Charles Leclerc took a comfortable victory at the Australian Grand Prix, scoring 26 points while the defending champion Max Verstappen scored nothing after retiring from the race.
The Ferrari driver led throughout the returning Melbourne event, which was disrupted by two safety cars – after which Leclerc dropped Verstappen each time, despite coming under heavy pressure from the 2021 title winner at the second restart.
Sergio Perez finished second ahead of George Russell, who was a big gainer under the second safety car, but had to hold off a charging Lewis Hamilton to the flag.
At the start, Verstappen looked to get a fractionally better start than Leclerc, but the polesitter was able to sweep across his front row rival and defend the inside line on the run to Turn 1, where behind Hamilton jumped Perez, who had been looking to follow Verstappen’s line to the outside.
Leclerc pulled a 0.6-second lead by the end of lap one of 58, with the top two exchanging fastest sectors over the next lap before the race was neutralised by the safety car’s appearance.
Carlos Sainz had started on the hard tyres but got a very poor launch off the line in ninth and tumbled down the pack, with the Spaniard starting to fight back on lap two when he lost the rear of his Ferrari after overtaking Mick Schumacher’s Haas into the fast left kink of Turn 9.
Sainz’s correction took him across the grass on the inside but he spun on the slippery surface, shooting sideways back across the track at the exit of Turn 10 – just in front of Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu – and ending up in the gravel on the far side where he became beached.
The virtual safety car was briefly activated before the full safety car was called for, which stayed out until the restart at the start of lap seven where Leclerc was easily able to maintain his advantage over Verstappen despite his car porpoising badly on full tanks at the end of each straight.
The top two eased clear of Hamilton and Perez – the only drivers able to stay in the one minute, 23 seconds bracket, with Leclerc gaining enough fractions in each sector of the two laps that followed the race resuming to be out of Verstappen’s DRS threat by the time the system was activated.
He continued to grow his lead with a series of fastest laps, metronomic in the 1m23.3s and that reached nearly two seconds by the end of lap 11.
But that ballooned to 3.0 seconds at the end of the next tour as Verstappen, who started to push on in response to Leclerc’s rapid pace, locked up at the penultimate corner and shipped a second, then complained his medium starting tyres were heavily grained.
Verstappen’s tyre trouble meant he slipped back to the mid 1m24s and with Leclerc able to keep his speed relentlessly high, the Ferrari soon had a lead above six seconds.
This reached 8.3 seconds by the time Red Bull called Verstappen in to go to the hards at the end of lap 18, which left Leclerc leading by miles ahead of Perez, who had repassed Hamilton shortly after the safety car came in.
Ferrari left Leclerc out until the end of lap 22 to swap his mediums for hards – the same lap Mercedes called Hamilton and got him out ahead of Perez.
But the tricky warm-up on the C4 rubber meant the Red Bull could close in on the sweeping run to Turn 9 and shoot ahead just before the quick left and just before the race was neutralised by the safety car’s appearance for a second time.
This was because Sebastian Vettel’s terrible Formula 1 return ended in the barriers ahead of the fast, tight right of Turn 5 – the Aston Martin driver having lost the rear of his AMR22 hitting the exit kerb of the previous left and spearing into the wall on the track’s inside.
With Vettel needing to be recovered from the short straight between Turns 5 and 6, and plenty of debris needing to be cleared from ahead of the former, the safety car stayed out until the start of lap 27, with Leclerc’s previous advantage – down to 6.9 seconds thanks to Verstappen’s strong pace on the hards after his stop – totally gone.
At the second restart, Leclerc’s run onto the main straight was compromised by going too wide and so Verstappen was able to close in and get alongside on the run to Turn 1.
But the Ferrari was able to stay in front with a solid defence on the inside line, which he repeated on the following straight and so was able to maintain the lead despite the pressure.
Leclerc then set about re-establishing his lead – again moving clear of Verstappen seemingly with ease to reach a gap of 3.4 seconds by the end of lap 31, the top duo reaching the one minute, 22 seconds having spent the early laps after the safety car in the one minute, 23 seconds and one minute, 24 seconds respectively as they worked to maintain critical tyre life.
Just like in the first stint, Leclerc set a string of fastest laps as he stroked clear of Verstappen, his lead back above five seconds by the end of lap 35.
