By Robert Haile

The first Grand Prix of the 2024 season ended with a Red Bull 1-2 as Max Verstappen continued to dominate.

Having taken Pole Position on Friday, March 1, Verstappen converted to win the first Grand Prix of the season as he led teammate Sergio Perez home.

While Red Bull sealed a 1-2 Ferrari took the next two places as Carlos Sainz lead Charles Leclerc to take the Prancing Horses’ first podium.

Verstappen said: “It was a special one today. These kind of days don’t happen that often where the car feels spot on, including the balance and feeling of the car and everything went really well.

“The start was good and then we also looked after the car really well, so it was an enjoyable race for me. We managed to find a good rhythm and pace on this track and the wind strength and direction helped me extract a bit more from the car.

“This is one of our strongest circuits and looking to Jeddah we know that the track there is very different, with a lot of high speed corners and less degradation. I am hoping we can bring the same performance to next week: it’s going to be a challenge but I am looking forward to it.

“We have to thank everyone at the factory who has contributed to a great start of the year. It is always a big challenge to build a new car and follow up such an unbelievable season, but I’m excited to kick things off this season with a win.”

Having started third Mercedes’ George Russell moved into second before dropped to fifth as McLaren’s Lando Norris split the Silver Arrows with Lewis Hamilton piping the other Papaya of Oscar Piastri in eighth.

The Mercedes duo both suffered from overheating with Russell saying: “t was a strange day today. Both Lewis and I faced a similar issue. The power unit was overheating from very early on, so we were managing that throughout.

“It was a shame as we made a really good start. I managed to make a good pass on Leclerc for second but very quickly, I had warnings on my steering wheel.

“To manage the overheating, we were losing tenths-of-a-second per lap, and it was very difficult to hold off anyone behind me. It’s a shame that we didn’t get to show any real potential of the car.”

After last seasons podium Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin finished ninth with teammate Lance Stroll taking the final point scoring place in tenth.

Kick Sauber almost got a point scoring start as Zhou Guanyu finished just outside the points in eleventh as Haas’ Kevin Magnussen lead RB’ Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda.

Alex Albon was the lead Williams in fifteenth Nico Hulkenberg dropping back to sixteenth after a top ten qualifying.

Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly gained two places for Alpine as Valtteri Bottas’ Kick Sauber finished in nineteenth as Logan Sargeant’s Williams was last in twentieth.

Formula One will head to the streets of Jeddah for the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix on March 7-9 where it will be joined by the F1 Academy series.