Jeremy Clarkson slams Red Bull and Mercedes for making F1 “boring” in Saudi

Red Bull stormed to another 1-2 finish at Jeddah as Sergio Perez won his first race of the season.

It was a fairly uneventful grand prix with Fernando Alonso finishing third ahead of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.

The battle at the front was seemingly settled when Red Bull gave Perez and Max Verstappen a ‘target lap time’.

Writing in his column for The Sun, Clarkson - who attended the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix - was very critical about the amount of mamagenet needed in modern F1.

“We like to think that when the red lights go out at the beginning of an F1 race, every single one of the drivers goes round every corner and down every straight as fast as is humanly and mechanically possible,” he wrote. “That’s what racing is all about, surely? It seems not.

“When Lewis Hamilton came up behind his teammate, George Russell, in last weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, George solved the problem by driving more quickly. Why didn’t he do that in the first place?

“And then you had the Red Bulls. To stop them from doing any racing, each of the drivers was told to do the same speed as one another.

“I know there are boring reasons for this, tyre wear and saving the engine and so on, but I wonder how many people would watch athletics if they thought half the competitors were not going as fast as they could. To prolong the life of their shoes.”