It looked as if that gap would continue to grow – especially when Leclerc responded to a lap 37 Verstappen fastest time with an even quicker one on the following tour – when Verstappen suddenly pulled over a retired on the inside of Turn 2 on lap 39.
Smoke coming from the Red Bull RB18’s airbox suggested an engine issue was the cause, with the car’s recovery covered by a VSC and so Leclerc’s lead – now back over Perez – was maintained.
He cruised home, still with very strong pace in the 1m21s for most of the rest of the event, to win by 20.5 seconds – taking the fastest lap to boot with a blistering one minute, 20.260 seconds on the final lap, where he also had to negotiate traffic.
Perez was clear in second, with Russell third after he was able to stop during the Vettel safety car and get out just ahead of Fernando Alonso – yet to stop after starting on the hard tyres – Perez and Hamilton.
After Alonso went backwards on his old tyres, Perez hunted down Russell and pressured him for several laps before getting by with DRS on the outside line to Turn 11 – the Briton not fighting hard, possibly as a result of a Mercedes warning that “tyre management was more important that position”.
The looked like it might cost Russell a first Mercedes podium, but Verstappen’s retirement boosted him back and he came home ahead of an unhappy Hamilton, who noted that his run of bad luck with safety car timing continued here.
The McLaren drivers were secure in fifth and sixth, Lando Norris leading Daniel Ricciardo home, with Esteban Ocon seventh for Alpine.
Valtteri Bottas got ahead of Pierre Gasly late-on when the AlphaTauri locked up and slid off at Turn 13 – the pair having been part of a thrilling multi-car scrap with Lance Stroll and Alonso once the Spaniard had stopped in the closing stages.
Alex Albon scored a brilliant first point for Williams after doing a 57-lap stint on the hards, running ahead of Ocon for a long time after the second safety car and gaining as the battle behind raged, which meant he could stop extremely late and not slide out of the top ten.
There, Zhou ended up P11, while Stroll finished P12 – penalised 5s for his aggressive weaving in defence against Bottas – the Aston having gained by pitting twice under the first safety car and completing a net two-stopper from there to get amongst the cars that had started ahead before falling back.
Alonso ended up as the last finisher after his contra-strategy backfired when he appeared to encounter severe degradation late-on and slid down the order to end up P17.
So another fine victory for Charles Leclerc with a commanding drive in Albert Park. The Ferrari F1-75 is very fast and reliable. The championship is looking promising as the next round is the Scuderia’s home race at Imola.
Australian Grand Prix, race results:
1 Charles Leclerc Ferrari 1:27:46.548
2 Sergio Perez Red Bull 20.524
3 George Russell Mercedes 25.593
4 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 28.543
5 Lando Norris McLaren 53.303
6 Daniel Ricciardo McLaren 53.737
7 Esteban Ocon Alpine 61.683
8 Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo 68.439s
9 Pierre Gasly AlphaTauri 76.221s
10 Alex Albon Williams 79.382s
11 Zhou Guanyu Alfa Romeo 81.695s
12 Lance Stroll Aston Martin 88.598s
13 Mick Schumacher Haas +1 lap
14 Kevin Magnussen Haas +1 lap
15 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri +1 lap
16 Nicholas Latifi Williams +1 lap
17 Fernando Alonso Alpine +1 lap
– Max Verstappen Red Bull DNF
– Sebastian Vettel Aston Martin DNF
– Carlos Sainz Jr. Ferrari DNF
Australian Grand Prix race review as reported by Formula1.com.
Charles Leclerc won the 2022 Australian Grand Prix to consolidate his and Ferrari’s championship leads as Max Verstappen suffered a second retirement in three races – Red Bull team mate Sergio Perez finishing second and Mercedes’ George Russell completing the podium.
A capacity crowd descended on Albert Park, Melbourne hosting its first Australian Grand Prix in 1,100 days. After action-packed free practice and qualifying sessions, they were treated to another thrilling show on Sunday afternoon.
Driver of The Day Leclerc kept his rival Verstappen at bay through two Safety Cars – the first when team mate Carlos Sainz spun out from P14 on Lap 2, and the second on Lap 23 after Sebastian Vettel’s crash. The threat dissolved on Lap 39 when Verstappen stopped with his engine on fire, allowing the Ferrari driver to cruise to victory over Perez with fastest lap to boot.
