Hamilton turns up the heat with dominant win in Barcelona

Lewis Hamilton took a dominant lights to flag victory in sweltering conditions at Spanish Grand Prix, eventually crossing the line 25 seconds clear of Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen. Hamilton’s Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas was third ahead of the Racing Points of Lance Stroll and Sergio Pérez.

In an ambien temperatures of aeround 30˚C and on a track nudging above 50˚C, Verstappen made a good getaway at the start and he was able to outpace the slower-starting Bottas on the long run to Turn 1 and steal P2 behind Hamilton.

Stroll also made a good getaway from fifth place on the grid to pass team-mate Pérez and Bottas. Behind them Alex Albon in the second Red Bull also made a solid start and he might have claimed fourth but in Turn 1 he was boxed in by the battle between Bottas and Stroll and was forced to hold his starting position.

Hamilton began to eke out a small gap to Verstappen, but the Red Bull driver clung to the race leader and after 10 laps he was just 1.6s behind the champion. Behind them, Bottas made his way past Stroll on lap five to close to retake third place.

Verstappen made his first stop of the race on lap 22. The Dutchman switched to medium tyres in just 1.9s, and when Hamilton made a slow change of 4.3s the Red Bull driver found himself back in second place, four seconds behind the Briton. Bottas was still in third, two seconds adrift of Verstappen. Fourth place was occupied by Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo, though the Australian had yet to make his first pit stop.

Verstappen made his second stop for a set of mediums, on lap 41 and after a two-second stop he was released back into third place, 18.2s behind Bottas.

Bottas pitted eight laps later but though he was on fresher soft tyres he failed to make serious inroads on the gap to the Red Bull driver.

Hamilton followed his team-mate to the pit lane on lap 51 but after insisting to his team that he did not want softs, he was given a set of mediums before rejoining 9.6s ahead of Verstappen.

From there the result was set. Hamilton again began to build a lead and with little chance of an assault on the lead and with Bottas well behind, Verstappen managed his pace to the flag. The task was made more straightforward when Bottas made a late stop for medium tyres and a final-lap blast to the fastest lap of the race.

Behind the top three Lance Stroll took fourth place ahead of Racing Point team-mate Sergio Pérez, who dropped behind the Canadian due to the five-second penalty for ignoring blue flags.

Sixth place went to Carlos Sainz, while Sebastian Vettel made a one-stop strategy last to take seventh place, just one second ahead of Alex. Ninth place went to AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly and the final point on offer was taken by McLaren’s Lando Norris.