Verstappen takes grand slam Spanish GP win ahead of resurgent Mercedes

F1

Mercedes' impressive race pace and Ferrari woes were a distant second to another dominant performance from Max Verstappen - the 40th of his career

Verstappen Spain GP

Verstappen captures victory in Spain

GettyImages

Author

Cambridge Kisby

Leading from the front, Max Verstappen captured an (almost) faultless victory in Spain, extending his advantage in the drivers’ standings and dealing a hefty blow to his title rivals – despite driving over the odd white line.

Errors by Sergio Perez in qualifying – perhaps the Dutchman’s only title rival – left Verstappen with very little competition out front from the start. He saw off Carlos Sainz and opened up a 3 second lead by lap ten despite being on the slower medium tyre – the rest of the top ten staring on softs.

As the race reached the halfway stage, the lead grew to 15 seconds and by race end, had enough pace left over to secure his third career ‘grand slam’ victory: capturing pole position, leading every lap and setting the fastest lap during the race. He was shown the black and white flag – threatening a five-second time penalty for breaching track limits but is nevertheless now 53 points clear of his team-mate in the drivers’ standings.

Verstappen F1 Spain

Verstappen takes the chequered flag – 24-seconds ahead of second-placed Hamilton

Getty Images

“It’s a big pleasure to drive a car like this,” he told Nico Rosberg in a post-race interview. “We had quite a lot of different tyre strategies out there and for most of the race we were on the right one. I knew the start was going to be a bit tricky – going around the outside in Turn 1 is always difficult – but we had another strong weekend.”

The disappearing Red Bull effectively left the rest of the field to fight for scraps, with all eyes focused on hometown hero Carlos Sainz and his podium defence against Mercedes and the resurgent Sergio Perez.

Related article

The Spaniard had qualified second – his best ever start on home soil – but struggled to keep pace with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell early on. Their management of the soft and medium tyre promoted them to podium places, and later lost out to Perez, ultimately finishing fifth.

“We know race pace and high speed corners are our weakness and unfortunately Barcelona has a high degradation tarmac and high degradation configuration and a lot of high speed corners,” Sainz told Sky Sports. “I did everything I could, but unfortunately we probably just put the upgrade on the worst possible circuit for us.”

Troubles for Ferrari continued further down the field as well, with Charles Leclerc unable to make any impression after a poor qualifying performance, only climbing from 19th to 11th.

Ferrari took the decision to start from the pitlane after replacing the car’s entire rear end as well as his electronic and energy store but it made little difference. The Spanish GP marks the third race this season that the Monegasque driver has failed to score in the points.

“I don’t understand what we’re doing wrong but we’re obviously doing something wrong,” said Leclerc. “It’s been a few races now where we’re struggling with the conditions or having a very peaky car and today was no better.”

Mercedes Spain F1

Russell surpasses Sainz for third

Getty Images

Mercedes’ race pace, courtesy of a new upgrade package, allowed both drivers to comfortably secure a double podium finish – their first since Brazil last year. Its resurgence even had Red Bull team boss Christian Horner acknowledge the “big step” the team had taken and a confident Hamilton made clear the team’s future intentions.

“We definitely have steps to continue taking to close the gap to the Red Bulls but this is way more than I expected this weekend, ” he told Sky Sports. “For as long as I’ve been racing here, if you’re quick here you should be good elsewhere.

“I think we have the strongest team, particularly me and George punching out good results weekend in and weekend out, so now we just need to up the performance a little bit and hopefully at some stage we can catch these Red Bulls.”

Russell added: “We had confidence we could move forward. It’s proof you just need to keep on believing.”

The podium finishers were followed closely by Perez in fourth and Sainz in fifth. The Aston Martin pair of Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso finished sixth and seventh respectively – a disappointing result for both drivers given the former’s qualifying performance and the latter’s history of success on home soil. Esteban Ocon, Zhou Guanyu and Pierre Gasly completed the top ten, after Yuki Tsunoda was given a 5-second time penalty.

Read the full race report later.

 

2023 Spanish Grand Prix race results

Position Driver Team Time Points
1 Max Verstappen Red Bull 66 laps 26*
2 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes +24.09sec 18
3 George Russell Mercedes +32.389sec 15
4 Sergio Perez Red Bull +35.812sec 12
5 Carlos Sainz Ferrari +45.698sec 10
6 Lance Stroll Aston Martin +63.32sec 8
7 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin +64.127sec 6
8 Esteban Ocon Alpine +69.242sec 4
9 Zhou Guanyu Alfa Romeo +71.878sec 2
10 Pierre Gasly Alpine +73.53sec 1
11 Charles Leclerc Ferrari +74.419sec 0
12 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri +75.416sec 0
13 Oscar Piastri McLaren +1 lap 0
14 Nyck de Vries AlphaTauri +1 lap 0
15 Nico Hulkenberg Haas +1 lap 0
16 Alex Albon Williams +1 lap 0
17 Lando Norris McLaren +1 lap 0
18 Kevin Magnussen Haas +1 lap 0
19 Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo +1 lap 0
20 Logan Sargeant Williams +1 lap 0

 

Comments

Loading Comments