On a weekend when he claimed his 100th pole position, Britain’s Sir Lewis Hamilton extended his lead at the top of the Formula 1 championship with victory in the Spanish Grand Prix.
In a familiar podium ceremony, Red Bull-Honda's Max Verstappen was second and Hamilton’s Mercedes-AMG team-mate Valtteri Bottas third.
Hamilton peerless
In a career that’s rapidly running out of suitable adjectives, Hamilton again delivered a stand-out race for Mercedes.
Title rival Verstappen, now 14 points behind after four rounds, managed to get the jump on him at the first corner, with an aggressive late brake diving up the inside. The move forced Hamilton to back off and assume second position and, on a track where so much of F1’s testing is done, it looked like a dull race might ensue.
How wrong we were. Verstappen led through the first round of stops, but then Mercedes pulled a tactical blinder and brought Hamilton in for a second set of tyres. With rubber that was a few laps fresher, and the Briton’s incredible race craft, Hamilton set about reeling in the Red Bull driver. The gap was 23sec with 18 laps remaining - a huge margin in F1 terms.
The fact that Hamilton passed Verstappen for the lead with six laps remaining demonstrates how the team and driver seem to be operating on a different plane at the moment. It was a masterclass in confidence - a radio message from Bono (Pete Bonnington, Hamilton’s race engineer) was calm and simple: “22 seconds, we’ve done it before.” Simple, no-fuss stuff.
Once Hamilton swept past under DRS into turn one, the race was over. Verstappen pitted for a fresh tyres and to get the fastest lap bonus point and second place, but it was scant reward for the Dutchman.
Monaco is next and is an outlier in terms of the formbook, but it would be a brave person to bet against Mercedes and Hamilton.
Data
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has expanded its data offering for F1 viewers this season, and it was interesting to see it ‘call’ various scenarios during the race. After Verstappen pitted early for his first stop, it said Mercedes needed to respond immediately.
The graphic showed the likelihood of where Hamilton would emerge if he came in for fresh tyres, and the odds slipped the longer that Mercedes left him out.
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I thought the most telling thing was Hamiltons comments after the race that the team had always prepared, as in saved another set of medium tyres, for a two-stop because he knew from experience that although a single stop was theoretically faster, it was extremely difficult to make it work.
One nil for Mercedes and Hamiltons experience. So what were Red Bull trying to do? Especially since they know their car is harder on tyres than the Mercedes. They never had a chance with their strategy, even with Verstappens kamikaze overtake.
Only other point, was Bottas trying to hold Hamilton back during his chase of Verstappen. Last time backing him up at the restart, now losing him time and possibly costing the win. The guy has stopped being a team player and is becoming a liability.
Forgot to add - most people well-placed to assess who has the faster car this year think it's the Red Bull. Perhaps one is better on some tracks, and the other is better on other tracks. Either way, it's very close.
That many people simply attribute Hamilton's success to "having the best car" conveniently ignores that most world champiionships are won in the best car. Senna was usually in the best car, often by a large margin. Not only did Schumacher often have the best car, he also benefitted from team orders. I'll always remember watching Schumacher's teammate being orderd to slow down/move over and let him pass. Rubens and Kimi both had to give up their positions, and sometimes the win, to allow Michael through. NOT always because Michael was faster. Mercedes doesn't have a team-order arrangement like that, to their credit. Multiple world championships are usually won in the best car. The best drivers usually end up in the best car because they're the best driver. Much of that is often because the best drivers can help the team develop the best car.
Mercedes is much better placed to know who the best driver is than anyone commenting here. If they thought that any other driver would be faster than Hamilton, they'd hire him.