Verstappen Victorious at the F1 Spanish Grand Prix

Max Verstappen wins Spanish Grand Prix in spite of a charging Lando Norris to take his 7th victory of the season.

It wasn’t a good start to the race for the pole sitter Lando Norris. Verstappen got a marginally better start, which forced Norris to defend by squeezing Verstappen to the inside. However, Russell, who started in 4th, was able to get a great launch off the line, and utilised the slipstream from the cars ahead to swing round the outside of turn 1 to take the lead of the race.

Russell’s lead would not last for long though, as Verstappen would be able to utilise DRS down the start finish straight to make a rather straightforward move for the lead, before building a 1 second gap to nullify any threat Russell may have posed.

The race began to settle down from there, with Verstappen slowly building up a gap to Russell in 2nd, whilst Norris, now third, was managing his pace whilst just sitting within DRS range.

Whilst some drivers had pit as early as lap 10, lap 16 would see the first of the drivers at the front of the grid make their first stop of the day. Russell had come in, as had Carlos Sainz. Russell would have hoped that getting the early undercut would have helped protect him from Norris, who would likely pull away if he got ahead, but a 5.3 second stop meant that the undercut became much less effective, and that he was almost overtaken by Sainz. Fortunately for the Mercedes driver, he was able to maintain position.

Had Norris responded immediately, it may have been likely that he could have taken 2nd place from Russell there and then. However, Norris’ focus was on Verstappen, and the team opted to think about the long game, and therefore Norris would continue to set more and more laps on his old soft tyres. By the time he did pit on lap 24, he would come back out in 6th place, but with much newer tyres than everyone else around him.

Norris’ charge properly began when he took fifth from his good friend Carlos Sainz, before beginning to chase down the two Mercedes cars. The initial push to close in on Hamilton in 4th seemed easy enough, but it took a bit of time to get close enough to make a pass. This wasn’t ideal for Norris’ strategy, as each lap spent behind Hamilton and Norris was time lost to Verstappen.

Norris would eventually overtake Hamilton on lap 32, but would again find it difficult to pass Russell, the dirty air being kicked up around such a technical circuit making things difficult to get too close, even with a tyre advantage. Norris did have too much pace for Russell though in the end, with Norris climbing up to 2nd on lap 35 following a fierce battle between the two Brits that lasted half of the lap.

Now that Norris was in clear air, he began to chase Verstappen down at a decent rate. By the time that Verstappen would pit on lap 45, Norris would cut the gap down to under 5 seconds, having been 9.4 seconds behind 10 laps prior.

Norris would again go for an overcut on Verstappen in order to build a tyre offset, though this time it would be by just 3 laps, compared to having 6 lap younger tyres for the middle stint. This was done to protect themselves from being overtaken by Russell once again. Had they left it any later, all the hard work Norris had done during the mid point of the race could have been wiped away.

Coming out of the pits, Norris was 8 seconds behind Verstappen with 18 laps to go. This gap did start to fall quickly once again, before starting to plateau around the 5 second gap. With Verstappen now being told to push, things got harder and harder for Norris to take the victory, as more and more laps ticked by without any real significant gains. Whilst Norris would begin to make bigger gains once again in the dying laps, it was too little, too late as the McLaren driver would have to settle for 2nd behind Verstappen once again.

There were other key battles taking place whilst Norris pursued Verstappen though. During his second pit stop, Russell had gone onto hard tyres to see out the end of the race. This would prove to be a bad call from Mercedes, as Russell was very unhappy with the pace, and had began sliding on his tyres early into the stint. The team learned from this, and opted to extend Hamilton’s middle stint before putting soft tyres onto his car on lap 44. After making quick work of Sainz, Hamilton would manage to sweep round the outside of turn 1 in order to take 3rd place from Russell, a move which would ultimately secure him his first podium of the season.

Russell was now under fire from Leclerc, who was demonstrating some strong pace in the late stages in the race. Whilst Leclerc was able to get very close, Russell would cross the line in 4th, less than four tenths ahead of the Ferrari behind. Leclerc was understandably not happy to have missed out on the position, nor was he happy with his pace being compromised early on in the race after minor contact with his teammate caused a little bit of front wing damage.

Norris also was not happy with his result either, blaming the bad start for why he lost out, in spite of being arguably the fastest driver on circuit today.

Race Results

1. Max Verstappen – Red Bull
2. Lando Norris – McLaren +2.219
3. Lewis Hamilton – Mercedes +17.790
4. George Russell – Mercedes +22.320
5. Charles Leclerc – Ferrari +22.709
6. Carlos Sainz – Ferrari +31.028
7. Oscar Piastri – McLaren +33.760
8. Sergio Perez – Red Bull +59.524
9. Pierre Gasly – Alpine +62.025
10. Esteban Ocon – Alpine +71.889
11. Nico Hulkenberg – Haas +79.215
12. Fernando Alonso – Aston Martin 1 LAP
13. Guanyu Zhou – Kick Sauber 1 LAP
14. Lance Stroll – Aston Martin 1 LAP
15. Valtteri Bottas – Kick Sauber 1 LAP
16. Daniel Ricciardo – RB 1 LAP
17. Kevin Magnussen – Haas 1 LAP
18. Alex Albon – Williams 1 LAP
19. Yuki Tsunoda – RB 1 LAP
20. Logan Sargeant – Williams 2 LAPS

Driver’s Standings

1. Max Verstappen – 219 points
2. Lando Norris – 150 points
3. Charles Leclerc – 148 points
4. Carlos Sainz – 116 points
5. Sergio Perez – 111 points
6. Oscar Piastri – 87 points
7. George Russell – 81 points
8. Lewis Hamilton – 70 points
9. Fernando Alonso – 41 points
10. Yuki Tsunoda – 19 points
11. Lance Stroll – 17 points
12. Daniel Ricciardo – 9 points
13. Oliver Bearman – 6 points
14. Nico Hulkenberg – 6 points
15. Pierre Gasly – 5 points
16. Esteban Ocon – 3 points
17. Alex Albon – 2 points
18. Kevin Magnussen – 1 point
19. Zhou Guanyu – 0 points
20. Valtteri Bottas – 0 points
21. Logan Sargeant – 0 points

Constructor’s Standings

1. Red Bull – 330 points
2. Ferrari – 270 points
3. McLaren – 237 points
4. Mercedes – 151 points
5. Aston Martin – 58 points
6. RB – 28 points
7. Alpine – 8 points
8. Haas – 7 points
9. Williams – 2 points
10. Kick Sauber – 0 points