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.”
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 |