Hamilton wins the Spanish Grand Prix! - Summary and Results

Lewis Hamilton has made it two out of the last two as he put up an absolute clinic in Barcelona, extending his lead at the top of the championship table as Sebastian Vettel only managed to finish in P4.

The race started with Sebastian Vettel immediately charging forward as the lights went out, hunting down Valtteri Bottas and taking second place from him after the first few corners.

Then, it was a familiar sight as Romain Grosjean spun his Haas, but for some reason he hit the throttle instead of the brakes in a desperate effort to recover and turned his Haas back onto the track and into traffic, taking out Pierre Gasly and Nico Hulkenberg in the process. Another big mistake from Grosjean, who will receive a penalty no doubt. Silly, silly man.

Hamilton stamped his authority on the race early on, setting fastest lap after fastest lap and getting an eight-second gap with Vettel quickly.

Mercedes tried to overtake Vettel in the pit lane by leaving Bottas out longer than Vettel, but the German just about overtook Bottas again after the Finn stopped.

Disaster then struck for Kimi Raikkonen, who suddenly lost all pace as he had a problem with his turbo. Verstappen profited and took second from him, and even took first for a while when Lewis Hamilton came in for his pit stop. Verstappen stayed out longer than everyone else and did very well to keep up the pace on his older set of tyres.

When the Virtual Safety Car was out after Esteban Ocon retired with an engine problem, Sebastian Vettel suddenly came into the pit. He lost two places to Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen and was pushed back into fourth but didn’t have the pace to attack either of them after. The decision worked well in Melbourne, but massively back-fired here in Barcelona. Ferrari threw away a second-place finish there.

Max Verstappen profited and came into third, even though a piece of his front wing had broken off when overtaking a Williams after the restart. His first podium since his win in Mexico last year. That will work wonders for his confidence, as the Dutch youngster has been bashed over the last few weeks for his reckless driving. He was good from start to finish, and was calm and collected, something that we haven’t seen from him much this season. Perhaps it was because he was driving on the track where he won his first race in 2016.

Bottas and Hamilton finished where they started, completing the first one-two for Mercedes of the year. An absolutely clinical race from Hamilton, who was the quickest man on the grid from start to finish. His win in Baku was lucky, but there was absolutely nothing lucky about this one. Almost twenty seconds between him and Bottas, that says it all.

Looking down the table, Kevin Magnussen finished sixth, showing that Haas still are the fourth quickest team, even though they have Romain Grosjean who seems to try to sabotage Haas F1’s performances on a weekly basis. They’ll be happy with a P6-finish.

McLaren will have mixed feelings about the race, as Fernando Alonso did do very well to finish in eighth, but Stoffel Vandoorne retired from the race with engine problems. No Honda to blame it on this time, guys.

Charles Leclerc made it back-to-back points-finishes as he finished in P10, as he gained five places after a lightning start and found himself in ninth. He climbed to eighth but was overtaken by Alonso and Perez in the final half of the race. There’s no shame in that, he’s driving a Sauber, for goodness’ sake. World-class performance from the rookie!

All in all, an eventful race that had a bit of everything; six drivers retired, Grosjean crashed in stupid fashion, Hamilton put up a clinic, Alonso overtook someone on the outside, and so on. Hamilton extends his lead at the top of the championship as Vettel only finished P4 and is back in control of the title race after being written off.