Brendan Lines 17th Aug, 2020 09:30am

Lewis Hamilton took a flawless victory leading the Spanish Grand Prix from start to finish from pole, scoring his fourth win of the 2020 season, ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Mercedes teammate Valterri Bottas.

Hamilton was in a world and class of his own, the Brit dominated off the line racing unchallenged into Turn 1, lapping the field up to P4 finishing +24.0s ahead of Verstappen.

“This feels absolutely incredible. I was just in a daze out there, I didn’t even know it was the last lap in the end, that’s how in the zone I was,” Hamilton said.

“I can’t remember the last time I felt like that. It was really special and a real surprise after our recent tyre problems,

“We brought all of our learnings from the previous weekend into this one and that enabled us to do well today,

“A fantastic effort from everyone in the team, I’m so grateful for all their hard work and for continuing to push, so a huge thank you to everyone at the factories,

“I got the perfect start and then it was all about tyre management. It was so hot out there and very demanding, but I was just focused on protecting the tyres and bringing the car home. What an incredible result.

Verstappen, starting from P3 split the Mercedes cars, placing his Red Bull in the slipstream of the Mercedes, Verstappen passed and blocked Bottas, dropping the Fin back to P4 and into the clutches of the Racing Point cars.

Racing Point’s Lance Stroll seized P3 in the Turn 1 jostling, Bottas eventually recovered to P3. Stroll dropped to P5 as the race unfolded, but was promoted back into P4 after the race, when teammate Sergio Perez was handed a five-second time penalty for disobeying blue flags.

Perez was demoted to P5 still finishing ahead of McLaren’s Carlos Sainz in P6, who muscled his way through the tight mid-field order on the Soft tyre in the early phases of the race.

Sainz passed the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel in P7 in the closing stages, Vettel held on to P7 seemingly running his own one-stop strategy amid much confusion over Ferrari’s team radio from the pitwall.

Vettel finished a second ahead of Red Bull’s Alex Albon who finished P8, Albon’s day was marred when his team opted to put him out on the Hard tyre in traffic — Albon seemed to play ‘Guinea Pig’ for Verstappen’s later move to the Medium tyre.

Alpha Tauri’s Pierre Gasly had a ‘day out’ passing Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari and McLaren’s Lando Norris on the opening lap, a middle stint stuck in mid-field traffic held up the Frenchman’s charge settling for P9 ahead of Norris who rounded out the top ten.

Dan Ricciardo’s ‘delicious’ pace in free practice was soured by disappointing race pace from Renault, the Aussie made up places starting from P13, but finished outside the points in P11, teammate Esteban Ocon finished P13.

Daniil Kyvat held station for Alpha Tauri starting and finishing P12, but the Russian fought hard passing Ricciardo on lap 2 on the outside of Turn 4, and eked out his first stint on the Soft tyre to lap 33 hoping to over-cut the midfield.

Charles Leclerc was the only DNF for the race, his Ferrari engine shutdown at the chicane locking up the rear tyres sending his SF1000 into a spin, he managed to restart the car but later pitted to retire the car.

With Leclerc out, Haas’ Romain Grosjean was classified last in P19, another late defensive move, this time on Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Räikkönen, might leave Grosjean some explaining to do in the next Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA) meeting for the Haas driver/GPDA chairperson.

Grosjean added an incident with Alfa’s Antonio Giovinazzi at Turn 1, together with a half-spin at Turn 8 on the penultimate lap to really make it a forgettable Spanish Grand Prix for himself.

Räikkönen finished P14, ahead of Haas’ Kevin Magnussen, the sister Alfa of Antonio Giovinazzi placed P16, with the two Williams of George Russell and Nicholas Latifi in P17 and P18.

This time around Mercedes handled its tyres hot conditions to great effect as Hamilton thwarted any chance Verstappen might repeat his superiority from Silverstone, the win now places Hamilton 37 points clear of Verstappen in the Drivers Championship standings.

Formula 1 now moves to Spa- Francochamps, Belgium for the next round in two weeks time.