Verstappen sambas to record extending & record breaking victory in Sao Paulo; Norris takes another second place in breakout season; Alonso out-duels Perez in scintillating battle for P3

Hot on the heels of his Saturday Sprint win, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen continued his campaign of total dominance on Sunday, surviving early race chaos behind him to take yet another assured win at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix in Brazil. Despite a solid effort by eventual runner-up Lando Norris of McLaren, Vertsappen was never put under any real pressure during the 71-lap contest and simply managed the race and his tries from the point all day long. Verstappen bested Norris by a comfortable 8.277-seconds in notching his record-extending seventeenth win of the season, also breaking the 71-year old record for greatest percentage of wins in a season, previously held by the legendary Ferrari pilot Alberto Ascari. With his third consecutive F1 title in the bag several races ago, Verstappen simply keeps putting the pedal to the metal and, with only two more rounds remaining in the season, it’s hard to see the flying Dutchman lifting off the throttle and giving someone else a chance at the top step.

But credit McLaren’s Norris for emerging as the Red Bull ace’s nearest rival in the second half of the season. Norris has a had a breakout year once McLaren put their upgrades to full use and made it 6 second place finishes out of the last ten rounds, with another P3 thrown into that mix for good measure. While he couldn’t match Verstappen’s peerless pace at Interlagos, Norris easily held off any challenges from other would be aspirants like Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and the second Red Bull of Sergio Perez. And while teammate Oscar Piastri has had some bad luck lately with early contact adversely effecting his races, as happened again at the start in Sao Paulo, it’s fairly evident that for now, at least, Norris is the dominant driver on that team. But with Piastri a  true rookie who will have a full season’s worth of experience to draw upon next year and Norris’s rapidly evolving excellence evident for all to see, 2024 is definitely looking very bright for McLaren.

Watching on repeat 🔁

Jump onboard with Fernando for THAT incredible last lap 😮‍💨#F1 #BrazilGP pic.twitter.com/0DnSIAk3at

— Formula 1 (@F1) November 6, 2023

Aston Martin had a sudden and unexpected return to their promising early season form after the team decided to bin their midseason “upgrades” and return to the earlier iteration of this year’s AMR23. We’ll see if that fix has legs but for whatever reason Sao Paulo really suited their cars, and both Alonso and Lance Stroll were very racy in the Grand Prix. The duo easily outclassed both Mercedes in Friday Qualifying and dusted off the Silver Arrows whenever caught behind them in the race on pit sequence, Alonso then fought a ding-dong battle with Perez for the latter third of the GP, Perez hunting him down with the DRS advantage beginning on Lap 54 after undercutting the Spaniard on Lap 47 for a final stint on the preferred Soft Pirellis. But the wily old Alonso used every trick of car positioning and battery recharging to hold off the pursuing Red Bull, clearly keen to keep his P3 and return to the podium for the first time since back at Round 14 in the Netherlands. With the laps winding down, Perez finally managed the overtake on the Aston on Lap 70 steaming down the straight into Turn 1. But Alonso was tenacious, first pushing hard to get up to the Red Bull’s gearbox on that penultimate lap and then passing Perez back for P3 and holding off the Mexican’s best final efforts as they crossed the line and the checkers flew. It was scintillating stuff, as Alonso pipped Perez for the final podium position by an astonishing .0053 seconds. Despite losing out, it was still a very good recovery weekend for the beleaguered Perez, as the veteran made his case for keeping his Red Bull seat with that P4 in the race and P3 in Saturday’s Sprint.

Trailing Perez, the second Aston of Stroll came home a very strong P5, a much needed boost for the young Canadian, who has had a mostly down year. Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was able to hold off the Alpine of Pierre Gasly despite a downshifting issue late in the race, P6 to P7. Lewis Hamilton finished up in P8 on a desultory day for Mercedes, with their cars lacking anything resembling top five pace and teammate George Russel forced to retire on Lap 58 with a critical oil temperature warning. Benefitting from the rash of retirements, AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda was P9 and Esteban Ocon took the last point in P10 for the second Alpine.

Mayhem at the start as Magnussen and Albon crash out before the first corner 💥😮#F1 #BrazilGP pic.twitter.com/pYWbbzvDUK

— Formula 1 (@F1) November 5, 2023

The unfortunate blemish on McLaren’s otherwise excellent day was Piastri getting caught up in a Lap 1 melee through no fault of his own. Haas’s Nico Hulkenberg got squeezed and contacted Williams’ Alexander Albon, who then speared across the track into the path of the second Haas of Kevin Magnussen, destroying both their race cars. Piastri was collateral damage and received a broken rear wing for his troubles, while the AlphaTauri of Daniel Ricciardo also had its rear wing broken in a scary manner by a loose flying tire carcass, something F1 will have to follow up on due to the inherent dangers of such a heavy flying object. The ensuing Red Flag period allowed both Piastri and Ricciardo to have their rides repaired but they lost a lap in the process after proceedings resumed and both were forced to start from the pits. It was worse for Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, whose Prancing Horse conked out on the Formation Lap with a hydraulics issue, leaving the Monegaque to bemoan his persistent lack of luck this year.

Top 10 finishers of the Sao Palo GP:

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

After three grueling race weekends on the trot, the teams get a week off as they finish up the final Western Hemisphere swing with the return of the Las Vegas Grand Prix in a fortnight. Not so much a night race as a night owl race, the GP is scheduled to start on at 10PM Eastern on Saturday night November 18 under the garish lights of Sin City. Hope to see you then to find out how things shake out on the virgin Vegas Strip Circuit track in the penultimate contest of the year!