Barcelona, Spain: Continuing his fine form of late, Max looked in complete control starting from pole position and led every one of the 66 laps at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. The Dutchman also claimed the race’s fastest lap to take home maximum points and his third career grand slam.
When the lights went out it was Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz who made the best start, and from P2 he pulled alongside Max as the pair arrowed towards Turn 1. Even though Max was on medium tyres against Saniz’s softs, the champion kept his cool, and taking a strong line he edged the Spanish driver towards the outside and moved ahead as they went into Turn 2. Behind them, Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton took P3 after passing McLaren’s Lando Norris who took some damage and was forced to pit.
Checo was also set up to start on medium tyres and was passed by Mercedes’ George Russell and Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu. Down in P12, the Mexican soon set his sights on the cars ahead and at the start of lap 2 he powered past McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and then got by AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda to rise into a point scoring position.
Back at the front, Max was already building a strong gap to the rest of the field and by lap 11 he was 5.2 seconds ahead of Sainz in P2 with Hamilton a further 1.6 seconds back. Lance Stroll was fourth for Aston Martin ahead of the Alpine of Esteban Ocon, while Russell was sixth. In seventh, and just half a second ahead of Checo, was the second Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso.
At the end of lap 13, Alpine’s Ocon pitted from fifth and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll came in for hard tyres a lap later, Checo moved up into sixth place. Sainz made his first stop of the race at the end of lap 15 and after taking on medium tyres he rejoined in eighth place. At the end of lap 19, Alonso dived into the pits and at last Checo was in clean air in fourth place, 7.5s behind Russell.
Max made his first stop of the race on lap 27 and rejoined the track where he began in P1 with hard compound Pirellis. Checo made the same switch at the end of the next lap and he emerged in ninth place, behind Alonso. The Dutchman was now 12 seconds clear of Hamilton with Sainz and Russell trailing behind. Stroll had climbed back up to fifth place ahead of Ocon, while Tsunoda, who had made an early stop for hard tyres, held seventh and Checo was now in P8 after easing past Alonso under DRS at the start of lap 31.
The Mexican continued his march through the pack and by lap 45 was into fourth behind Russell. The Mercedes driver came in for his second pit stop changing his hard compound tyres for soft. Coming back out onto track, the Mercedes driver dropped 13.4 seconds behind Checo. On fresh soft tyres he began to chip away on the gap of Sergio Perez, so Red Bull acted decisively pitting the Mexican for a second time on lap 51. A set of soft tyres were quickly bolted on in a swift 2.2 second and rejoined the action in fifth place, only 2.4 seconds behind Sainz on 10-lap old hard tyres.
Hamilton too, pitted with 15 laps remaining, which gave Red Bull the freedom two laps later to pit Max again for a set of soft compound tyres. Max rejoined the track with his lead still intact. Checo managed to power past Sainz to take P4 from the Spaniard. With only 8 seconds now between him George Russell’s Mercedes and lapping almost a second faster than the Mercedes driver, a podium seemed within touching distance.
However, while Checo did his best to reel in Russell, he cut the gap to just four seconds but just run out of laps. The Mexican had to settle for fourth and 12 points, but from 11th on the grid it was an mighty performance.
Ahead Max was first-rate and after 66 almost perfect laps the Dutchman crossed the line some 24 seconds ahead of Hamilton and 32 ahead of third-placed Russell to take his fifth win of the season and the 40th of his career.
The win extends the Dutchman’s championship lead and he now has 170 points, 53 ahead of Checo who has 117 in second place. The Team also expanded his Constructors’ Championship lead and now has 287 points, 135 ahead of Mercedes who have moved into second place ahead of Aston Martin.
After claiming his third win in a row, driver Max Verstappen said: “To win here again feels incredible. It’s a massive pleasure to drive a car like this. It was important to try and keep the lead into turn one, it was quite tight.
“From there onwards it was about managing the tyres, I was able to create a big gap. We went on to the hards but I didn’t seem to have much grip, I was sliding around quite a lot, the pace was okay but I couldn’t create more of a gap, so we switched to softs and then I just needed to bring it home.
“We’ve had another strong weekend and that’s of course what I like to see for the Team, hopefully we can keep this up throughout the year.”
Reflecting on the race and what lies ahead, driver Sergio Perez said: “I am disappointed with today, we have ultimately paid the price for a bad qualifying. We did have a good strategy but, looking at where we started from, there was only so much that we could do. I think P3 was possible but, if we wanted more points, then I would have had to take more risks on lap one and potentially compromise my race.
“George went really deep on that first lap, gaining a lot of positions but we took it easier to ensure we had more of a clean start. Then we got stuck behind the Aston Martin and Fernando was quite hard to pass, so it meant I couldn’t progress through the field as quickly as we would have liked.
“This weekend, in general, has been a step back and we weren’t quite there, but there are plenty of things we can do better. All in all, we brought home twelve points today and I think, looking forward, Canada should be a strong race for us. Everything is pretty close right now so that will be an interesting one.”