Spanish Grand Prix

Red Bull's Max Verstappen won the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona on Sunday, after early race dominator Charles Leclerc was forced to retire his Ferrari ...

Verstappen caught and passed Perez on Lap 49. The charging Verstappen passed Bottas for third around the outside of Turn 12. Russell’s car was overheating, while Verstappen’s DRS wasn’t always working, and they pitted together on Lap 14.

The world champion finished a place ahead of Red Bull teammate Sergio Pérez to take the lead in the championship, George Russell claimed third and Lewis ...

Hamilton, having worked his way through the field made a late stop for fresh tyres and his team’s confidence paid off as he made it through to pass Sainz for fourth on lap 59. He duly came in on lap 44 and emerged in front of Russell and five seconds behind his teammate. Pérez with working DRS could not be held off by Russell and he passed for the lead on lap 30. He had it open on lap 23 and the pair went wheel to wheel through turn one and into two and three as Russell refused to yield, brilliantly squeezing the Dutchman wide. Losing power on lap 26 he was forced to retire, promoting Russell to the lead. Verstappen charged and had Russell in range but with his DRS failing he could not make the pass as Russell defended brilliantly.

Lewis Hamilton believes he could have fought against the Red Bulls in the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix had it not been for his first-lap clash with Kevin ...

So hopefully for me, that was a bit like a win, and I dedicate it to her.” He managed to pull off a number of overtakes as he cut his way through the field, running a three-stop strategy that included a late charge on softs. Hamilton explained that the race pace was “much better” and the car felt “much nicer” over the long runs thanks to the updates, giving him reason to think he could have been in the mix with the Red Bulls that finished first and second in a normal race.

Max Verstappen took advantage of Charles Leclerc's retirement to go top of the the drivers' standings after the Dutchman's third consecutive victory led Red ...

"It is a shame. "Today was very tough. A second podium of the season for Russell ensured the 24-year-old Briton extended his run of finishing fifth or above in the first five races of the campaign. "We will look at this issue and we cannot afford for this to happen many times in the season so we need to find the problem." After posting a blistering final qualifying lap to start on pole, the Ferrari driver looked set to ease to his third win of the season before suffering a loss of power on lap 27, forcing the devastated 24-year-old to retire from a race for the first time this season. As well as Red Bull taking a second one-two in three races, Perez also secured an extra point for fastest lap to provide the cherry on top of the cake after a near-perfect afternoon in Barcelona for the team.

Max Verstappen wins the Spanish Grand Prix. Teammate Sergio Perez was leading the race when the team told him to let Verstappen pass on Lap 49 of 66.

I’ve had to miss a lot of engineering sessions, which has compromised my weekend, and I definitely wasn’t as prepared for the Grand Prix as I could have been.” “I’ve been a bit on the backfoot this weekend as most of my energy has been spent fighting off this illness. “It was a very pleasing weekend with lots of positive signs, even though I’m not yet ecstatic,” said Mercedes head Toto Wolff. “With Lewis we had probably the fastest race car of all. Mercedes has struggled through the first six races of the F1 season as its new 2022 car is still a work in progress. Seeking a victory in his home grand prix, Sainz later was blown off course by the wind in the same spot as Verstappen but ultimately rallied to finish fourth. The stakes were too high for Red Bull and Verstappen, who trailed Leclerc by 19 points ahead of the race but now holds a six-point advantage in defence of his first world championship.

Lewis Hamilton (36%) · George Russell (29%) · Max Verstappen (5%) · Sergio Perez (4%) · Charles Leclerc (14%) · Carlos Sainz Jnr (0%) · Lando Norris (0%) · Daniel ...

Third win in a row and fourth in six races for Verstappen, who now leads Leclerc by six points. The champion started second but reacted slower than the Ferrari ...

Schumacher qualified in the top 10 and moved up to sixth on the opening lap, running a two stop strategy that soon unravelled. Bottas ran as high as third early on and his points helped Alfa reduce the gap to McLaren to 11 points. Ricciardo, who lined up ninth and was passed by his team mate on track, said it had been a struggle with little grip. He battled Russell for second but dropped to fourth after going into the gravel on lap nine, blaming the wind. He led the race for a while. The podium was the 250th for the modern Mercedes team.

The Mercedes driver and Kevin Magnussen collided on the first lap after the Haas man tried to go around the outside of Hamilton, leaving him with a puncture and ...

I was just really unfortunate at the start to get the puncture I got, but I didn't give up. He [Hamilton] would have raced for the win. But then, to be fighting for fourth, I was so happy.

And the seven-time world champion said he was confident Mercedes would be race winners again before too long. Hamilton clashed with Kevin Magnussen on the ...

“I was thinking this is impossible to get back into the points but they said no I was on for eighth,” he said. We have made a lot of improvements with the car, the race pace is much better. “I had to get through a lot of adversity in that race starting from so far back.”

Red Bull's Max Verstappen raced to his third victory in as many outings.

