Red Bull Breaks Second F1 Trophy During 2023 Belgian Grand Prix Win Celebration
The $45,000 trophy, which took six months to hand-craft, cost Norris his apology, and the Hungarian GP organizers promised to replace it with a new one.
Champagne celebrations were held in front of Red Bull's garage in the pitlane after the team took the customary team photo to mark Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez's 1-2 victory at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit for the 2023 Belgian Grand Prix. The team's pit board crashed on top of its constructors' trophy, utterly ruining it, while team members, including Verstappen and team principal Christian Horner, cleared out to avoid a champagne shower. Verstappen said to a beaming Horner, "It's broken again, the trophy is broken again!" as the blunder was met with much laughter in the Red Bull camp.
Following Verstappen's Hungarian Grand Prix winning trophy being broken during the podium celebrations in Budapest by McLaren's Lando Norris, Red Bull has now failed to get their trophies to Milton Keynes in perfect condition twice in as a couple of weeks.
The $45,000 trophy, which took six months to hand-craft, cost Norris his apology, and the Hungarian GP organizers promised to replace it with a new one.
Greg Reeson, a dependable garage technician for the team, accepted the Belgian GP constructors' trophy from the podium. Reeson, according to Horner, symbolized the labor that the entire team put in to piece together Red Bull's unblemished run of 12 victories in 2023.
"Results like today are the combination of teamwork, and that's why you guys have seen Greg, our garage technician who looks after all the tyres in the garage, go and get the constructors' trophy today," Horner said.
With a dominant performance at Spa, Verstappen scored his eighth straight victory of the 2023 season, falling only one victory short of Sebastian Vettel's all-time record of nine victories straight in 2013. Charles Leclerc of Ferrari came in third, 32 seconds behind Perez, as Formula One enters its summer break.
F1 will return to action after the summer break on 27th of August 2023, for the Dutch Grand Prix at the Zandvoot Circuit. This will be Max Verstappen’s second home race.