Oh dear, this is in danger of turning into the most one-sided fight since Herod took on the Innocents.
Two races, two Red Bull wins, the rest annihilated. As Lewis Hamilton put it: ‘I have definitely never seen a car so fast.’
The only twist here in Saudi Arabia was that pole-man Sergio Perez, rather than his illustrious team-mate Max Verstappen, triumphed on the self-styled fastest street circuit in the world.
Verstappen, however, finished second, having started 15th — as if the driveshaft failure he suffered in qualifying on Saturday was devised as a deliberate handicap to spice up yesterday’s fare.
The conceit worked to a limited degree, introducing a slice of jeopardy into the mix, but such was his machine’s sheer performance advantage that the world champion zoomed up to 10th by the eighth of 50 laps and was on Hamilton’s tail a couple of minutes later.
Sergio Perez produced an assured drive to secure victory in the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix
The Mexican kept hold of pole for the majority of the race – always showing irresistible pace
The race further underlined the feeling that Red Bull will dominate this season with another one-two finish
Lap 10: Verstappen passes the Briton on the long straight. Without resistance. It would have been futile. Max knew it and Lewis knew it.
By the time a safety car came out on lap 18, Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin having parked up just off the track, Verstappen was in fourth place.
Lap 23: The Dutchman perpetrated on Fernando Alonso, in the other Aston, the murder he had just performed on Hamilton. Alonso did not so much as raise a hand in defiance. Again, it was pointless.
Now, it was a matter of whether Verstappen would catch Perez. He couldn’t. They matched each other equally — a feather the Mexican can wear proudly in his crash helmet.
His reward, a fifth career victory. He now stands one point off the championship lead at this early stage of a 23-race marathon. Verstappen’s fastest lap, set at the death, is all that separates them.
But what a prodigious gap to the rest.
Mercedes’ George Russell, 26 seconds back, was briefly handed third place after the chequered flag had been waved and the fireworks were banging, when the FIA punished Alonso for serving incorrectly a five-second penalty imposed for starting out of position on the grid, to the left of the centre of the box.
The retrospective sanction demoted the Spaniard to fourth only for him to be reinstated to third at 1am local time after an appeal. Hamilton remained in fifth. Asked about the wider state of the sport, and the possibility of the newly recruited Netflix generation being turned off by the predictability, Hamilton replied:
Aston Martin celebrated joyfully after Fernando Alonso produced a solid drive to finish third
‘It is not for me to say. When we were fast (in previous years of dominance), we were not that fast. It is the fastest car I have seen, especially compared to the rest.
‘I don’t know how, but he (Verstappen) came past me with some serious speed. I didn’t even bother to block because there was a massive difference.
‘Everyone wants to see close racing, but it is the way it is and it is not my problem. It is not my fault.’
Not his fault, maybe, but it is his problem. And the wider sport’s. Red Bull have won 12 of the last 13 races. Congratulations, and take nothing away from them, for they have risen to the top in Formula One’s great meritocracy.
As for the race, Russell drove the better of the two Mercedes men, as he had in qualifying, earning the right to start third to Hamilton’s eighth.
When the lights went out, Hamilton was struggling on hard tyres and was passed by Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Lewis Hamilton had struggled in qualifying but appeared more comfortable in the race itself
Max Verstappen left himself just too much to do to catch Perez having started 15th on the grid
George Russell held off a late challenge from team-mate Hamilton to finish fourth
The safety-car-induced halt in racing permitted him a cheap stop, having just been shown a black-and-white warning flag for weaving. This timely re-shodding allowed the senior Brit to sit close on Russell’s tail for some time, but he could not wriggle past the other Silver Arrow and ended up 5.1 seconds adrift of his team-mate.
‘I am generally happy,’ said Hamilton. ‘I struggled in the first stint, pace wise, with the loss of understeer, but the second stint was a bit better. I still don’t have confidence in the car, but I am doing the best I can with it.’
As for Alonso, the evergreen 41-year-old, there appeared a flickering, illusory outside chance of victory when he pipped Perez off the start and into the first corner, but he was soon overtaken back before his original penalty bit. He finished 21 seconds off Perez. Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc were sixth and seventh for Ferrari, a team in as much disarray as Mercedes.
Briton Lando Norris finished 17th on another difficult weekend and McLaren. His rookie team-mate Oscar Piastri was two places up the road. Credit to Red Bull for not ordering Perez to make way for Verstappen. But such an instruction would have been a terrible look, and anyway there was no need. They are fighting nobody but themselves.
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