Verstappen denies Norris comeback charge to win Spanish GP

Max Verstappen overcame the comeback challenge of a fast Lando Norris to pull off an impressive Spanish GP win and stretch his F1 world championship lead.

Left to regret a poor start which dropped him from pole position to third place coming out of the race’s first corner – in significant opening exchanges which saw Mercedes’ George Russell surge into the lead from fourth – Norris attempted to get back ahead through strategy as McLaren delayed the timing of both of his pit stops compared with Verstappen and Red Bull.

But, despite relentlessly catching Verstappen in the closing stages of the race, Norris ultimately ran out of laps and finished 2.2s behind at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya as the Red Bull driver hung on for his seventh win of an increasingly competitive season.

Lewis Hamilton finally ended his wait for a first podium in 2024 with a fine drive of his own to third.

Although he dropped behind his fast-starting team-mate at the start, Hamilton overtook Russell after the second stops with an eye-catching around-the-outside move on the sister Mercedes into Turn One.

Russell, who struggled on his second set of tyres when he went on to the hard compound while others, including Hamilton, took to the softs, in the end just finished ahead of fifth-placed Charles Leclerc.

But fifth for Leclerc and sixth for Spain’s Carlos Sainz, more than 20 seconds behind the front two, represented a disappointing result for Ferrari two weeks on from their point-less outing in Canada.

Carlos Sainz, who overtook Leclerc early on but was repassed later on, was sixth at his home race. Oscar Piastri was seventh in the second McLaren at the end of a disappointing weekend for the young Australian, with Sergio Perez only able to recover to eighth from 11th on the grid in the other Red Bull.

Alpine’s unexpectedly strong weekend ended with a much-needed double-points finish for the under-pressure Enstone team, with Pierre Gasly ninth and Esteban Ocon 10th.

How Norris lost the win within seconds of the start

It’s often remarked in F1 that a race can only be lost – and not won – at the start and that is effectively how it transpired for Norris.

Having produced a lap which he described as the best of his career to secure just the second pole position of his career in qualifying, the Englishman’s hard-won starting advantage was wiped out within seconds of the start lights going out.

Focusing on Verstappen on his inside, the McLaren squeezed the Red Bull towards the grass, but that only allowed a fast-starting and opportunistic Russell from fourth to get the slipstream on both of them and position his Mercedes on the outside heading towards Turn One.

Sweeping past the front-row starters in the braking zone, Russell seized the lead while Norris also dropped behind Verstappen.

Two laps later and, in what in itself proved a crucial moment of the race, Verstappen made quick work of seizing the lead for himself as he overtook Russell into the first turn at the start of lap three.

While Verstappen went to build an early gap, Norris was bottled up behind Russell and lost four seconds to his Red Bull rival before the race leader made his first stop.

That then made McLaren’s mind up to try and run longer than Red Bull – by six laps – at the first stops to try and make the ground back up later into the race.

More to follow…

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