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Max Verstappen wins Qatar Grand Prix after Lando Norris penalty and puncture chaos

New race director failed to remove debris from track after wing mirror fell from Kevin Magnussen’s car

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen celebrates after winning the Qatar Grand Prix at the Lusail International Circuit in Doha. Photograph: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP via Getty Images
Red Bull driver Max Verstappen celebrates after winning the Qatar Grand Prix at the Lusail International Circuit in Doha. Photograph: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP via Getty Images
Giles Richards
Sun Dec 01 2024 - 18:50

Max Verstappen won the Qatar Grand Prix for Red Bull with a commanding drive in a race notable for the controversy caused when the new FIA race director failed to deal with debris on track that gave two cars punctures. Charles Leclerc was second for Ferrari and Oscar Piastri third, while his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris endured a torrid afternoon, relegated from second to the back of the grid for failing to slow under yellow flags, he came back to finish 10th.

The race had been very much a procession for the first half with Verstappen leading from Norris, the top 10 largely circling line astern from one another in a laborious exercise in tyre management.

However, just after the halfway point an errant wing mirror dislodged from Kevin Magnussen’s Haas. It was left on track toward the end of the start-finish straight in the overtaking zone, but nothing was done about it for over three laps.

It was ultimately shifted, entirely unsurprisingly, by being crushed into pieces by Valtteri Bottas’s Sauber on lap 34 but immediately afterwards both Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz picked up punctures from the debris raising serious questions as to why the race had not been neutralised to allow marshals to remove it sooner.

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The incident was another embarrassment for the FIA, coming so soon after the former race director Niels Wittich was replaced with just three races remaining. He has since said he did not resign and it is reported he was sacked. Wittich was replaced by Rui Marques, who was previously the race director for Formula Two and Formula Three but the timing of the change, with three complex races remaining and an inexperienced race director in place was questioned by drivers and teams alike.

The FIA made no comment on why Wittich had been replaced but the incident occurred during a weekend when Mercedes’ George Russell, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, had demanded “clarity and understanding of what is going on and who is getting fired next”. A comment which was met on Sunday with a dismissive rebuttal by the FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem. “Do we tell them how to drive? Do we tell them what to have as their strategy? It’s none of their business,” he said.

However the president will be under even further pressure to explain the circumstances of Wittich’s departure after the events at the Lusail circuit which could have caused a serious accident.

The result takes the constructors’ championship to the wire at the final round in Abu Dhabi next weekend, with Norris’s penalty costing McLaren dear. They are looking to claim their first title since 1998 and needed to be 45 points ahead of rivals Ferrari at the close of the meeting in Qatar to finish it off. But Ferrari have now closed the gap to 21 points with 44 on offer in Abu Dhabi.

Hamilton endured a painful afternoon after what has been a tough weekend. He was flagged for a false start early in the race and he took a five-second penalty, having already dropped to eighth.

Hamilton, who was struggling with the balance of the car all race, took a puncture from the debris and then received a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane. The driver, thoroughly fed-up, asked to retire his car but the team insisted he stick at it, which will not have improved his mood and he finished 12th.

The race was interrupted by a series of safety car interventions after on-track clashes demonstrating how key race direction would be in Qatar. While Norris had also been caught out, receiving his 10-second stop-go penalty for failing to slow under the yellows which were shown when the wing mirror was on track, a huge penalty that ruined his race.

Russell was in fourth for Mercedes, Pierre Gasly fifth for Alpine, Carlos Sainz sixth for Ferrari, Fernando Alonso seventh for Aston Martin, Guanyu Zhou eighth for Sauber and Magnussen ninth for Haas. – Guardian