Momentous events can result from small decisions and it was Max Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, known to the world as ‘GP’, who made the call.
Lando Norris had just asked too much of his MCL39’s front axle on the approach to the Jeddah Corniche circuit’s Turn 4, sailed over the kerbs at Turn 5, and met the barrier on the exit hard enough to warrant a red flag and a medical car deployment. Verstappen was on a new set of soft tyres which he was just ‘introducing’, ready for his own qualifying lap.