Russell took P3 having pitted during the caution for Vettel’s crash, Hamilton losing out on another podium by two seconds in P4 – Mercedes however outscoring Red Bull to retain P2 in the constructors’ standings.
McLaren were a distant P5 and P6, Lando Norris a few tenths ahead of home hero Daniel Ricciardo in a solid showing for the team in orange – Esteban Ocon eight seconds back in P7.
A penultimate corner lock-up on Lap 54 saw AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly drop from P8 to P9, while Valtteri Bottas gained an extra place to take P8 having started 12th. The Alfa Romeo driver capitalised on Gasly’s mistake, Sainz’s retirement and a difficult race for Fernando Alonso (P17 after a late pit stop for fastest lap).
One of a handful to start on hards, Alex Albon stopped late before claiming P10 to give Williams a deserved first point of 2022.
Zhou Guanyu had a solid 58-lap journey from P14 to P11, missing out on the final point by a whisker to the wily Williams of Albon ahead.
Just five kilometres away from the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where the late, great Shane Warne enthralled a hundred thousand on any given weekend, Albert Park hosted a sell-out crowd for the first Australian Grand Prix since 2019 – hoping to witness enough twists and turns worthy of a ‘Warney’ bowling spell.
For round three of the championship, we had Charles Leclerc lining up on pole for Ferrari against two Red Bulls – Max Verstappen from P2 and Sergio Perez from P3 – while team mate Carlos Sainz was ninth on the grid. Lando Norris lined up P4 for McLaren ahead of the Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton in P5 and George Russell P6.
Sainz, Fernando Alonso (from P10), Kevin Magnussen (P16), Sebastian Vettel (P17), Lance Stroll (P19) and Alex Albon (P20) would be the only five to start on hards, the others beginning on mediums.
With track temperatures rising past 40 degrees Celsius, the lights went out. Verstappen suffered a millisecond of wheelspin, allowing Leclerc to retain the lead into Turn 1, while Hamilton swept into third at Perez’s expense – and Russell into fourth in front of Norris.
Sainz’s qualifying misery was compounded on Lap 2 – the Spaniard having dropped down to P14 on his hard tyres – where he tried to pass Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu around the outside of Turn 9 and spun into the following corner’s gravel to trigger a Virtual Safety Car that evolved into a Safety Car.
Safety Car in for Lap 7, Leclerc dropped the hammer with Verstappen and Hamilton right in his tow down to Turn 1. Perez soon loomed large in Hamilton’s mirrors and on Lap 10 he scythed past down the inside of Turn 3 for P3. Norris and homecoming team mate Daniel Ricciardo, holding steady in P7, turned the wick up and were reeling in the Mercedes pair ahead.
At the very front, Verstappen suffered a lock-up into the right-hand Turn 11 on Lap 12, and suffered graining on his left-front tyre. Leclerc was then told to go long on his medium tyres, one-stop strategy still at play. The call to box came on Lap 19 – Verstappen coming in for a set of hard tyres and emerging seventh.
Meanwhile, Hamilton’s pace on mediums had taken a turn and now Perez was under pressure from the seven-time champ. The Mexican was called in to box at the start of Lap 21, as was Norris. Leclerc, however, still hadn’t pitted – and Verstappen was on the charge in P5. The Monegasque driver finally came in on Lap 23 and was ahead of the reigning champion, although the gap between the two had been halved from 8s to 4s.
Hamilton followed suit with Leclerc and, on cold hard tyres, he was just milliseconds ahead of the Mexican – the pair going side by side onto the lakeside run to Turn 9 when Perez made a stunning move around the outside. The timing couldn’t have been worse for Hamilton as the Safety Car came out – Vettel having spun on power out of Turn 4 and hit the wall, ending a torrid weekend for the four-time champion, who had missed the first two races due to Covid-19.
The timing was perfect for Russell as he chose Lap 23 to pit under caution, emerging third – ahead of still-to-pit Alonso. Preparing to restart from P6 behind Perez, Hamilton asked: “What does that mean, I’ve lost position?”
The race restarted a second time on Lap 27, the whole field on hards, but Leclerc’s start was glacial out of the final corner with Verstappen almost alongside into Turn 1. The Ferrari crucially held on to the lead, but not by much, allowing Russell to attack the Red Bull – but the top three was unchanged as the hard tyres warmed into their window.
