JEDDAH: Reigning Formula One world champion Max Verstappen won the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix on Sunday after an intense battle with Ferrari rival Charles Leclerc.
The Red Bull driver overtook Leclerc's Ferrari three laps from the end in Jeddah for his first win of the F1 season and the 21st of his career in a night of high drama.
The Dutchman and Monegasque, who have raced against each other since they were young karters, went back and forth in the closing stages of the race until the world champion managed to create a gap of just over half a second, which was enough for him to clinch the win.
Leclerc, who led teammate Carlos Sainz to a 1-2 podium finish for Ferrari last weekend in Bahrain, was denied a chance at a back-to-back win.
“Really happy we finally kick-started the season,” Verstappen said. “It was a really tough race but a good race. We were both battling hard at the front.”
Leclerc even congratulated his old karting rival on the radio and then gave him a thumbs-up after.
“We’ve been pushing like I’ve rarely pushed before, we take risks. Of course there’s respect,” Leclerc said. “I really enjoyed that race, it was hard racing but fair. Every race should be like this. It was fun, I wanted to win today."
Last year, seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton won the race in Jeddah after he and Verstappen were the two drivers battling it out in an incident-heavy race.
This time however the Briton started way down the grid after failing to qualify beyond Q1 on Saturday for the first time since 2017. The Briton managed to claim a points finish for Mercedes after climbing up to tenth. His Mercedes co-driver George Russell found himself mostly holding on to fifth position throughout the race until the chequered flag.
Verstappen entered the weekend with zero points to his name after a late retirement at the Bahrain Grand Prix and this weekend started in fourth on the grid behind his teammate Sergio Perez and both Ferraris.
Perez claimed his first ever pole position in F1 in Saturday's qualifying and lined up at the head of the grid for Sunday's race. The Mexican led the early stages until a deployment of the safety car due to a crash by the Williams driver, Nicholas Latifi, 17 laps into the race.
Video replays showed Latifi getting on the power early through the final corner, which caused him to lose control and collide nose first into the barriers — which marked two crashes in two days for the Canadian driver.
By this point, Perez had already pitted and was racing in fourth.
The yellow flag let the drivers go in for a pit and closed the gap the Mexican worked so hard to create since the start. Leclerc who joined Perez on the front row on Sunday’s race pit and was able to lead the second half tailed by Verstappen from lap 21 who began slowly closing the gap during the final laps eventually leading to three tenths of a second and DRS activations down the straight.
But after a virtual safety car came out, due to apparent power failures on Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren and Fernando Alonso’s Alpine, Verstappen found himself lurking behind Leclerc with eight laps to go.
Verstappen overtook on the outside at the end of lap 42, but it was clever driving from Leclerc, who dived straight back inside Verstappen on turn 1 of the next lap.
The Dutchman had another go on lap 44, locking his brakes trying a risky overtake on the DRS line, but overtook on Lap 47 with a clean pass.
The championship moves on to Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix, the first race in the country since 2019 after two cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
