At the front, Verstappen had extended his lead to over five seconds from Norris as Lap 14 ticked down. But things weren’t going quite so well for Leclerc near the rear of the pack, with the Ferrari driver losing a spot to the Williams of Albon to drop down to P19.
Perez – running in seventh place – was reporting sidepod damage, having been caught up in the Lap 1 Leclerc/Piastri incident. Magnussen, meanwhile, was apparently not in the mood to save tyres after being asked to do so by his engineer, offering a sweary response to the request.
As many teams seemed to be contemplating switching to a three-stop strategy, Leclerc’s day continued to go from bad to worse, with the Monaco Grand Prix winner pitting for medium tyres to emerge at the very back of the field and seemingly on course to be lapped by Verstappen.
With most of the front-runners yet to pit, Norris was told by his engineer that the hard compound looked “poor”, though the Briton was reminded that he had two sets of mediums left, a possible advantage given that the Red Bull team did not have the same available.
Elsewhere, the stewards were being kept busy. Zhou voiced his annoyance after being punted off track by Alonso, prompting an investigation which resulted in a 10-second time penalty for the latter. Hamilton, meanwhile, had been noted for potentially crossing the white line on pit entry, and this gave the seven-time world champion a five-second penalty.