Alonso was now the lead car in a train from P4-P9 – Perez, Hamilton, Magnussen then the McLarens behind. On Lap 30, Perez calmly pried P4 off the Alpine going into Turn 4, Hamilton next to take a place off Alonso one lap later with DRS. Magnussen aspired to follow suit but made a mistake coming out of the final corner on Lap 33 and lost out to the McLaren of Norris, Ricciardo sweeping by two laps later.
Perez now had his eyes on P3 with DRS on Russell – being told (to his puzzlement) to nurse the Mercedes’ tyres above all – and on Lap 36 made the move on the Mercedes going into Turn 11. Russell tried to hit back but to no avail.
In the lead, Leclerc put in a purple lap but Verstappen, five seconds behind, responded in kind. There was an answer to the Ferrari’s pace – but just how strong was it?
On Lap 39 came the answer to that question when Verstappen peeled off at Turn 2 and launched the steering wheel out of his smoking RB18 as he gestured marshals to put the fire out. The VSC was Race Control’s answer to the Dutchman’s bad luck – a second DNF in three races.
Leclerc would cruise to victory from then on, the margin totalling to more than 20 seconds – with fastest lap giving him another point.
Perez took P2, five seconds ahead of Mercedes’ Russell – while Hamilton was left cursing his luck in P4. Crucially, the Silver Arrows once again outscored Red Bull in the fight for P2 in the constructors’ standings. As for McLaren, they ran a lonely race to P5 and P6, Norris just 0.4s ahead of homecoming team mate Ricciardo at the flag – the Australian having run as high as P4 before his Lap 22 stop for hards.
Ocon had a straightforward journey to P7 for Alpine having pitted once on Lap 18 – but team mate Alonso had a far rockier ride on Sunday. Running as high as eighth when Ocon pitted, the Spaniard cooked his tyres and fell down the order having battled in a midfield train with the lap counter ticking down to 58. Pitting for mediums with four laps left, he ended up last of the runners in P17.
Valtteri Bottas started 12th and found it hard to make early in-roads, but finished eighth for Alfa Romeo, briefly losing out to AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly but hitting back on Lap 40. In an attempt to pass then-P9 Lance Stroll, Bottas was barged off track but continued on for another points finish.
Gasly therefore finished ninth from 11th on the grid, ahead of Albon – who ran 57 laps on hard tyres before pitting. The Williams driver, having started last thanks to a grid penalty from Saudi Arabia, made it as high as P7 and lost just three places with his late pit stop.
Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu was solid but came up short for the final point thanks to Albon’s brilliant strategy.
Stroll, given an academic penalty for crashing into Nicholas Latifi (P16) in qualifying, started P19 but finished P12 on hard tyres having pitted for mediums on the Lap 4 Safety Car, swapping back to hards one lap later. He was, however, given a five-second penalty for weaving ahead of Bottas in defence of P9 on Lap 42.
Behind Stroll was Mick Schumacher, the Haas driver running wide on Lap 12 and again on Lap 50 – but passing Magnussen, who pitted for from hards to mediums with 20 laps remaining, late on. Magnussen was battling for the final point but outmanoeuvred himself on Lap 17 – and was summoned to the stewards post-race for an on-track scuffle with Alonso.
Yuki Tsunoda started 13th on mediums and briefly battled for the final points-paying position, but ended up 15th as his pace waned on hard tyres. That left Williams’ Nicholas Latifi 16th after his qualifying crash, and Alonso last on the board from P10 on a trying Sunday.
Verstappen, Vettel, and Sainz were the three retirements – but it was the former’s DNF that gave Leclerc free reign on Sunday as he stretched his and the Scuderia’s championship leads.
Race winner Charles Leclerc admitted he “couldn’t turn” before poor Australian Grand Prix restart but he held his position ahead of Max Verstappen. Motorsport.com has the news story.
Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc explained picking up old rubber before the final corner was behind the poor safety car restart that almost cost him the lead of Formula 1’s Australian Grand Prix.
Leclerc produced a crushing display in Albert Park as Ferrari comfortably had the measure of its rival Red Bull.
The Monegasque driver took his second win of the season by 20 seconds on Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, after Leclerc’s nearest competitor Max Verstappen was forced to retire.
