Red Bull added yet another broken trophy to their collection after the 2023 Belgian Grand Prix, after Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez recorded the team’s first one-two in nearly 100 days.
After celebrating with the first-place, second-place and constructors’ trophies in the pitlane, Perez‘s pit board fell over onto the team’s trophy, breaking it into three pieces.
The incident comes just a week after Lando Norris shattered Verstappen‘s Hungarian GP winner’s trophy during the podium celebrations and has some fans claiming the team are cursed on social media.
Luckily the Belgian GP design wasn’t as elaborate – or delicate – as the Hungarian trophy though, and Red Bull have seemingly been able to salvage the trophy to take back to the factory in Milton Keynes.
Aptly for a race weekend as rain-drenched as the Belgian GP, the winners’ trophies were designed around boats due to the race’s sponsor, MSC Cruises.
Belgium has 66.5km of coastline for cruises to depart from, ranking it 143rd in the world behind the Gambia and ahead of Iraq.
It comes after Verstappen needed to order a replacement winners’ trophy for the Hungarian GP thanks to Norris‘ antics.
On Verstappen‘s first time taking home the traditional Hungarian porcelain urn, he left it on the top step of the podium for the champagne celebrations.
But it didn’t stay there long as second-placed Norris hammered his bottle onto the step, bouncing the trophy onto the floor and causing the base to shatter, an incident Norris later apologise for and said was accidental.
The trophy cost around £39,000 and took the Herendi Porcelain Manufactory company – who’ve been in business since 1826 – six months to create.
When is the next F1 2023 race?
F1 will return from its summer break with the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix from Zandvoort on August 25-27, where championship leader Max Verstappen will be racing on home soil.
