On lap 18, Carlos Sainz Jr. had a slow pit stop as his tyres were not ready; the mechanics also misplaced the spare wheel gun in an unsafe position which Pérez ran over.

Tsunoda was told to continue and came in a lap later, for a change of tyres and to tighten his seatbelt, which he had loosened as he prepared to abandon his car.

This brought out a virtual safety car, allowing Verstappen to make a pit stop to keep the lead ahead of the two Mercedes.

Verstappen overtook Hamilton at the restart almost immediately, while Sainz received a five-second penalty for an unsafe release during his pit stop.

After Russell made a split-second decision to pit again for faster softs, he overtook Hamilton, who fell to fourth after being overtaken by Leclerc as well.

The race was viewed as Hamilton’s best chance of victory, but because of the bad strategy call, he didn’t even finish on the podium.

Following the race, a conspiracy theory emerged accusing Red Bull Racing strategist Hannah Schmitz of conspiring with sister team AlphaTauri to ensure a favourable result for Verstappen, after questioning the nature of Tsunoda's retirement on lap 47 which helped Verstappen take a pit stop with a reduced time loss, due to the virtual safety car.

This followed the post-race comments of Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff who openly admitted to being suspicious about the circumstances of Tsunoda's retirement saying he was left "speechless" by the incident and that he may have had inspected the incident more closely had his driver Lewis Hamilton been a realistic contender to win the drivers championship.