Hamilton romps to victory in Spain, bests P2 Bottas for 5th consecutive Mercedes 1-2; Verstappen claims last podium position in P3; indecisive Ferrari miss out

With hís teammate Valtteri Bottas proving that he is a genuine threat for the World Championship this year, the veteran Mercedes ace Lewis Hamilton showed his ability to raise his game in the face of stiff competition and dominated the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday. Bottas, who was coming off an inspiring victory in Baku, Azerbaijan a fortnight ago, looked poised to extend his momentum after snatching pole in Saturday qualifying. But Hamilton got the better start from P2 when the lights went out and out raced his Finnish rival going down into pivotal Turn 1 of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. Bottas would later blame a fritzy clutch for his boggy beginning and the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel also pulled alongside him, momentarily making Bottas the meat in the sandwich. Hamilton then got the superior launch off the corner and pulled away, Bottas’ Silver Arrow squirmed under the combined break-acceleration effort required to avoid the two cars surrounding hime but was able to control his car with fast hands while Vettel locked up and flat-spotted his right front tire. That moment would prove to be the decisive moment for all three men in the contest.

Pics courtesy GrandPrix247.com

Hamilton pulled a gap almost immediately, Bottas was able to recover enough to hold his P2 position and Vettel quickly slipped back into the clutches of his junior teammate, Charles Leclerc. And here Ferrari’s pit wall indecision would once again come back to bite them. With Leclerc harassing Vettel and clearly looking like the faster car as his German teammate struggled with that flat spot vibration, the Scuderia delayed the team order for their drivers to swap positions until Lap 12. And by then both Mercedes had disappeared into the distance. Vettel, who was practically pleading to pit for fresh rubber from the time he damaged his tires on the opening lap, was brought in on Lap 20 to get off the starting Soft Pirellis and onto the Medium compound tires. The stop was actually slow by about 2 seconds by modern F1 standards but the four-time World Champ promptly set the fastest laps of the race, proving that the Mediums were not greatly inferior to the Softs.

Meanwhile Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who started from P4 and passed Vettel after the German’s initial opening lap bobble, pitted a lap later on 21 going from Soft to Soft, obviously signaling that he would be doing a two-stopper. This also indicated that Red Bull had deduced that the Mediums would not last long enough to do a one-stop strategy thsi early in the race, although they did split their strategy by swapping their number two driver Pierre Gasly onto the Mediums on Lap 23. On Lap 26 Ferrari made another odd call when they called Leclerc in for his first stop and decided to put the Monegasque onto the decidedly slower Hard tires. With 40 more laps to be run in this 66 lap contest the Ferrari braintrust must have been figuring that Leclerc would be able to capitalize when the other runners were forced to pit again when their tires gave up later in the race.

However, with Leclerc running much slower on the hardest rubber on offer he was quickly caught up by his teammate Vettel and once again Ferrari seemed to hesitate to give the team order for Leclerc to relinquish the position. After essentially catching Leclerc on Lap 30 it took until Lap 36 for the Prancing Horse pit wall to make the call and tell Leclerc to move aside. Just five laps later Vettel came in again for his second stop, getting new Mediums to go to the end of the race. Verstappen came in on Lap 44 to switch to Mediums and fulfill the mandatory two-compound rule and it looked as if things might get very interesting because Hamilton’s rear right tire was blistering so badly that he would surely be forced to pit for fresh Pirelli rubber at any moment. Bottas tried to get the jump on his struggling teammate by pitting on Lap 46 for the best performing Soft tires but then the racing gods intervened and Hamilton’s risky decision to stay out a bit longer on badly worn tires paid off in spades.

The backmarkers Lando Norris of McLaren and Lance Stroll of Williams touched wheels while dicing, sending both cars careening off track and disabling them not to mention bringing a lot of gravel onto the racing surface. That brought out the Safety Car, enabling Hamilton to pit for Softs while the rest of the field was circulating at greatly reduced speed. Hamilton therefore held onto his lead easily and all the tire gambles and strategies of the  the other front runners were basically thrown out the window. When racing resumed at the end of Lap 52 after the track had been cleared and cleaned Hamilton roared away and set the fastest lap of the race. On this day, neither Bottas or anyone else had anything for the English 5-time Champ and Hamilton came home a dominant 4 seconds to the good of his teammate. While Bottas fairly easily held on to his P2 after the restart for Mercedes fifth consecutive 1-2 finish to start the season, the Drivers’ points swung back to Hamilton’s favor, as did the confidence of a dominant race win. Verstappen took the last step on the podium with a very clean and tidy P3 run while Ferrari were left befuddled and demoralized with Vettel finishing P4 and Leclerc P5. Its pretty clear now that the legendary team from Maranello’s preseason pace was a mirage and that once again Mercedes are absolutely dominant in racing trim. If the Scuderia is going to compete with them this year they are going to have to tighten up their in-race strategy and decision making at the very least. Their indecisiveness in Spain this weekend was undoubtedly costly.

The second Red Bull of Pierre Gasly finished in P6, the Haas of Kevin Magnussen scored solid points in P7 while his teammate Romain Grosjean barely held on to the last points paying position in P10 after several ragged, off track moments dicing with his nearest competitors, including wheel-banging with Magnussen. Carlos Sainz of McLaren and Daniil Kvyat of Toro Rosso rounded out the Top 10 in P8 and P9 respectively. Kvyat was fast all weekend and might have finished higher in the order but the team botched a double-stack pit stop during that Safety Car period by being caught completely unprepared that cost he and his rookie teammate Alexander Albon a lot of precious time.

Top 10 finishers of the Spanish GP:

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

The next race is in two weeks time and is the biggest in the F1 calendar — the glitz and glamor extravaganza that is the Monaco Grand Prix. Hope to see you then for that momentous Memorial Day must-see event to find out if Hamilton can press his advantage, Bottas can regain his and if any car other than a Mercedes can actually win a race in 2019!