Race recap: Carlos fifth, Charles retired
Zandvoort 27 agosto 2023
It’s the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. It’s very windy, and dry, although the clouds are menacing. Air temperature is 18°, track 30°.
Start. At the start, it begins to rain very hard. Charles is one of the drivers who pit to change tyres. The Monegasque loses a lot of time because of the chaos in the pit lane. On lap two, Carlos comes in and so the order on lap 4 sees Leclerc in fifth and Sainz in seventh.
Lap 6. Alonso passes Charles, who has slight damage to the front wing.
Lap 9. Because of this, the team decides to swap the drivers round, in sixth and seventh places.
Lap 11. Carlos pits to switch back to Soft tyres and next time round Charles comes in, also changing his front wing. The Spaniard is fifth, the Monegasque 13th.
Lap 14. Logan Sargeant crashes into the barriers, triggering a Safety Car Period. Charles thus moves up to 12th.
Lap 22. After the restart, it’s clear that Charles also has problems with the floor on his SF-23 and he is passed by Lewis Hamilton dropping to 13th and shortly after, Piastri also overtakes him.
Lap 30. Leclerc is still struggling with his damaged car, so Nico Hulkenberg gets passed and Charles is 15th.
Lap 36. George Russell passes Charles, followed shortly afterwards by Valtteri Bottas.
Lap 42. Carlos pits for new Softs, rejoins 11th, while Charles pits and retires because of the damage to his SF-23. The Spaniard gains places as others pit.
Lap 46. Sainz passes Piastri for sixth.
Giro 48. Pierre Gasly pits and has to take a 5 second penalty, thus allowing Carlos up to fifth. On the next lap, the Spaniard also passes Yuki Tsunoda to move up to fourth.
Lap 50. A long stop for Fernando Alonso sees Carlos move up to third.
Lap 52. Alonso retakes third.
Lap 60. Gasly passes Sainz for fourth.
Lap 61. The rain returns. Sainz switches to Intermediates. He is seventh and moves up to fifth.
Lap 64. Guanyu Zhou crashes. Red flag. Carlos is currently sixth.
Restart. After over half an hour the race restarts, with the field on Intermediates with seven laps to go. Carlos is fifth and is there at the flag, the best that could be achieved this weekend.