Heavenly Max and the patience of a Sainz

Canadian GP

British GP

Austrian GP

THREE GRANDS PRIX PACKED into four weekends in this quick-fire championship gave three different winners, one of them for the first time. The victories of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen (in Canada) and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc (in Austria) bookended Carlos Sainz’s breakthrough win at the British Grand Prix. Sainz had been Ferrari’s main chance two weeks earlier, in Canada, where he fought with Verstappen for the win, pressuring the Red Bull all the way to the flag. On that occasion Leclerc had started from the back row as penalty for taking his fourth power unit of the season, placing Sainz in the team’s lead role for the weekend. But before he could take the race to Verstappen, Sainz had to find a way around the Alpine of a starring Fernando Alonso, who in wet qualifying the previous day made himself the first driver in his forties to reach the front row since Nigel Mansell in 1994, though his deficit to pole-sitting Verstappen was O.65sec. Sergio Perez crashed his Red Bull out of Q2 on the tricky surface, Mercedes’ George Russell