Verstappen never looked like threatening Leclerc on pure pace, the Dutchman admitting “I knew I could not fight Charles, so there was no point to try and put pressure on him.”
But the reigning world champion did get close to overtaking the Ferrari on the second safety car restart halfway through the race.
After a poor getaway out of the final corner from Leclerc, Verstappen managed to pull alongside but failed to complete the pass into Turn 1.
Leclerc explained that his sluggish restart was the result of going off line before Melbourne’s final corner, which meant his tyres were full of marbles and he suffered severe understeer.
“I tried to prepare the last corner as much as possible, staying on the left, but I actually took quite a bit of old rubber and I just couldn’t turn for the last corner, so I lost so much [grip],” Leclerc said.
“And then we’re side by side with Max for the first corner, I managed to stay in the lead and then it got much better with the tyres. And then we could pull a gap to have a bit more margin.”
Leclerc added that while he wasn’t affected too much by the Ferrari’s severe porpoising, he did concede that the bouncing made it challenging for him to defend against Verstappen in the Turn 1 braking zone.
“For the restart it was a bit tricky because I had it before Turn 1,” he explained.
“So, you’re never as confident to just brake extremely hard for Turn 1, but everything went well.
“It was just not so comfortable to do 58 laps like this.”
Mercedes driver George Russell commented that his race pace would have “fallen off a cliff” trying to fight Sergio Perez. Motorsport.com has the details.
George Russell thinks his pace would have “fallen off a cliff” if he’d tried fighting Sergio Perez before “cruising” to score his first Formula 1 podium with Mercedes in Australia.
Russell sat fifth during the opening stint of the race at Albert Park before pitting under the safety car to leap up to third ahead of both Red Bull driver Perez and teammate Lewis Hamilton.
Russell was instructed with 20 laps to go not to fight Perez for third place as he needed to manage his tyres to the end of the race. Perez ultimately got the overtake completed three laps later.
But after Max Verstappen’s late DNF for Red Bull, Russell was able to grab third after keeping the chasing Hamilton at an arm’s length through the closing stages.
It marked Russell’s first podium for Mercedes, and came after a difficult start to the season for the team that has seen it fail to match Red Bull and Ferrari for pace.
“You’ve got to be in it to win it, and capitalise from others misfortune,” Russell said. “Obviously we got a little bit lucky today probably twice, but you know, we take it.
“There’s so much hard work going on back at base in Brackley and Brixworth to try to get us back to the front, so to be standing on the podium is special.”
Russell acknowledged it was “difficult losing a podium spot” when conceding the place to Perez, but agreed the long-term benefits meant it was not worth putting up a fight.
“I want to do everything I can to keep the faster car behind, but ultimately we needed to manage that tyre,” Russell said.
“The front-left tyre was worse in the last corner, and I can’t manage through there.
“I really wanted to push it further, but I recognise we probably would have just fallen off a cliff if I went ever faster.
“I knew Lewis wasn’t going to make it easy for me. He never gives up, and he was pushing flat out to the end. But I think it was well managed and I was always able to stay out of DRS detection.
“Once Checo got past, it was pretty cruising.”
Mercedes has been struggling with extreme porpoising on its W13 car so far this season, and Russell said the team had been “a long way behind our rivals” in Australia,having finished over a second off Charles Leclerc’s pole lap for Ferrari on Saturday, but stressed that it was “never going to give up”.
“I think it’s going to take some time until we can fight these boys in red and blue, they look pretty exceptional at the moment,” Russell said. “But if anyone can, Mercedes can, so let’s go for it.”
This was another non-finish for the defending world champion. The Red Bull’s reliability issues is “unacceptable”, says Max Verstappen. Motorsport.com provides the news story.
Max Verstappen says Red Bull’s reliability problems are “unacceptable” if the team wants to keep itself in the Formula 1 title hunt.
The world champion suffered his second DNF of the season at the Australian Grand Prix as his car ground to a halt with an unspecified problem on lap 39 in Melbourne.
The non-points finish, allied to another non-score in the season-opening Bahrain GP, has left the Dutchman 46 points adrift of runaway championship leader Charles Leclerc after just three races.
Speaking to Sky, Verstappen said that thoughts on the championship were far from his mind already, as the priority was on Red Bull getting on top of its problems.
