Unsurprisingly the Red Bull spaceships emerged with a double podium at the conclusion of the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. The advantage Red Bull enjoys is such, that not even the James Webb space telescope can peer through the infra-Red Bull shift to determine if the engineering powering the RB19 is from another planet. Certainly the RB19’s performance is other-worldly as demonstrated by Max Verstappen, who started the race 15th, due to technical issues in qualifying, yet finished the race with a comfortable second, over 15 seconds ahead of the Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin.

Many expected Verstappen to charge through the field and to victory. For once, Sergio Perez, who temporarily dropped to second at the start, was able to fend off Verstappen’s relentless determination by showing equal race pace. Barring reliability issues, the race was between two alien space invaders secretly living a lie in Milton Keynes and posing as Formula One drivers driving extraterrestrial technology known as the RB19.

The 2023 Formula One season is now a battle for the second-best team on the grid, which is evidently Aston Martin. Fernando Alonso scored his second consecutive podium to rubber stamp Aston Martin’s rise to the top. Aston enjoys a performance advantage over Mercedes at the moment, and while Ferrari has front-row single-lap qualifying pace, the performance goes AWOL on Sunday.

Ferrari finished a distant 6th and 7th, not far behind the Mercedes duo of Hamilton and Russell. The Formula One circus next heads to Australia later this month. Red Bull enjoys an advantage not seen since the McLaren Senna/Prost era and the Williams era of the 1990s. However, the RB19 is simply at another level even compared to the latter mentioned.

The real question is, how fast will Red Bull wrap up both drivers and constructor’s titles? I can not see any other team winning unless Red Bull suffers a reliability issue… which is a statical probability.

2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix: Race Results

1 Sergio PEREZ Red Bull Racing: 1:21:14.894

2 Max VERSTAPPEN Red Bull Racing: +5.355

3 Fernando ALONSO Aston Martin: +20.728

4 George RUSSELL Mercedes: +25.866

5 Lewis HAMILTON Mercedes: +31.065

6 Carlos SAINZ Ferrari: +35.876

7 Charles LECLERC Ferrari: +43.162

8 Esteban OCON Alpine: +52.832

9 Pierre GASLY Alpine: +54.747

10 Kevin MAGNUSSEN Haas F1 Team: +64.826

11 Yuki TSUNODA AlphaTauri: +67.494

12 Nico HULKENBERG Haas F1 Team: +70.588

13 Guanyu ZHOU Alfa Romeo: +76.060

14 Nyck DE VRIES AlphaTauri: +77.478

15 Oscar PIASTRI McLaren: +85.021

16 Logan SARGEANT Williams: +86.293

17 Lando NORRIS McLaren: +86.445

18 Valtteri BOTTAS Alfa Romeo: 1 lap

DNF:

Alex Albon Williams: lap 29

Lance Stroll Aston Martin: lap 18