Double Delight For Honda Power In Turkey #F1
A wet Turkish Grand Prix full of jeopardy was brilliantly handled by Red Bull Racing and Scuderia AlphaTauri as three Honda-powered cars finished in the top six.
Morning drizzle eased but never fully stopped and under grey skies the low temperatures meant the track did not dry up. So the race started with the entire field on intermediate tyres, Max starting from second ahead of Pierre in fourth, Sergio in sixth and Yuki in ninth.
While Max retained P2 at the first corner, Sergio had the best getaway and was attacking for fourth place down the inside of Turn 1. Pierre was caught in the middle of a sandwich with Sergio on his inside and Fernando Alonso on his outside, and the AlphaTauri tapped the Alpine into a spin, earning Pierre a somewhat harsh five-second time penalty.
Yuki ran eighth after a clean start and then provided some excellent defensive driving to keep Lewis Hamilton at bay for a number of laps. Unfortunately, after finally being overtaken he then suffered a spin at Turn 9 on Lap 22 and dropped out of the top ten.
Max looked after his tyres and pushed to close up on Valtteri Bottas in the lead but couldn’t quite get close enough to attack, instead keeping a safe gap to Charles Leclerc behind him.
The race entered a bit of a holding pattern with Max second, Sergio fourth and Pierre sixth after being passed by Hamilton, with everyone waiting to see if the track would dry enough for slick tyres. As it became clear that wouldn’t happen, the pace picked up and Sergio fought an epic battle with Hamilton, holding off the Mercedes driver after going wheel-to-wheel through a number of corners.
Yuki was first to make a pit stop for another set of intermediate tyres on lap 35 and was followed by Max one lap later and Sergio a lap after that. Pierre came in on lap 39 and took his time penalty, rejoining in sixth place.
Max remained in second while Sergio closed up on both Leclerc and Hamilton ahead who had tried to stay out on intermediates to the flag, but in the end both made pit stops and Sergio managed to clear the Ferrari for third place into Turn 12.
Both Red Bulls - in the special tribute white livery to mark what would have been the Japanese Grand Prix weekend - ended up on the podium for the second time this season, while Pierre recorded his fourth top-six finish in the past six races.
The result also gives Max the lead in the drivers’ championship once again, earning a six-point advantage with six races remaining.