Pole for Perez. It will be an interesting race. If Verstappen wants to get near the podium, he has to overtake 2 AM, 2 Ferraris and 2 Mercedes. Alonso starting 2nd due to Leclerc's penalty.

Oh dear poor Max

Might make for some interesting racing again. In other news, at least judging by qualifying so far, Haas made the right decision in switching Hulkenberg for Schumacher.

Almost any driver would have been better than Schumacher

You do know I'm referring to Mick not Michael, right?

Of course...otherwise my comment would have been very inappropriate…to say the least.

There are several drivers out there who aren't much better imo. Some of them just have ( very ) rich dads.

I agree but we did have a great start in the meantime…great race so far

Oh my, poor Alonso!

I was a bit underwhelmed from lap 0 to 25. Verstappen overtook 13 cars without major battles. The expected battle with Leclerc was a major disappointment when Leclerc entered boxes for new tires just when Max caught up with him. I was cooking, so not fully focused on the race but I think when Max overtook Sainz was not shown on TV. And Alonso did not put up a fight :/ Not sure if it was related to his 5 second penalty.

After Verstappen passed Alonso on lap 25, he was 5.5s from Pérez. It seemed he was unstoppable but he could only gain 0.1s per lap from Pérez. Nail bitting laps from 25 to 36. By lap 36 (or 37?) Verstappen got to 4.3-4.5s from Pérez. At that point something broke in his car and lost pace. A lap later, Pérez complained about brakes not working that well. By that point in the race, both redbulls could DNF.

Max slowed down, and Pérez was asked to ease the pace a bit too by lap 40 to ensure car got the finish line. He complained while unaware Max was slowing down. Last laps where slower until Max got fastest lap. Pérez 1st, Vertappen 2nd, Alonso 3rd.

It seems both Verstappen and Pérez pushed their cars to failure. There were no wonderful overtakes, but watching the fractions of a second separating them change every lap was quite entertaining.