Max Verstappen didn’t just win Sunday, he completely dominated the Spanish Grand Prix.
Verstappen started on pole position, led every lap, scored the fastest lap bonus point and took the checkered flag for his 40th career victory. The Red Bull driver also led all three practice sessions to boot.
It was also the fifth win of the season for Verstappen as the double-defending world champion continues to cruise to a three-peat.
Verstappen finished a comfortable 24 seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton followed by George Russell, who made it a 2-3 finish for Mercedes.
Here’s what you need to know from the Spanish GP:
WHO OR WHAT COULD STOP VERSTAPPEN AND RED BULL?
Verstappen clearly has his settings on Easy Mode. Other than a close call with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz at the start, Verstappen was never challenged as he rocketed away from the field and never looked back in Spain.
Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez is the only other driver who has won a race, two to be precise, this season but a poor performance in qualifying meant he had other things to focus on before considering contention.
Verstappen doesn’t have an external rival and has to seemingly cause his own problems such as driving over the white line and exceeding track limits, which only resulted in a warning.
Unless someone decides to revive former CEO Bernie Ecclestone’s idea to add sprinklers to artificially make the track wet, the onus is still on other teams and drivers to step up. Ferrari was competitive last year but has fallen off significantly while Mercedes and Aston Martin, having both taken positive steps forward lately, still have some ways to go.
Red Bull could very well end up winning every race this season based on performance alone but life isn’t a video game and there’s bound to be a weekend where they experience engine failure or some other unforced error. Just not so far.
BIG WEEKEND FOR MERCEDES
Mercedes’ updates paid off as the silver arrows delivered their best weekend of the season so far. Although the latest package arrived last week at Monaco, Mercedes shined in Spain with Hamilton earning his second runner-up result of the year and Russell stepping on the podium for the first time in 2023.
When Red Bull and Verstappen are in command, a 2-3 finish is as good as it’s going to get.
Hamilton earned “driver of the day” honours, but Russell was the biggest mover, gaining nine spots from his starting position on the grid in P12.
Mercedes also leapfrogged Aston Martin in the constructors’ championship and holds an 18-point lead for second place.
“This result highlights all the hard work and efforts that have gone on at the factory to bring these upgrades,” Russell said in Mercedes’ race report. “We had a strong race here last year, so the next couple of races will be key to see if we can consistently produce results like this and close the gap to Red Bull.”
MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR ALONSO
There were high hopes for Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso heading into Spain. The home favourite had finished on the podium five times through six races, including a runner-up result just last week in Monaco. Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya was also the site of Alonso’s most recent victory — back in 2013 with Ferrari — as he was vying to end the decade-long drought.
The stars must not have been aligned then as Alonso finished a season “low” of seventh. Teammate and Canadian Lance Stroll even crossed the line ahead of Alonso for the first time this season, finishing one spot ahead in sixth.
The gap to second in the world championship also stretched as Perez finished fourth to now lead by 18 points over Alonso.
Things came unglued for Alonso during qualifying Saturday when damage to his car’s floor compromised his stint during the third session, and he was only able to achieve P9 on the starting grid. Tire wear and tear seemed to be an issue on race day.
“We didn’t have as much pace today on both the soft and hard compounds, so it was a tricky race for us,” Alonso said in his team’s race report. “We tried to go longer on our strategy and hoped it would pay off later with fresher tires, but our rivals had a little more pace.”
BAD BREAK FOR NORRIS
Lando Norris has had the worst start to a season since his rookie campaign in 2019. The McLaren driver looked poised to turn things around having qualified P3 for his best starting position this season by a margin.
His place among the leaders didn’t last beyond a handful of turns, though, as he came into contact with Hamilton on the opening lap, resulting in damage to his front wing. Sainz slowed down ahead of Hamilton, who steered to avoid a fender bender and pinched out Norris.
That forced Norris to make an emergency pit stop — one that took longer than expected — and he never truly recovered to finish 17th.
McLaren was shut out of the points as rookie Oscar Piastri, who started ninth, wasn’t able to hold steady in the top-10 and finished 13th.
McLaren is closer to the likes of Haas and Alfa Romeo than to Alpine with the duo of Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly finishing in the top-10 for the third consecutive race. Alpine’s gap over McLaren for fifth place in the constructors’ championship has now stretched to 23 points.
PAIN IN SPAIN FOR FERRARI
Sainz slipped from second on the starting grid to fifth at the finish line in his home race while it was pretty much an uphill battle all weekend for Charles Leclerc.
The Monegasque driver was eliminated in the first round of qualifying Saturday and started from the pit lane as his team opted for new power unit parts as a solution. Leclerc, who started on the hard tires, pitted well ahead of others who were on the soft compound, so it was puzzling why they would put him back on the hards during the home stretch when they were clearly struggling before. Still, Leclerc came up just short of Gasly for the final points-paying position by less than a second.
“We really must analyze all the data, because while the upgrades seem to work as expected, we are always slightly caught out by what is happening with the tires and we struggle to get them in the right window which is a big problem,” Leclerc said in his team’s race report. “We ran the same tire twice in the same race and we went from having a very bad car to quite a good one towards the end of the race. Now we will go back to the factory and find out what went wrong yesterday in qualifying because that’s what put us in a tricky situation today. There’s a lot of work to do.”
Leclerc’s P11 is actually his worst non-retirement finish since the Russian Grand Prix in September 2021 when he came in 15th.
PIT STOPS
• Although rain was in the forecast, it turned out to just be a sweaty Russell. But seriously, that was about as clean a race as you could get as not only was there no rain but no retirements, yellow flags or safety cars, either. Hamilton and Norris coming together on the opening lap and a couple of near-misses was about as close as we got to disrupting the status quo.
• It looked like Yuki Tsunoda was going to score a season-best ninth, but the AlphaTauri driver was dinged five seconds for pushing Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu off of the track and ended up 12th overall. Although a bit sloppy, how do you penalize Tsunoda for that but Ocon received nothing for his aggressive manoeuvring to try (and fail) to fend off former teammate Alonso?
• If you ever needed an example of the height difference between F1 drivers and NBA players, here you go.
UP NEXT
O, Canada! F1 crosses the pond again for the Canadian Grand Prix on June 18. Verstappen was victorious from pole position last year at Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, so try to act surprised if he does it again.