The result was so remarkable, so perfect – fitting into the narrative of the Red Bull driver lead-up to the race and creating so many historical firsts – that it almost doesn’t matter how it came to be that Max Verstappen won the Spanish Grand Prix.
His speed, the way he kept a set of mediums together for 32 laps, his coolness under long pressure from Kimi Räikkönen’s Ferrari despite the enormity of the position he was in; all these remarkable facets of Max’s day played their part. But there were a couple of other things even more critical – the Mercedes drivers finally having the first lap crash they’ve always been destined to have some day. And the way Red Bull and Ferrari were faced with a strategic dilemma in their fight with each other that forced them to make a 50:50 choice. Three stop or two? One of those choices was always going to be wrong.
The two drivers – Verstappen and Räikkönen – in the passive roles, running behind when that choice had to be made, turned out to be the ones in the Pound seats. Sebastian Vettel’s speed once he’d got himself past Carlos Sainz’s Toro Rosso convinced Red Bull that the Scuderia would attempt to pass them by using the only way it might be possible – a three-stop strategy, which was indeed what Vettel was pushing his team to do. Which in turn forced Red Bull to respond by putting one of its cars on a matching strategy.
