Max Verstappen postponed the championship – Sport – Kommersant

Red Bull driver Sergio Perez wins the Singapore Grand Prix. The Mexican already at the start bypassed the Ferrari leader Charles Leclerc and did not give up more leadership in the race. But the championship leader Max Verstappen, for whom the Singapore stage theoretically could become a champion, was only the seventh. However, the advantage of the Dutchman is such that now each of the remaining races can bring him a second title in his career.

The Singapore Grand Prix is ​​a beautiful, bright stage (in the literal sense, because the race is held at night under artificial lighting), but at the same time it does not give fans a chance for thrills. The configuration of the track is not conducive to overtaking, and therefore it is critical how the riders perform in qualifying. And in it, the undisputed leader of the season, Max Verstappen, was not lucky. Red Bull miscalculated the amount of fuel poured into his car, realized this when Verstappen was on the last fast lap, and in order not to run into a fine (after qualifying, fuel is taken from the tanks of the cars for analysis, and if the prescribed volume cannot be drained, tough sanctions), called him back into the pits. This cost Verstappen the first place at the start and, apparently, the victory in the race, which, under certain conditions, could well provide him with a second consecutive and second title in his career ahead of schedule. There were several scenarios for his conquest. But they all assumed that Verstappen would win the race. He didn’t even come close to winning.

The race itself is difficult to attribute to examples of entertainment. The most important thing in the struggle for victory in it actually happened immediately after the start.

Perez, who started the stage in second position, reacted to the lights better than Leclerc, pulled ahead and did not give up the lead anymore.

Maybe everything could have turned out differently if the Singapore track had not been flooded with rain, which had to shift the start of the race for an hour, but spent a good half of it with deactivated DRS. Without it, overtaking was quite sad. However, even after the track dried out and the riders changed into slick shoes, nothing fundamentally changed. Yes, there were a few laps during which Leclerc really put pressure on Perez. But in this fight, Leclerc simply killed the rubber and was forced to give up trying to get around the leader. It is noteworthy that towards the end of the race, the race directorate announced that Pérez would be investigated at the end of the stage for misconduct while the safety car was on the track. The Mexican was ordered from the Red Bull pits to increase the gap from Leclerc to a mark exceeding five seconds (it was the five-second penalty that Perez was eventually assigned), he did it with ease.

He eventually broke away from Leclerc by 7.5 seconds, from Carlos Sainz (Ferrari), who finished third, by more than 15 seconds.

Ferrari, however, drew attention to the fact that Perez committed the same violations twice, and therefore he needs to write out two penalties of five seconds, and then the Mexican’s lead is not enough to save the victory. But for the second violation, he received only a warning.

As for Verstappen, his problems were not limited to unsuccessful qualification. In principle, the car allowed the Dutchman, who started from eighth place, to claim at least a place on the podium. But he overslept the start, rolling back into the second ten of the peloton. Well, when he nevertheless gained momentum and even climbed to fifth place, he made a mistake that almost led to a descent. An unplanned pit stop sent Verstappen back again, and all he managed to do before the finish line was get to seventh position.

However, this failure means almost nothing for Verstappen, although he probably wanted to extend his winning streak, stretching for five races. He is ahead of Leclerc by 104 points and in a week in Japan (taking into account the Japanese race there are five stages left before the end of the championship) he will get another chance to get the title ahead of schedule.

Arnold Kabanov