Max prevails in Melbourne mayhem
Verstappen survives chaotic, crash-filled race as China's Zhou Guanyu earns his first points of season

In a chaotic Australian Grand Prix laden with crashes and multiple red flags, Red Bull's Max Verstappen held off a revived Lewis Hamilton to top the podium on Sunday, when Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu won his first points of the season after finishing ninth.
Verstappen began from pole and despite being passed by Mercedes pair George Russell and Hamilton at the start, he kept his cool to win a race that was red-flagged three times, with multiple crashes.
Hamilton came home second ahead of Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso, who made it three podiums from three races this year.
"It's great to win here, my first win as well. It's been a while for the team as well but very, very happy," said Verstappen.
"But also, it's still great to see that the fans are having a good time even now. They had a long wait for the whole day, so I'll say a big thank you to them as well for sticking around.
"It was a bit of mess but we survived everything, we had good pace on the car today again, and we won, which of course is the most important."
The victory was Verstappen's maiden win in Melbourne and Red Bull's first in Australia since Sebastian Vettel's 2011 triumph.
His teammate and winner in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago Sergio Perez sliced through the field to come fifth after qualifying last due to brake issues.
Seven-time world champion Hamilton was ecstatic at making the podium.
"I'm driving as best I can and working as hard as I can but still, considering we've been down on performance and in straight pace, for us to be up there fighting with Aston is amazing," he said.
Spanish veteran Alonso said the team had a "roller-coaster" of emotions.
"There were many things going on at the beginning, and the last half an hour. Mercedes was very fast and Lewis did an incredible job — I could not match the pace, but we'll take P3."
The Red Bull triumph came despite late drama that saw a red flag come out when Verstappen had a comfortable lead from Hamilton and Alonso with two laps left, meaning they had a bunched restart for an all-out attack to the finish.
But it descended into chaos when Alonso was clipped by Ferrari's Carlos Sainz Jr. as they jostled for position and went into a spin, which caused a flow-on effect with multiple other cars coming to grief. Sainz was given a five-second penalty, eventually finishing 12th, and the race was stopped again.
It resumed after a lengthy delay for a single lap behind a safety car — with no overtaking allowed — in the order of the previous start with only 12 cars left.
Lance Stroll in the other Aston Martin was fourth ahead of Perez. Lando Norris in a McLaren was sixth. Nico Hulkenberg in the Haas was seventh and rookie Oscar Piastri, in the other McLaren, had an encouraging eighth in only his third race and on his home circuit.
Zhou's joy
The ninth- and 11th-place finishes respectively for Zhou and his Alfa Romeo teammate Valtteri Bottas came as something of a surprise after they qualified in 17th and 19th positions on Saturday.
The result earned Zhou his first two points of the season following tough opening races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where the Chinese driver finished 16th and 13th respectively.
"I'm so happy to win my first points this season. I think, without the last red flag, I could have had a better result," said Zhou.
"But, generally speaking, the team did a great job for today's race as we started from nearly the last row and we finished the race with points. Our cars were competitive today. For next month's races, I hope we can do a better job to analyze all the data and make our car even more competitive."
Disastrous day
It was a disastrous day for Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, last year's winner, who spun out on the first lap, while Russell's car caught fire on lap 19 and his race too was over.
Leclerc crashed out of the race on lap 1, getting ahead of Stroll into turn 3 but collecting the Aston Martin's front-left wheel and spinning out into the gravel to bring out a safety car. But the Ferrari driver refused to apportion blame to the Canadian.
"I'm not pointing the finger at Lance because I think he had no choice once Fernando (Alonso) slowed down the car the second time, and for me it was just impossible to see whether Lance was staying behind Fernando or if he was just in between... I obviously didn't think he was there," explained Leclerc.
With two retirements and a seventh-place finish in Saudi Arabia so far this season, Leclerc has scored only six points and endured his worst start to a season since his debut for Sauber in 2018, when he went without points for the first three rounds.
"Just extremely frustrating, I mean, it's the worst start to the season ever, really... it is really frustrating," said Leclerc.
Agencies


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