Verstappen cruises to F1 victory from Perez, Alonso

Verstappen led easily away from pole position, while Perez lost second to Leclerc after he made a slow getaway and fell behind the Ferrari driver.

Any hope of a battle for the lead was quickly extinguished when Verstappen romped clear of Leclerc by over half-a-second a lap, with Perez tracking Leclerc across the first stint before they made their first of two pitstops.

Leclerc was the first of the leaders to stop to switch from softs to hards on lap 13 of 57, with Verstappen coming in from nearly 10s clear to take a second set of softs after both Red Bull cars had come into the race with just one set of the white-walled rubber available.

Perez ran a few laps longer before he stopped to take more softs too, which he then used to close in on Leclerc and took second with a DRS-assisted blast to the inside of Turn 1 on lap 26.

From there, Verstappen was only bothered by a minor downshift issue causing occasional rear-locking and ran clear of Perez to win by 11.9s after they had both completed one more pitstop to finally take the hards in what was a crushing performance from Red Bull.

That was made even better when Leclerc, who had dropped to nearly 10s behind Perez before making a second stop for fresh hards on lap 33, retired from the race after suddenly losing drive on lap 40, with Ferrari later saying it had “lost the engine” on his SF-23.

That triggered a brief virtual safety car as the Ferrari was recovered, after which Alonso charged after and passed compatriot Carlos Sainz to score a podium on his first appearance for Aston Martin.

He had earlier lost a place to Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes on the first lap, then lost another to George Russell when Lance Stroll tagged his new Aston team-mate outbraking himself while battling Russell into Turn 4 on the opening tour.

Alonso followed Hamilton through the race’s early tyre management phases and two stops for both Astons and Mercedes cars, the Spaniard running long before making his second stop after Mercedes had pitted Hamilton early for a second time to ward off an undercut threat from his former McLaren team-mate.

The two world champions engaged in a thrilling fight over what was then fifth place, with Alonso needing two attempts to clear Hamilton after his first pass at Turn 4 went wrong before he put in a brilliant Turns 9/10 dive to clear the Mercedes.

Post-VSC, Alonso quickly caught Sainz, who had been running a long way adrift of Leclerc and concerned about his second set of…