Another win, another record.
Lewis Hamilton took a dominant victory at the 2020 Spanish Grand Prix and moved one clear of Michael Schumacher to claim the outright record for the most podiums in F1 history with his 156th visit.
There were hopes in the paddock of another closely fought race, after last week’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix exposed a potential Achilles’ heel for the champions as they struggled with their rear tyres and Max Verstappen snatched an unlikely win. But those hopes were quickly extinguished when Hamilton “pulled the pin”, as Martin Brundle put it, and built a gap of almost ten seconds to the Red Bull in preparation for his first pit stop.
The usual Mercedes 1-2 in qualifying had been broken up by a poor start from Valtteri Bottas, the Finn suffering from a lack of a slipstream on the long run to the first corner and being passed by Verstappen and the opportunistic Lance Stroll. The Finn recovered to third quickly enough but spent the rest of the grand prix failing to get close enough to Verstappen in order to mount a real attack. Even on soft tyres towards the end of the race, he just didn’t seem to have the requisite pace and crossed the line 44 seconds behind his teammate, after making a late stop to claim the fastest lap.
It was a chastening weekend for Bottas, who is seeing his title aspirations crumble once again. “I have no idea what the points difference is,” he said, “but it is way too big and I can see again the championship drifting away. I will always bounce back, but right now I want to be somewhere else other than this.”
During the latest triple-header, the championship has transformed from a two-horse to a three-horse race and he is looking increasingly like the third horse.
Hamilton, meanwhile, was imperious throughout – only denied his seventh career ‘grand chelem’ by his teammate’s late dash for the fastest lap and so “in the zone” that he didn’t realise he had passed the chequered flag.
Behind the front three, the Racing Points were ‘best of the rest’. Stroll continues to defy his critics and is really starting to cement his position as more than just a ‘rich boy driving for his dad’s team’; the Canadian took fourth ahead of teammate Sergio Pérez after the Mexican received a five-second penalty for ignoring blue flags.
Carlos Sainz completed the top six with a strong drive at his home grand prix, seemingly having solved the overheating issues that have plagued his McLaren recently.
A Little Redemption in Red
Sebastian Vettel made the best of another bizarre Ferrari strategy to salvage seventh, impressively making a set of soft tyres last 36 laps and holding off a train of faster cars towards the end.
The incompetency of the Ferrari strategists has become a running joke at this point and they continued to add fuel to the fire here. A bizarre radio exchange played out for the world to hear as Vettel was ignored, then told to push, then told to go to the end, and finally had to tell his team the sums they needed to do for him.
The tension between the four-time world champion and his team is palpable and it feels as though both parties are just waiting for the season to be over.
Ferrari may also find themselves in hot water as it has now transpired that Charles Leclerc drove for two laps without his safety harnesses secured after his engine had cut out and spun him at the final chicane on lap 36. A massive lapse in common sense and safety that the FIA may feel the need to make an example of.
Pressure Continues to Increase on Albon
In the break before racing at Spa-Francorchamps last season, despite all the team’s previous reassurances, Pierre Gasly was replaced at Red Bull by Alexander Albon. But, as we head to this year’s Belgian Grand Prix, the team find Albon arguably underperforming as badly as the Frenchman was 12 months ago.
Red Bull are desperate for their second car to get, at least, reasonably close to Verstappen’s pace to aid their strategy options when attempting to outsmart Mercedes. Albon has certainly showed promise at times, but there is surely only so long people can continue to make excuses for him.
The London-born Thai driver is averaging a deficit of over half a second to his teammate in qualifying and, whilst he has often produced great recovery drives on a Sunday, that is still only getting him back into a position that would be the least expected of him.
This weekend, he did improve his qualifying slightly – if only to sixth on the grid – but was hampered in the race as Red Bull possibly used him as a guinea pig to test out the hard tyre for his teammate out front. That put him back into the many ‘DRS trains’ forming through the midfield and he only managed fight back to eighth place.
The fact is, however, that if he had shown the pace to get past the Racing Points into fourth earlier in the race, Red Bull would likely not have taken the gamble to switch to the hard tyres.
It was apparently Gasly being lapped by Verstappen in Hungary last year that was the final straw for the Red Bull bosses, so one wonders what must have been going through Albon’s head as he moved aside for his teammate here in Spain.
The Spanish Grand Prix in 60 Seconds
Answering the Burning Questions
Will Mercedes experience issues with their tyres again? Nope.
And can Red Bull then challenge for another win? Also nope.
Will Sebastian Vettel leave his Silverstone troubles behind him? To some extent, yes. A rightful driver of the day.
How will Sergio Pérez deal with the strain of driving an F1 car post-virus? He coped fine, seemingly. Even with it being one of the hottest races in years.
Will anyone pull a Maldonado? Again, nope.
