Race recap: Carlos 12th, Charles out at the start

The sun is finally shining in Melbourne after the past couple of cloudy and rainy days. Air temperature is 17 degrees, the track is at 35. Carlos Sainz is fifth on the grid, Charles Leclerc is seventh in front of a crowd of 444,000, a new Formula 1 record.

Start.  Carlos moves up to fourth, but Charles ends up stuck in the gravel, clipped by Lance Stroll, while making a move to the outside of the Canadian. Safety Car

Lap 4. The race resumes, but the Safety Car is out again on lap 8 when Alex Albon hits the barriers. Carlos pits to switch from Medium to Hard tyres and rejoins 11th. Because of all the gravel on track, the race is red flagged, which works against Carlos who had already pitted. 

Second start. Race resumes for 49 laps. At the start, Carlos passes Oscar Piastri for tenth.

Lap 11. Sainz passes Lando Norris for ninth.

Lap 12. Carlos passes Yuki Tsunoda for eighth.

Lap 14. The Spaniard also despatches Nico Hulkenberg for seventh.

Lap 15. Sainz gets ahead of Stroll for sixth.

Lap 18. George Russell stops with his car on fire. Carlos is fifth.

Lap 25. Sainz pulls off a great move on Pierre Gasly at turn 3 to go up to fourth.

Lap 40. Max Verstappen leads by 10 seconds from Lewis Hamilton, who is just over a second ahead of Fernando Alonso. Carlos is under 2 seconds behind his fellow countryman.

Lap 54. Kevin Magnussen’s crash brings out the Safety Car and then the red flag. It’s a standing restart with 2 laps to go.

Third start. Chaos: several cars crash out and Carlos and Alonso make contact. The incidents behind them bring out an immediate red flag. There is just one lap left to complete behind the Safety Car. Carlos is fourth at the chequered flag but is given a 5 second time penalty for the collision with Alonso, which drops him to 12th, not at all a true reflection of the SF-23’s performance on the day.