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Autosport
Autosport
Sport
Filip Cleeren

Red Bull suffers second broken F1 trophy in a row at Belgian GP

Red Bull celebrated Max Verstappen's and Sergio Perez's 1-2 victory at Spa-Francorchamps with a standard team photo, followed by champagne celebrations in front of its garage in the pitlane.

As team members, including Verstappen and team principal Christian Horner, cleared off to avoid a champagne shower, the team's pitboard fell on top of its constructors' trophy, completely destroying it in the process.

The snafu was treated to a lot of amusement in the Red Bull camp, with Verstappen blurting out "It's broken again, the trophy is broken again!" to a smiling Horner.

It's the second time in consecutive weeks Red Bull has failed to bring its silverware to Milton Keynes in one piece, after McLaren's Lando Norris broke Verstappen's Hungarian Grand Prix victory trophy during the Budapest podium celebrations.

Norris apologised for damaging the $45,000 trophy, which took six months to craft by hand, with the Hungarian GP organisers vowing to replace it with a new example.

Earlier this season, Red Bull also damaged Sergio Perez's trophy for finishing third in the Austrian GP, but it was mended by Red Bull chief Oliver Mintzlaff.

 

The Belgian GP constructors' trophy was collected on the podium by Greg Reeson, a valued garage technician at the squad.

After the race - but before taking the team photo - Horner said Reeson represented the work that the entire team did to string together Red Bull's clean sweep of 12 consecutive wins in 2023.

"Results like today are the combination of teamwork and that's why you guys have seen Greg, our garage technician that looks after all the tyres in the garage, to go and get the constructors' trophy today," Horner explained.

Verstappen snared his eighth consecutive victory of the 2023 season, one shy of Sebastian Vettel's all-time record of nine wins in a row in 2013, with a commanding drive at Spa.

Starting from sixth after a five-place grid penalty for taking his fifth gearbox of the season, he took the lead by lap 17 by overtaking Perez and then romped home to win his third consecutive Belgian Grand Prix by 22 seconds.

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc finished third 32 seconds behind as F1 heads into its summer break.

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