The irrepressible Dutchman was barely seen on screen throughout the 50-lap encounter in Jeddah, save from the start and his brief battle with Lando Norris after the first safety car of the year, as the action happened elsewhere.
Instead, much of the attention was focused elsewhere: a thrilling midfield scrap courted much of the TV time, as did the battle between Norris and Lewis Hamilton in the dying stages of the race. And, of course, F1’s viewers had the last-minute debut of Oliver Bearman to savour, as the 18-year-old Briton was thrown in the deep end at Ferrari when Carlos Sainz was laid up with appendicitis on Friday morning.
1. Red Bull’s dominance shows no sign of ending…
Two races in, two perfect scoring weekends for Red Bull – talk about ominous!
Photo by: Shameem Fahath
Last year, George Russell had suggested very early on into the season that Red Bull was likely to win every race of 2023. At the time his candour came tinged with what felt like defeatism, but his prognostications had been 95% correct by the end of the year; the RB19 had been far and away the dominant car, and only Carlos Sainz broke the team’s stranglehold of the winners’ circle.
This season? So far, the same – except it feels even more exclusive at this juncture. Only a technical issue or a Singapore-like capitulation is realistically going to peel Verstappen off the top of the race results, based on these first two races. The three-time champion’s margin of victory was not as crushing as it had been in Bahrain, with his 13.6s winning margin over Sergio Perez inflated by the Mexican’s unsafe pitstop release penalty.
Verstappen only needed to use DRS assistance in one arena, when wresting his lead back from Norris as the Briton had assumed first place post-safety car. Norris, who hadn’t stopped while the race was neutralised, did not put up too much of a fight as his focus was on preserving his medium-compound tyres. Nor could he, as the Red Bull DRS cracked open and delivered a huge straightline speed boost into Turn 1, north of 30km/h against the DRS-less McLaren.
Before indulging in too much doomsaying, it’s probably worth seeing where the RB20 stacks up in a lower-speed environment; Monaco and Singapore were among its predecessor’s weak spots, so any carryover will be something to look out for. But at this rate, not even Perez is going to get a look in at the top step.
2….
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