If I didn’t have the issue at the start I would have been fighting the Red Bulls so that gives me a great hope at some stage we will be fighting for the win. Russell also impressed to secure his second podium of the year. “Since the final race of last year it has been difficult all-round. “Lewis, that was amazing,” said Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff, seconds after the race finished. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. So gloomy was Hamilton’s apparent fate that he wanted to retire his car.

George Russell, Lewis Hamilton finish in top-five, still face big hurdle in the Formula 1 standings.

Russell was superb in defending against the faster Verstappen and fully merited his podium while Hamilton put in an astonishing recovery after first-lap contact with Kevin Magnussen left him with a puncture. George Russell qualified fourth, six-tenths off pole, while Lewis Hamilton conceded he should have done better than sixth. Mercedes believed the phenomenon triggered by the return of ground effect was severely hampering its performance.

Max Verstappen reclaimed the Formula One points lead as the reigning world champion won the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday for his third consecutive victory ...

I've had to miss a lot of engineering sessions, which has compromised my weekend, and I definitely wasn't as prepared for the Grand Prix as I could have been." "It was a very pleasing weekend with lots of positive signs, even though I'm not yet ecstatic," said Mercedes head Toto Wolff. "With Lewis we had probably the fastest race car of all. "I've been a bit on the backfoot this weekend as most of my energy has been spent fighting off this illness. Seeking a victory in his home grand prix, Sainz later was blown off course by the wind in the same spot as Verstappen but ultimately rallied to finish fourth. The stakes were too high for Red Bull and Verstappen, who trailed Leclerc by 19 points ahead of the race but now holds a six-point advantage in defense of his first world championship. "I don't know what the problem is yet, but it hurts."

Max Verstappen won an action-packed 2022 Spanish Grand Prix as pole-sitter Charles Leclerc retired from a comfortable lead. Sergio Perez took second place ...

The Mercedes emerged ahead of the Red Bull in the battle for third, and on Lap 16 Verstappen was right on Russell’s tail. But on Lap 49, Perez complied – Verstappen thanking him – before skating away to win by 13.072s and retake the championship lead. Of course, I was in the train and I tried to pass but my DRS was not always working, so that made it very tough but we managed, due to the strategy, to get ahead again and do our own race and eventually win the race. As a result, Sainz re-took P4 having passed not only Hamilton (on Lap 65) but Bottas (on Lap 57, along with Hamilton). The following lap began with Verstappen therefore attacking Russell for the lead, Perez vying for a starring role just behind. Leclerc enjoying a comfortable lead, Perez attempted to pry P2 off Russell on Lap 10 but was held off masterfully by the Mercedes into Turn 1. Agonisingly for Verstappen, even though he was within striking distance on Lap 25, that DRS just wouldn’t open and give him that extra burst of pace. So Verstappen pitted a second time from mediums back to softs on Lap 29 and caught up to Russell’s tail by Lap 37, when Russell swapped for another set of mediums. Mercury indicating air temperature of 36 degrees Celsius and a track temperature of 49 degrees C, the heat was most definitely on. Valtteri Bottas’s soft-medium-medium strategy saw him lose out to soft-tyred finishers Sainz and Hamilton, the Finn taking a still-solid P6 finish for Alfa Romeo. In seventh was Esteban Ocon, up five places for Alpine with two soft-tyred stints. Hamilton passed Sainz for P4 with a brilliant move at Turn 1 with five laps left, but then dropped to P5 having been told to lift off by his Mercedes team. Soaring temperatures weren’t the only problem on Sunday; huge gusts into Turn 4 caused both Carlos Sainz and Verstappen to go off track and drop down the order early on.

Punishingly hot conditions forced drivers towards three-stop strategies at the Circuit de Catalunya. Here's all the data from the Spanish GP.

C3 (21) C3 (14) C3 (21) C3 (21) C3 (13) C3 (10) C3 (14) C3 (13) C3 (21) C3 (21) C3 (13) C3 (13)

Lando Norris was taken for examination by McLaren's medical team following his eighth-place finish at the Spanish Grand Prix.

We need to make sure he gets some good rest now in the next four days before we then go again in Monaco." "Obviously he was not feeling well all weekend. The 22-year-old was withdrawn from his post-race media duties and instead went straight to the motorhome to be looked over by the team doctor.

Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Sunday 22 May. Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, and Team Principal Andreas Seidl after ...

"The entire team here at the track and back home did a great job in the recent weeks and days to bring all the upgrades to the car this weekend and race it on both cars. This allowed us to make a step forward in terms of performance and it worked as expected but we still have a lot of work to do in understanding and optimising it in the weeks ahead. "It was a long and challenging Spanish Grand Prix under very hot conditions. We'll look at the data over the next few days, see if there's any additional performance we can extract from the car and make sure we're ready to go for Monaco." I've had to miss a lot of engineering sessions, which has compromised my weekend, and I definitely wasn't as prepared for the Grand Prix as I could have been. With that in mind, I'm really pleased to have come out of the race with decent points for the team.

Red Bull's Max Verstappen won the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona on Sunday, after early race dominator Charles Leclerc was forced to retire his Ferrari ...

1 The charging Verstappen passed Bottas for third around the outside of Turn 12. 1

Max Verstappen recovered from a spin and a DRS problem to take a third consecutive victory and the Formula 1 world championship lead at the Spanish Grand ...

