Max Verstappen of Red Bull won the Sao Paulo Grand Prix with ease, raising his record for most victories in a season to 17. Early on, Verstappen held off a brief push from Lando Norris of McLaren before settling in to lead the race.
After a breathtaking drive in the Aston Martin, Fernando Alonso secured the final podium spot by overtaking Sergio Perez's Red Bull on the final lap, having previously lost the position.
George Russell retired from the race while running eleventh, and Lewis Hamilton finished eighth in Mercedes' worst race of 2023.
The team felt they had improved their floor in recent races, thus it was an unpleasant surprise for the defending champs. After a brief battle with Norris in the early laps, Verstappen's victory was textbook.
With a brilliant defensive effort against Perez and then some incredible racecraft to recover the lead after losing it on the penultimate lap, Alonso was undoubtedly the race's standout.
With sixteen laps remaining, Perez was using the DRS overtaking aid because he was only a second behind Alonso.
However, Alonso managed to maintain a faster vehicle in his wake by driving deftly, picking creative lines around turns, and timing his pace at crucial spots on the course to make sure Perez was never quite able to catch up.
It seemed like Alonso was going to cling on as the race entered its last three circuits, but Perez made a heroic last push and passed him into Turn One on the penultimate lap.
Into Turn Four, Alonso made a challenge again, but the move did not hold, and it seemed like the third place was gone.
However, at the beginning of the last lap, he narrowed the gap on Perez once more and sold him a dummy into Turn One, forcing Perez to defend to the inside. This allowed Alonso to undermine the Red Bull's run through the Senna S.
Due to his improved departure on the back straight, Alonso was able to retake third place, go around the outside of Turn Four, and hold off Perez into the last curve and on the run to the finish line, winning third place by a mere 0.053 seconds.
Charles crashes before lights out:
During the Brazilian Grand Prix formation lap, Charles Leclerc met an unfortunate end as his Ferrari crashed into the barriers. After a spectacular qualifying performance on Friday, Leclerc seemed in a good position to challenge Max Verstappen for the victory in Brazil.
Given the inside line into the first corner, the Ferrari driver would have been optimistic about his prospects of getting off to a strong start. However, Leclerc's strange event crashing into the barriers on the formation lap was disastrous.
With cameras trained on his helmet, the 26-year-old appeared heartbroken in the cockpit. Leclerc immediately expressed his rage over the team radio, saying that his car's malfunction was the reason for the collision. A distraught Leclerc said over the radio: "Noooo, I lost the hydraulics, I lost the hydraulics! Why the f*** am I so unlucky?"
Chaos at turn 1:
Due to the large amount of debris on the track, the race was shortly declared red-flagged, and Albon, Magnussen, and Leclerc all retired. Daniel Ricciardo and Oscar Piastri were two more vehicles that sustained damage as a result of the chaos at Turn One.
Although Ricciardo was unable to stop it from hitting his back wing, he narrowly averted a terrifying situation in which a loose tyre bounced on his head. When McLaren first brought Piastri into the pits, the spinning Magnussen struck the back of his vehicle.
However, the red flag allowed McLaren to try to get Piastri's car ready for another race.
Mercedes nightmare in Sao Paulo:
Mercedes's stubborn vehicle and erratic performance will raise more concerns when they depart Brazil. A week prior, Hamilton had finished second in Austin and Mexico, but he was disqualified for excessive wear on the undercarriage of his car.
However, they did not place at all in Brazil, not only in the Saturday sprint race but also in the Sunday grand prix. Russell trailed Hamilton in fourth place during the early laps, but Hamilton got off to a strong start and finished third.
However, the cars lacked speed and retreated throughout the race as they battled to maintain their stint lengths and dealt with remarkably worse tyre degradation than their competitors.
Russell was faster than Hamilton at one time, so he asked to pass, but as the race went on, he fell behind and was eventually forced to withdraw to the pits due to a power unit overheating. The team said the unit was close to breaking down.
The best of the rest:
Seeing out the top 10 was Sergio Perez finished in 4th with much-needed points in the race for P2 in the driver's championship, Lance Stroll finished in 5th rounding off a good weekend for Aston Martin, Carlos Sainz finished 6th to bring some points to Ferarri this weekend, Pierre Gasly came home in 7th, Lewis Hamilton was disappointed to finish in 8th, Yuki Tsunoda bagged some point for Alpha Tauri with a 9th place finish and Esteban Ocon made sure that Alpine got double points with a 10th place finish.
There is a two-week break now with the next race in Las Vegas.
