Max Verstappen secured his seventh win of the 2024 Formula 1 season at the Spanish Grand Prix, narrowly holding off a late-race challenge from McLaren’s Lando Norris.
Lando said the result could have been very different, however, had the start been better and Russell not got in his way.
Polesitter Norris had led the charge to Turn 1, with Verstappen closely trailing on the inside. However, Max got a slightly better start and used the grass to pull alongside Lando.
Russell, starting 4th, immediately passed Hamilton and used the double slipstream from Max and Lando to draw alongside both on the outside of the track as they apporached Turn 1. Seizing the moment, he pulled off a brilliant late-brake and dived in to the first corner, taking the lead. Verstappen settled into second, with Norris falling to third.
Hamilton held fourth, shadowed by the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, while Pierre Gasly (Alpine) and Oscar Piastri (McLaren) followed.
In a dramatic moment, Sainz overtook Leclerc at Turn 1 for fifth, using the run-off area after a minor wheel-to-wheel contact.
Verstappen leveraged his DRS to overtake Russell on lap three, steadily extending his lead to 4.5 seconds by the first round of pit stops, despite a minor error at Turn 8 on lap 12. Russell, the first of the top six to pit on lap 16, experienced a slow pit stop, allowing Norris to close the gap. Verstappen pitted on lap 18, reclaiming the lead after Leclerc’s brief stint at the front.
Hamilton executed a tight move on Sainz for sixth at Turn 1 on lap 19, immediately setting the fastest lap. Verstappen encountered a delay passing Piastri, who pitted from fourth shortly after.
Norris, running a long stint, pitted on lap 23, rejoining in sixth with fresh medium tires. He quickly set the fastest lap and overtook Sainz for fourth on lap 27.
Norris showcased McLaren’s pace by using DRS to pass Hamilton on lap 32 for third, while Piastri climbed to seventh by mid-race.
Norris and Russell then had a titanic battle for third that went on for most of a lap. Lando eventually made the pass stick at Turn 7. Russell pitted on lap 37 for hard tires.
Verstappen’s lead over Norris shrank from over nine seconds to 4.4 seconds during this stint. Hamilton was the next front-runner to pit, switching to soft tires. Verstappen mirrored this strategy on lap 45, returning Norris to the lead with 21 laps remaining. Norris pitted a few laps later, narrowly rejoining ahead of Russell in second, with an eight-second gap to Verstappen in the lead.
Norris pushed hard in his final stint, trimming the gap to Verstappen by two seconds within three laps, prompting Verstappen to increase his pace. The gap stabilized at five seconds in the closing laps. Despite a valiant final effort, Norris could not bridge the gap, and Verstappen secured victory by 2.2 seconds.
Hamilton overtook Russell for third on lap 52. Leclerc, on soft tires, passed Sainz, on hard tires, for fifth with 11 laps to go. Leclerc fell just short of catching Russell, finishing a mere 0.3 seconds behind.
Piastri finished seventh, ahead of a three-stopping Sergio Perez, who overtook Gasly in the final stages. Gasly recovered well from an early slow stop, while Esteban Ocon’s Alpine rounded out the points scorers.
P2, fastest lap & DOTD! 👏 @salesforce#SpanishGP 🇪🇸 pic.twitter.com/Vv0ii8nzJj
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) June 23, 2024
Had Lando only fallen behind Verstappen at the start, we’d probably have had a very different result. But it was the fact George Russell delayed Lando’s progress in catching Max that allowed Verstappen to build up a buffer and control the pace.
After the race, Lando said “It wasn’t like it was a bad start… Max just got there and I couldn’t cover him, and that was it. It wasn’t the best start but it wasn’t bad.”
He knows that he lost the race at the beginning. He said “It’s shame a couple of metres cost us, but they did.” Lando also acknowledged that following Russell for a few laps really hurt him as his tyres began to overheat in the Mercedes’ dirty air, it gave him a much harder job to pass him.
Lando was clearly frustrated, saying “Today we had the quickest car. Fact. The team deserved it and we were quickest on track today from start to finish. The dirty air (behind Russell) cost us the win today”.
