Formula 1 Sao Paulo Grand Prix 2024 - Results
And Sao Paulo completes the triple-header!
What a weekend. What a day. What a race! Rain, amiright? Gotta be the most expensive weekend all year, in terms of destruction.
Congrats to Ocon, Gasly, and all of Alpine! P2 & P3, respectively. No one would've predicted that.
As an RB fan, it's great to see Max back at P1 and extending his championship lead over Norris! The gap has increased to 62pts. Amazing drive, starting at P17 and finishing P1. Plus he kept banging out fastest lap after fastest lap at the front, even with the rain and wet track. Yeah he got lucky with the safety car and red flag, but even before that, he was on form.
On the other side of the garage...Checo, WTH. Can't even pass your junior team's rookie driver? And then letting Hamilton through, as well? I'll just leave it at that.
Props to all the mechanics and engineers for having to fix and rebuild all those cars that got destroyed in Qualifying this morning. Especially Williams. I think Albon's crash was the most disappointing for me. He was provisionally P2 with 3min left of Q3, and I was stoked that he might actually keep it. But then he spun out into the wall. I actually yelled out "NOOOOOOO!" when I saw it happen ðŸ˜
Lastly, remember that there are potential penalties for Norris and a few others on the aborted start weirdness at the beginning.
3 weeks until the next race; enjoy the break. REMEMBER: Vegas is a SATURDAY NIGHT race in the US. Adjust accordingly to your local time.
Next race:
Las Vegas Grand Prix
Las Vegas Strip Circuit
Saturday, November 24
Provisional GRAND PRIX Results -- SPOILER
| Pos | No | Driver | Car | Laps | Time/retired | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing Honda RBPT | 69 | 2:06:54.430 | 26 |
| 2 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | Alpine Renault | 69 | +19.477s | 18 |
| 3 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine Renault | 69 | +22.532s | 15 |
| 4 | 63 | George Russell | Mercedes | 69 | +23.265s | 12 |
| 5 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 69 | +30.177s | 10 |
| 6 | 4 | Lando Norris | McLaren Mercedes | 69 | +31.372s | 8 |
| 7 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | RB Honda RBPT | 69 | +42.056s | 6 |
| 8 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren Mercedes | 69 | +44.943s | 4 |
| 9 | 30 | Liam Lawson | RB Honda RBPT | 69 | +50.452s | 2 |
| 10 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 69 | +50.753s | 1 |
| 11 | 11 | Sergio Perez | Red Bull Racing Honda RBPT | 69 | +51.531s | 0 |
| 12 | 50 | Oliver Bearman | Haas Ferrari | 69 | +57.085s | 0 |
| 13 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Kick Sauber Ferrari | 69 | +63.588s | 0 |
| 14 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin Aramco Mercedes | 69 | +78.049s | 0 |
| 15 | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | Kick Sauber Ferrari | 69 | +79.649s | 0 |
| NC | 55 | Carlos Sainz | Ferrari | 38 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 43 | Franco Colapinto | Williams Mercedes | 30 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Haas Ferrari | 30 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 23 | Alexander Albon | Williams Mercedes | 0 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 18 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin Aramco Mercedes | 0 | DNF | 0 |
Fastest Lap: Max Verstappen, Lap 67
Source: F1.com
SPRINT RACE Results -- SPOILER
| Pos | No | Driver | Car | Laps | Time/retired | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | Lando Norris | McLaren Mercedes | 24 | 29:46.045 | 8 |
| 2 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren Mercedes | 24 | +0.593s | 7 |
| 3 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 24 | +5.656s | 6 |
| 4 | 1 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing Honda RBPT | 24 | +6.497s | 5 |
| 5 | 55 | Carlos Sainz | Ferrari | 24 | +7.224s | 4 |
| 6 | 63 | George Russell | Mercedes | 24 | +12.475s | 3 |
| 7 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine Renault | 24 | +18.161s | 2 |
| 8 | 11 | Sergio Perez | Red Bull Racing Honda RBPT | 24 | +18.717s | 1 |
| 9 | 30 | Liam Lawson | RB Honda RBPT | 24 | +20.773s | 0 |
| 10 | 23 | Alexander Albon | Williams Mercedes | 24 | +24.606s | 0 |
| 11 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 24 | +29.764s | 0 |
| 12 | 43 | Franco Colapinto | Williams Mercedes | 24 | +33.233s | 0 |
| 13 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | Alpine Renault | 24 | +34.128s | 0 |
| 14 | 50 | Oliver Bearman | Haas Ferrari | 24 | +35.507s | 0 |
| 15 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | RB Honda RBPT | 24 | +41.374s | 0 |
| 16 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Kick Sauber Ferrari | 24 | +43.231s | 0 |
| 17 | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | Kick Sauber Ferrari | 24 | +54.139s | 0 |
| 18 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin Aramco Mercedes | 24 | +56.537s | 0 |
| 19 | 18 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin Aramco Mercedes | 24 | +57.983s | 0 |
| NC | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Haas Ferrari | 19 | DNF | 0 |
Source: F1.com
What an unbelievable race. Awesome! I was also sad to see Albon crashing out. But - although I’ve never been an alpine fan - seeing them finish p2 & p3 was a really nice moment as well.
