And with that, Red Bull’s fifteen race win streak and Max Verstappen’s ten race win streak come to an end. Shoutout to Singapore for being a spoiler to championship teams every single year. Every single year we are thankful.
With Red Bull out of the running for first (though Max did make a charge through the field at the end, finishing P5 and gaining 18s in 5 laps) the top four places were split by barely 5 seconds at the most for the entire race. It was wonderful to watch! Even the devastation of George going off and losing P3 in the final moments was tampered by how cool it was.
The final places for everyone was Carlos in P1 for Ferrari, Lando in P2 for Mclaren, and Lewis in P3 for Mercedes.
Liam Lawson is making a case
Liam Lawson is making a case for a seat in F1 this season. From leading the championship in Super Formula to now scoring points on just his third race in an F1 car, Liam is showing that he deserves to be on the grid next year.
The only trouble for him is that the Red Bull teams for next year seem to be full-up. Red Bull seem set on honoring Perez’s contract through at least the first few races of next season, Yuki is doing well at AlphaTauri, and with the rebranding coming Daniel Ricciardo’s experience and brand is too good to give up.
However, that doesn’t mean all is lost for Liam. F1 is nothing if not silly. If something happens to Perez, a seat at AlphaTauri could open. Since Red Bull and Honda are parting ways, who knows if they’ll want to keep Yuki in a Red Bull affiliated seat. Also, with Liam scoring points, that means Logan Sargeant is the only rookie left in F1 who hasn’t scored points this year… and we know the Williams can be in the points.
The driver I see the most pressure on (especially with today’s rumors of Yuki’s AT contract for next year being announced at Suzuka) is Logan Sargeant. It just doesn’t look good when a guy can come in and score points in his third race in what is arguably a worse car. On a circuit he’s never driven before, while Logan had the entire European section of the season to try and score on tracks he knew well. Especially when Logan is currently winning the “Destructor’s Championship” (aka has binned his car the most on the grid).
WHEREVER Liam Lawson goes next year, he’s going to be a driver to watch. Keep an eye on him while he’s filling in for Daniel—I’ve been following him since 2021 and am so excited to finally see him get some laurels.
Is that a wrecking ball or is it Sergio Perez? It’s honestly hard to tell.
While Max was doing damage-limitation for Red Bull, pulling his RB19 into P5, Sergio Perez was… playing bumper cars? It’s hard to tell, but that’s what it looked like. It was Perez’s 250th race start, but he looked newer than a rookie, somehow.
To start with, he collided with Yuki near instantly, ripping off Yuki’s sidepod and knocking him out of the race. Somehow, Perez had no damage, so he spent the majority of the laps just chilling in his starting position. A weekend of driving in circles. I would’ve said he wasn’t trying, except he did something to show he was trying almost too hard.
The trying to hard happened when he woke up and realized he was in a race and promptly decided to stick his nose up the inside line against Alex Albon once, twice, three times before deciding ‘fuck it’ and just ramming into the side of Albon at a turn.
Seriously, it was bizarre. The footage is damning. I have no idea what the dude was doing this weekend but it was seriously disgraceful in my opinion—he ruined two races and only received a 5s (YES FIVE SECONDS. ONLY FIVE) penalty. It didn’t even demote him a position. Just a disappointing performance all around.
Carlando working together
The highlight of the race for me was the Carlando podium. It was so wonderful to see these two together again, and especially perfect to get Lando on the podium again. The two were stuck together like glue throughout the race after Ferrari kinda sacrificed Charles (see the next section for more on that) and it paid off!
Carlos’s ability to strategize while still going at 250+kph is incredible to me. He managed his tires perfectly throughout the race and was able to use that rubber in the last 20 laps to defend from the two Mercedes, who had been brought into the fight for P1 thanks to some strategy and a good safety car.
Still, Carlos might not have won if he wasn’t clever enough to keep Lando, who was in P2, in DRS range. He knew that Lando’s tires were too shot to try and overtake, so if he could keep Lando within DRS, he would have more of a chance to defend from George Russell. By doing this, Lando would slow Russell down and keep him from reaching Carlos in time.
It worked perfectly, and got us the radio message of the race. Carlos’s response to his engineer’s message that Lando was within DRS—a cool “Yeah, that’s on purpose”— has been rolling around in my brain all day.
A brief aside: Carlos and Red Bull
Red Bull’s perfect run might have been broke, but it wasn’t lost on them that Carlos—a former Toro Rosso driver—was the one to do it. From Max liking all of Carlos’s posts and congratulating him to Christian Horner shouting Carlos and Ferrari out in his Instagram post it seemed like more proof that, no matter how removed you are from Red Bull, they’re always willing to celebrate you.
Take a look at what Horner told Carlos after the race:
Congratulations, it was an impressive performance. And if anyone had to beat us, I'm glad it was you.
Mercedes didn’t show up for Lewis Hamilton’s podium. Verstappen wants to win by twenty seconds at Suzuka. Jonathan Wheatly is the best in the business. Daniel Ricciardo talked to the New York Times and made me cry. Rumor is that Yuki and Daniel will be at AT next season. Alex Albon talks about how his promotion to Red Bull came way to soon (we can’t all be Verstappen/Vettel). “AlphaTauri is for junior drivers” vs “Why was Gasly there then??” drama is back on twitter.
I leave you with the funniest audio of the race (please watch all the way through it’s worth it).
Guys I’m very excited for Suzuka. But also qualifying is at 2AM and the race is at 1AM for me so. If someone wants to send me caffeine I’d be very thankful. See y’all soon!