Spanish GP Puts on a Show
Round 10 of F1 2024 in Barcelona: What Happened?
An ironic and not serious at all summary of the race.
The Catalan circuit has never thrilled me, I have to be honest. I like it but I don’t put it among my favorites. It doesn’t impress me, even though it’s a nice track.
However, it is a circuit that has always spoken more to professionals.
Until it was decided that Bahrain would be the test track, Barcelona played that role for years and years. It is ideal for understanding the cars, due to its straights, slow and fast, uphill and downhill curves.
So we arrived at round 10 with one certainty, after two anomalous races (Monaco, for obvious reasons, and Montreal due to the intermittent rain): Red Bull is a king primus inter pares, led by a monster like Max Verstappen.
The Dutchman has shouldered the weight of an entire team while they no longer dominate as before. Now it’s up to him to find the spark and the magic to win with a two-second lead over the second-best driver currently on the track: Lando Norris.
What to say? Finally, an open championship! If this remains the case, every race will be heart-pounding and we will need an electrocardiogram and a blood pressure monitor next to us.
Ferrari has taken a notable step back, currently falling to virtual fourth place in terms of performance level. At the same time, it is overtaken by Mercedes which seems to have found serenity.
Let’s see what happened. Watching Lando get to pole position was exciting as it was only his second in his career after Russia ’21 and it ignited our curiosity: would he have closed every space in front of the Dutchman?
Guess what, when two people fight, the third one wins: George Russell. He takes advantage of a trail receiving an incredible boost. The Brit rushes forward and passes both, taking the race leadership. Wow!
However, Norris is unable to contain Max and drops to third place. Verstappen wastes no time and on the third lap, he already climbs into P1. Behind them is Hamilton who tries to stay close to the podium trio.
And then there are the Ferraris that are struggling and giving us an episode to discuss and argue about: at the first corner, Sainz overtakes Leclerc on the outside, closing in on the Monegasque. The two cars touch.
In my opinion, it’s Carlos’ fault and Charles had every reason to complain for once. Only this time fans online accused him of being a crybaby. There is always a lot of volatility online and we are always good at jumping on the bandwagon when things are going well for us, that’s the reality.
What is certain is that the contact between the two was an unnecessary mistake given the Scuderia’s recent disappointing performances. Serenity is lost and it is easy to fall into nervousness. Let’s close the Ferrari chapter here for now.
Let’s get back to the race. Everything is proceeding normally and the time window for making the first tyre change is approaching. On lap 16, Russell and Sainz pit to get the Mediums but the Spaniard gets the better of the British driver given a too-long pit stop by the Mercedes.
Hamilton does the same thing the next lap. The riddle of strategies begins: McLaren wants to pit and protect themselves from George’s undercut but Lando wants to chase Max.
So, Max immediately pits to protect himself from the others with a wonderful stop of 1.9 seconds. “Well, if they drink Red Bull, it’s easy to be so fast…” (stupid jokes that haven’t been funny for 15 years).
Hamilton, on the other hand, doesn’t want to waste time and aggressively overtakes the guy from whom he stole the place for next year. The two touch and Sainz complains, but it seems like a more regular overtaking than his on Leclerc, in my opinion.
Lando is called to pit only on lap 23 but he doesn’t have the advantage to stay ahead of Max. Maybe they waited too long or the soft tyre had degraded too much.
The fact is the only one in the group who hadn’t pitted yet is Leclerc, who gets called the following lap to put on Mediums. Charles wonders the reason for this and I wonder too why no one had wanted to try the Hards.
The answer comes shortly after: Lando sets the best times on the Mediums and chases Max. The Mercedes are also doing very well with this compound.
The only ones having difficulty are Perez and Piastri who remain stuck in the lower area of the points zone. What an anonymous performance by Piastri. No comment for Perez, come on…
Norris reaches the Mercedes and first eats Lewis on lap 32. Then on lap 35 we witness the best moment of the whole race: the fight between him and Russell for P2. I don’t want to exaggerate, but I think it’s the best duel of the season so far (if not the only one).
Lando attacks George in turn 1, gets alongside him and they go on wheel to wheel until turn 3. He gets in front of George who, however, doesn’t agree and stays on his heels. Here he invents a difficult overtaking on the outside in turn 5 and gets back in front.
But Lando doesn’t give up, he gets back wheel to wheel and almost goes into the grass. Maybe George lifts his foot and Lando finally passes him in turn 7. Enjoy this show and watch it again as many times as you want:
This fight causes George’s medium tyres to lose pace and, above all, grip, and indeed he is called to pit. He switches to hard tyres to reach the end. Ferrari does the same thing with Sainz.
Lando reduces his gap with Max to 7 seconds but the Dutchman has the advantage of having an additional set of new Softs for the final stint. When the gap reaches 4.5 seconds, Red Bull calls Max, and voilà, here are the Softs.
Sainz struggles with the Hards and is passed by Hamilton. At that point the teams diversify their strategies: Leclerc and Norris copy Max and Lewis, pitting on lap 48 and switching to the Softs. Let’s remember that Sainz and Russell race with Hards but they don’t shine particularly.
The Papaya is good at having pitted Norris precisely at the right time to stay ahead of George. Lando pushes in this last phase, doesn’t worry in the least about having used soft tyres, and also sets the fastest lap.
Max is urged by his team to defend himself from Lando. The Dutchman reacts by trying to maintain a safe gap. On lap 55 the two are separated by 5.5 seconds and less than 10 laps to go.
We reach the finish line without major shocks. Lando fails to catch Max and his gap stops at just 2.2 seconds, which, let’s repeat, is impressive given what we were used to.
An interesting moment is Leclerc’s “comeback” as he overtakes Sainz and regains his starting position. He also tries to annoy Russell and as a matter of fact, the final gap is only 3 tenths. Phew!
Hamilton manages to jump on the podium after Mexico ’23 and seeing Max and Lando celebrate the moment by spraying him with sparkling wine was a nice picture.
Now McLaren can seriously worry Red Bull, but they still lack that “something” to win: some wrong strategy, such as having waited too long in the first stint, probably. Or simply a bad start on Lando’s part.
I’m sure we’ll see some good ones. Let’s enjoy this early summer European relay that continues in Austria and the UK. I’m sure we’ll have fun!
