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Alex Albon’s mirror fell off his Williams after 29 laps of Formula 1's Qatar Grand Prix. Maybe it had worked loose from a combination of his first lap hit by Lance Stroll and subsequent vibrations over the kerbs. Probably we’ll never know.
But it landed on the right-hand side of the pit straight, just before the pitlane exit – which is roughly the bit of track where a driver trying for a passing move down the inside would be.
The significant point was that the mirror stayed there – barely visible from the various cockpits - for six laps until inevitably someone hit it and smashed it into carbon and glass shards. Valtteri Bottas had moved to that side of the track to obey the blue flags he’d got for the approaching Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.
It could hardly have happened at a worse time. Because Lusail – just like last year – was a flat-out race where the tyres don’t suffer thermal degradation but just wear out. Any degradation was less than the gain in performance from the reducing fuel load. Furthermore, the medium on which almost everyone started was a much faster tyre than the hard. So everyone wanted to stay on it as long as possible.
Which in this one-stopping race meant that by lap 29 of 57, when Albon lost his mirror, almost everyone was running with very little tread. Subsequently the front-left of Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz punctured, probably from debris damage.
In those intervening laps between the mirror’s departure from the car and its final demise a yellow flag was hung out on that part of the straight. There were 28 laps to go. So the track’s only overtaking zone looked set to be neutralised.
Max Verstappen, in the lead from the start, being pushed by Lando Norris all the way, saw the yellow and lifted. Norris, who’d just picked up DRS from a car he was lapping, kept his foot to the floor, not noticing the yellow light panel. On observing how much closer Norris was afterwards (he’d gained 0.6 seconds) Verstappen asked his team (and by default race control) to check if Norris had lifted.
Race control checked and applied a 10s stop/go penalty – which was viciously punishing given that the field was bunched up behind the safety car triggered by the punctures. So the driver who’d kept Verstappen under pressure was sent to the back – from where he recovered to 10th in the 13 laps remaining after he’d served the penalty.
Did it cost him a shot at victory? Probably not. Verstappen was masterful in how he was controlling Norris around a track at which passing is difficult. He was keeping him just out of DRS reach by exquisite judgement in establishing the required gap each lap in the middle sector, knowing that Norris was actually faster out of the final corner. He was doing this, what’s more, while managing his tyres through the fast double-right seventh gear Turns 12-13 – which was the only place Norris was making up the time on him.
It was a victory built upon the transformation of the Red Bull from the oversteering handful it had been in the sprint race to the much better-balanced machine it became after a rethink on set-up before grand prix qualifying a few hours later. That and Verstappen’s total determination at the start to beat polesitter (but not pole-setter) George Russell off the line.
Verstappen’s one-place penalty for impeding when both were on prep laps and specifically Russell’s campaigning in the stewards room for a penalty to be applied had infuriated Verstappen. He angled his car heavily over towards Russell on the grid. As it turned out, he didn’t need to act upon his plan of waiting for Russell to brake and then brake later – the Mercedes didn’t get off the second clutch phase as well and had been passed by both Verstappen and Norris as they went into Turn 1.
There was a split-second moment where Norris had his nose ahead as they went side-by-side through Turn 2 where he could have squeezed Verstappen and maybe grinded ahead on the run up to Turn 3-4.
He was perhaps intimidated into not doing so from his experience racing him and knowing that the team’s mission is the constructors' championship. He’d get half a sniff upon a second safety car restart, as Verstappen on cold gripless hard tyres couldn’t get the power down well out of the final turn and was therefore a little vulnerable into Turn 1. But again, it was nothing Max couldn’t handle.
Russell? He faded along with his tyres, the Mercedes seemingly the only car suffering thermal degradation – which hit after about 15 laps, making it an understeering mess and bringing him into the pits for new hards. He was stuck there for an extra 5s as the right-rear initially refused to come off.
This cascaded into further loss behind slow traffic but, as he noted, even then he was no faster than Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin or Zhou Guanyu’s Sauber.
Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes was similarly afflicted. The car which had an advantage by switching on its tyres better in Las Vegas a week earlier was here punished by putting too much energy into them around a track imposing among the highest energy inputs the tyres see all season.
Russell’s struggles and delays allowed Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc by, Oscar having been compromised by lapping at the struggling Mercedes’ pace and thereby not having much of a gap over the Ferrari. This proved costly when Piastri pitted just before the safety car, allowing Leclerc a cheaper stop on the next lap – enough to leapfrog him past the McLaren for what was ultimately second place, a result that definitely flattered the Ferrari.
Piastri’s third was damage limitation in McLaren’s quest for the title. Russell’s fourth was more than he might’ve expected given his race day dramas, but far less than suggested by his qualifying speed.
Pierre Gasly was the beneficiary of the punctures, delivering Alpine a fifth place finish ahead of Sainz, Alonso’s Aston Martin, Zhou in the revitalised Sauber, Kevin Magnussen’s Haas and the naturally disappointed Norris, his extra point for fastest lap scant consolation for how his day had headed south after promising so much.
