Charles Leclerc dominates Australian Grand Prix, Max Verstappen DNF, Lewis Hamilton behind George Russell

Charles Leclerc took his second win of the season as he dominated the Australian Grand Prix with a lights-to-flag victory, as his potential championship rival, Max Verstappen hit more technical issues in a worrying run of form. In the first three races of this year’s championship, the world champion already has two DNF’s to his name — something which could really hamper his championship credentials.

Ad/> In truth, it was a fairly straight forward race win for the Monegasque driver, who had to navigate two safety car restarts after separate incidents involving his teammate, Carlos Sainz, and the Aston Martin of Sebastian Vettel. Australian Grand Prix‘Frustrating, unacceptable’ — Verstappen fumes after another retirement42 MINUTES AGO As the second safety car period came to an end on lap 27, Verstappen tried desperately to get past the Ferrari after Leclerc got a poor run out of the final corner.

The Red Bull driver tried to dive around the outside going into turn one, but Leclerc defended resolutely and held position. That brought the Mercedes of George Russell in on the fight, but he couldn’t find a way past, as he would later lose out to Sergio Perez, who lost out to the Briton when he pitted under the second safety car.

After having to defend his lead for a brief moment after the second restart, the Monegasque driver soon began to stretch his legs as he and Verstappen traded fastest laps before the Dutchman retired with another technical issue with his RBPT power unit. The world champion would later call the issues Red Bull have had in the early part of this season as “unacceptable.” Verstappen’s retirement left Leclerc with an even more comfortable margin at the head of the field as he set another new fastest lap of