BARCELONA, Spain – Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes AMG Petronas out-strategized Max Verstappen and Red Bull to win Sunday’s Aramco Spanish Grand Prix at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
Hamilton, who started from the pole but lost out on the initial start when Verstappen snuck up the inside lane at turn one to take the lead, dug deep when it counted with an assist from a strong strategy call by Toto Wolff and the Mercedes pit area en route to the 98th win of his Formula One career.
The seven-time and defending F-1 champion stayed out five laps longer than Verstappen during the first pit cycle, coming in on lap 29 after Verstappen pitted on the 24th lap, but it was Hamilton’s second pit stop that ultimately won him the race.
Anticipating Hamilton being able to chase down Verstappen, Mercedes called Hamilton into the pits with 24 to go for a second fresh set of medium-compound tires, effectively pinning Verstappen into a no-win situation.
If Verstappen pitted at that point, he’d almost certainly have given up any hope of fighting for the win with Hamilton’s pace advantage, so Verstappen stayed on track with older tires in hopes of eking out a miracle.
Despite a 22-second gap after Hamilton first pitted, that margin eventually evaporated. Hamilton passed teammate Valtteri Bottas for second with 15 laps left and then finally worked past Verstappen entering turn one with eight to go, never looking back after that point.
Once Hamilton was past him, Verstappen pitted for a second time and eventually took the bonus point for setting the fastest lap of the race, but it was little consolation as Hamilton cruised home to the checkered flag by 15.841 seconds.
It was Hamilton’s sixth Spanish Grand Prix victory and his fifth win in a row at the Catalunya circuit.
“I feel great after this one. I feel like I could go again,” said a smiling Hamilton. “Such a close start … there was a lot of rubber down on the right-hand side [of the track] and, obviously, Red Bull got a great start to get past. After that, I was just hunting. I was so close for so long, and I didn’t think in doing that I could make the tires last, but I managed to keep him in [reach] somehow.
“It was a long way to come from 20-odd seconds back, but it was a good gamble and a really great strategy call by the team,” Hamilton added. “It had been the plan all weekend, to make sure we had two medium [set]s to do a two-stopper, because even though a one-stop plan looks better on paper, I know from experience here that a one-stop race is very, very hard to pull off.
“As soon as we had the pace that we had, I knew as soon as I could get past him … that we’d be OK.”
Verstappen was visibly disappointed with the runner-up finish, almost silently acknowledging that there was little his team could do to stop Hamilton at the end of the day despite a banner start to the race.
“In a way, I could see [the end result] coming,” tipped Verstappen. “Already at the end, with the softs he was faster, and even with the mediums he clearly had a lot more pace to be able to stay within one second of me. There wasn’t much we could have done. When they went for another stop, I knew it was over.
“I was already starting to struggle with the [older] tires and you could see with every lap that he was just getting closer and closer, so I was a bit of a sitting duck.”
Bottas hung on to complete the top three, marking his 50th podium finish as a Mercedes driver.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was “best of the rest,” starting and ending in fourth, with the second Red Bull of Sergio Perez coming home fifth.
The McLaren duo of Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris were sixth and eighth, respectively, split by the second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz. Alpine’s Esteban Ocon and AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly closed the top 10.
Gasly’s points finish was impressive considering that he copped a five-second time penalty on his first pit stop due to being out of position in his grid stall on the initial start, then had a slow second pit stop also.
Only one safety car period occurred during Sunday’s race, with the yellow flags waving on lap eight for the stalled car of AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda at turn 10.
The 66-lap race ran uninterrupted from lap 11 to the finish.
The Formula One season continues with the Monaco Grand Prix on May 23. Hamilton is the defending event champion, taking the most recent edition of the historic race in 2019.
Last year’s Monaco Grand Prix was cancelled due to the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The finish:
1. Lewis Hamilton, 2. Max Verstappen, 3. Valtteri Bottas, 4. Charles Leclerc, 5. Sergio Perez, 6. Daniel Ricciardo, 7. Carlos Sainz, 8. Lando Norris, 9. Esteban Ocon, 10. Pierre Gasly, 11. Lance Stroll, 12. Kimi Räikkönen, 13. Sebastian Vettel, 14. George Russell, 15. Antonio Giovinazzi, 16. Nicholas Latifi, 17. Fernando Alonso, 18. Mick Schumacher, 19. Nikita Mazepin, 20. Yuki Tsunoda (DNF).