An incident-packed Australian Grand Prix was, for those encumbered by a European time zone, certainly worth getting up for. Although another Max Verstappen victory was unsurprising given his and Red Bull’s advantage in the early part of the 2023 Formula 1 season, late chaos threatened to derail the otherwise settled pecking order.
In F1’s first triple red-flagged race (or quadruple, if one counts the late Nico Hulkenberg stoppage), the FIA once again got itself into a pickle with its approach to race direction, and the decision to introduce a stoppage to proceedings after Kevin Magnussen’s wall-bang received criticism in the media – particularly after it precipitated a deluge of chaos on the second restart.