“We’re already miles behind, so I don’t even want to think about the championship fight at the moment,” he explained. “I think it’s more important to finish races.
“Today was in general just a bad day again. Not really having the pace, and just managing my tyres to try and just bring it to the end, because it looked like quite an easy P2 anyway.
“I knew I could not fight Charles, so there was no point to try and put pressure on him. But yeah, we didn’t even finish the race. It’s pretty frustrating and unacceptable.”
While the cause of his retirement is not known, Verstappen said he feared not making it to the end when Red Bull mechanics were seen working hard on his car on the grid.
“I knew there was a problem,” he said. “So it was always going to be a question mark of finishing the race. I mean, these kinds of things, if you want to fight for the title, they cannot happen.”
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said he fully accepted Verstappen’s disappointment at the situation, but said the priority was to understand exactly what had gone wrong.
“It is totally understandable his frustration,” he said. “That was a really, really disappointing result not to finish the race.
“We don’t know what the issue is yet, but I don’t think it’s actually engine related. I think it might be a fuel issue, but we need to get the car back, we need to be able to look at what’s exactly happened.”
While the reliability problems have hit Red Bull’s championship chances, Horner said that at least the team knows its car is quick.
“I’d rather fix a fast car, than try and make a reliable slow one fast,” he explained. “We need to get on top of it. We can’t accept DNFs, but we need to understand what the issue is and we have got to address it.”
Alex Albon says a series of “qualifying laps” were needed to secure the Williams team’s “unexpected” first point of the 2022 Formula 1 season in the Australian Grand Prix.
The Anglo-Thai driver carried a three-place grid penalty into the Albert Park weekend after contact with Lance Stroll in the previous Jeddah race, but had to start the race from the back of the grid anyway as his car lacked enough fuel to provide a sample after qualifying.
Starting the race on hard tyres, Albon completed a mammoth 57-lap stint on his original rubber, gaining track position by staying out during multiple safety car and VSC periods.
He ran seventh, holding Esteban Ocon’s Alpine at bay, before pitting on the penultimate tour to complete the mandatory tyre swap.
His switch onto soft rubber allowed Ocon, Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) and Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri) through, but Albon had built enough of a margin over Bottas’s teammate Zhou Guanyu to still finish tenth.
Albon explained that he’d saved his tyres early in the race, because “when you start last you can afford to do that” and improved his pace as the laps ticked by to score the first point of his F1 return after spending 2021 in the DTM.
“It just got better and better and by the end of it, it felt like qualifying laps for the last 25 laps of the race,” Albon said when asked to explain his race by Motorsport.com.
“Obviously it’s completely unexpected, but it really highlights all the work that’s been done at the factory and here at the track.
“That’s what determination and motivation – that’s where it gets you.
“It’s been an amazing day and I’m glad I could get this result for the team.”
Albon admits he was “surprised we were never boxing under the VSC or the safety cars” and expected to be swallowed up by the pack when he didn’t follow Kevin Magnussen’s Haas into the pits under the VSC required following Max Verstappen’s retirement.
But his pace during the final stint proved Williams’ strategy correct, and Albon admits the team needs to understand why the FW44 seems better suited to the hard compound.
“I thought, ‘Okay well they know something I don’t’,” he said.
“One of the Haas’ boxed in front of me and that was my point where I thought, ‘Okay it’s going to be a tricky race now’, because that DRS was saving me from being overtaken from the pack behind.
“But once we got clear air we just went, we were on much older tyres than the guys around us and we were keeping pace more or less with the McLarens. At the very end pulling away from the Alpines.
“What’s interesting is that C2 tyres really suits our car. We almost need to understand why because it’s a bit unexpected, clearly this result.
“Maybe we need to qualify, race, do everything on that tyre. Bring in 10 sets for the whole thing!”
Albon added that the result “feels just as sweet” as his two podiums with Red Bull in the 2020 Tuscan and Bahrain grands prix after a difficult start to the season for Williams.
“It’s a much needed result,” he said.
“I feel like when you have a tough start to the season you want to switch that momentum and have positivity with what you’re doing.
“It’s hard when you don’t get good results, it is a tough time but it motivates me, it motivates the team to get that point on the board and now we’re hungry for more.”
Source: Motorsport.com