The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, a familiar face for Formula 1 teams as a traditional pre-season testing venue, was bathed in sunshine for this year's ...

So to come away with points for the team in eighth, matching his result from last year, is heroic. Albon made a strong start to grab a few places – and his early pace was strong. Battling those symptoms in scorching temperatures made it, as he described, “one of the hardest races I’ve ever done”. He recovered to finish fourth, but a podium should have been the minimum. That consistency has kept him fourth and ahead of Carlos Sainz in the drivers’ standings. He valiantly defended from a faster Verstappen for several laps, placing his car with pinpoint accuracy.

No perfect 10s but plenty of star performers as Edd Straw delivers his verdict on the performances of all 20 F1 drivers at the Spanish GP.

Unfortunately, his two-stop strategy meant he was pushed out of the points-paying positions entirely during his long and difficult final stint, coming home in 12th. Made a good start, but his attempt to go around the outside of Hamilton at Turn 4 proved disastrous for his race. He then picked off Albon and Stroll before his first stop and was up to 12th in the middle stint when he retired with an engine problem. But he was 0.270s off Albon and he’d had what he described as his worst Friday in F1. Climbed to 14th on the opening lap, but unlike his team-mate he was on a three-stopper. A slow right-front tyre change at his final pitstop meant he had to pass the struggling Schumacher early in that final stint but that didn’t compromise his result. Hamilton inevitably jumped him, but Leclerc’s retirement meant this added up to seventh for Ocon. He chased down the fundamentally quicker Alfa of Bottas late on thanks to a tyre advantage but was still 15s off at the finish. Ocon admitted to being a little surprised by how easily he made up ground in the first stint. Despite it being revealed he was suffering from tonsillitis afterwards, Norris put in a good race performance to finish eighth. Breezed through Q1 on one set of tyres, but a moment on his first Q2 run, then struggles with overheating rears on his second meant he was eliminated. Ran second chasing Leclerc before a trip through the Turn 4 gravel when he was caught out by a gust of wind. Verstappen did have the pace to be a pole position threat having set the pace on the first Q3 runs, as despite being 0.323s slower than Leclerc’s fastest time the track was improving rapidly.

On the back of its first visit to the all-new Miami circuit, Formula 1 moved on to the Spanish Grand Prix, which took place at a considerably more familiar ...

Add in the tyre management requirement and the factor passes could be pulled off for a change at Barcelona (more on that later) and this was a severe test for any driver. Plus, Verstappen’s DRS issues meant his battle with Russell was in a sense artificial and F1 never got to see if the Red Bull could’ve battled Leclerc’s Ferrari once again. With sixth in Spain from seventh on the grid, Bottas put the disappointing and very poor ending to his otherwise excellent weekend in Miami firmly in the rear-view mirror. But he did have something to prove in terms of wheel-to-wheel racing given his struggles in the pack early in 2020 and his incredible Sakhir GP performance took place largely in clear air. In fact, Perez was denied the chance to attack Russell when Verstappen was stymied by his malfunctioning DRS and then as the leader was told to let his team-mate by again when Verstappen roared back late in the race. Back to Barcelona – where Russell showed he can take on the best when the pressure is on, with his sterling defence against Verstappen after the world champion had been allowed past Perez for the first time. His trip through the gravel at Turn 4, caught out by a gust of wind, should’ve been more costly and Verstappen would do well to reflect on his good fortune given how things panned out for Leclerc, especially if Ferrari’s improved tyre management is indeed a real gain that is subsequently maintained. Verstappen is unafraid to publicly call out Red Bull for what he perceives as the team not getting small details right that can cost him in races. At Barcelona in 2022, it twice asked Perez to get out of Verstappen’s way – on the first instance as he ran behind George Russell early on and promising “we’ll pay you back later”. What was once commonplace in F1 has been overturned by some of the world’s best engineers working to make things even better – reflecting the adage that the championship is simply better than it once was, while also helping keep costs down and encouraging sustainability. Leclerc had by then edged to a 2-second lead and showed what he called “very good degradation” that he meant stayed out until lap 21 before pitting to get rid of the fragile softs. Ferrari’s defeats at Imola and in Miami were put down to its top speed deficit to Red Bull, but worse tyre degradation on the softer tyre compounds also left Charles Leclerc horribly exposed against Max Verstappen’s key straight-line advantage.

Reigning world champion Max Verstappen has moved into the lead of the 2022 title fight following the Spanish Grand Prix.

13) Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri +1 lap Verstappen made another stop on lap 44, giving the lead back to Perez. However, after he rejoined the race in second place, Verstappen was given way to move into the lead by Perez, with the drivers continuing to their one-two finish. Despite slowing, Hamilton was able to hold on to fifth place ahead of Bottas. Perez with the aid of DRS passed Russell to take the lead on lap 31, with Verstappen passing Bottas to take third about the same time. After Leclerc retired on lap 27, Verstappen made a pit stop and resumed in fourth place behind Bottas, with both Perez and Russell further ahead. Further back was Perez and then Alfa Romeo's Valtteri Bottas.