And Max… just wow. Great to see him so happy and joyfully spitting fire in the post race press conference ^^
i didn’t think i’d miss seeing Max with a dominant performance, but this was exactly what i wanted to see. i think he only had ten positions in the grid to win from now.
It was nice to see a win be so celebrated. When Hamilton, Vettel and Verstappen were in their most dominant periods, some of the wins just become routine. It was great to see the victory mean so much and be so appreciated by the race winner in Brazil.
what an incredible drive, too. i had the main feed full screen and max’s onboard smaller in the corner.
between this and the first five or six laps of motogp, it was a legendary weekend.
a) Meltdown for McLaren. Lando couldn't start/restart to save his life, and McLaren botched the one pitstop they had.
b) This is the Max I like to see, the "incredibly fast, picking his way through the field" Max, as opposed to the "run people off the road Max". Found his behaviour in the last race appalling, but sublime today.
c) Well done to Alpine!
d) Checo, almost forgot he was in the race until I read your OP. Lawson handled him like a boss.
Lawson gave Perez such a hard time, I loved it. Perez had a pretty decent legacy as a tire whisperer etc. etc., at Sauber and Force India. A journeyman driver, but a very competent one with flashes of greatness on his day. Now, I think "pay driver" is the thing that pops up in discussions about him.
This triple header has been amazing. I appreciate all the work that went into making Quali and the Race happen today. 5 red flags during quali was intense and made it a really long session. Then only having a few hours to fix cars meant some impressive work done by the mechanics.
I'm an Ocon fan, so seeing Alpine in P2 and P3 was an amazing surprise. With the season they have been having, I thought single podium finish would be out of the realm of possibility.
McLaren has blown me away with their string of questionable choices since the break. They didn't use team orders earlier in the season which hurt Lando's chances, and today when he had no chance, they swapped him and Piastri. If I was either driver on that team, I wouldn't be happy.
Piastri hasn't been an amazing support driver, either, to be honest, even when Norris had half a chance at the championship. That famous dive at Monza and barely any defence against Verstappen yesterday. I'm no Norris fan, so it doesn't bother me, but I think it says something about how Piastri perceives his and Norris' places in the team and their chances of titles. Pragmatically, I think Mclaren should have gone full-on Norris support mode as soon as there were whispers he had a chance. I honestly don't think he's good enough to get another chance. Mclaren have to be good and Piastri will be in season 3 and, I believe, surpassing him.
All that said, Verstappen, wow, what a drive. I felt like we didn't get to watch him much, but seeing the fastest lap notice flash up again and again was something else. He's got that champions' trait of making the most of the car, when it counts. You love to see it. Hopefully some other team comes along to wreck RBR though, I want to see Verstappen challenged!
He really hasn't been a team player at all and he has been given a lot of help from team orders throughout the season. I honestly don't think his win at Hungary should have happened. Norris had the better pit strategy and it put him out in front. He had the better pace and better strategy that day. If Piastri had any other driver ahead of him, they wouldn't have slowed down to let him pass and I don't think Norris should have either. I think Piastri has a lot of talent, but if he can't play a team game, no one is going to want to be in the other McLaren seat to help them win WDC and WCC.
I'm not a Verstappen fan, but that was a lot of fun to watch. We switched to the onboard camera for parts of the race and it was just crazy to watch what he was doing from the cockpit in the crazy amount of spray being kicked up by the cars ahead.
Max reminded us all why he is levels ahead of any of his competitors yesterday. If rain helps level the performance of the car then Max made all the difference. Obviously luck of the safety car helped him but him and Ocon and Gasly had the bottle to make the strategy work and stay out in torrential rain on old inters that where running out of treads.
I think the safety car actually removed some of the drama from the race. Max had managed to keep his gap to the leaders at 10 seconds while getting through traffic I think there was a chance of him driving up to the back of the front runners and making some great moves.