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Spanish Grand Prix ... Lewis Hamilton 1st Verstappen 2nd Bottas 3rd


 

Montemelo, 16 August, 2020

Weather: sunny, 30.1-29.8°C air, 50.1-46.5°C track

·         Lewis scored the 88th victory of his Formula One career, his fourth of the 2020 season and fifth at the Spanish GP

·         Valtteri recovered from a difficult start to finish P3, scoring his 50th F1 podium

·         On lap 23 of the race, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team reached 25,000 laps raced in F1

·         Today’s result marks Lewis’ 156th podium in F1, setting a new record for the most in F1 history

·         Lewis (132 points) leads the Drivers’ Championship by 37 points from Max Verstappen (95 points), with Valtteri in P3 (89 points)

·         The Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team (221 points) leads Red Bull Racing (135 points) by 86 points in the Constructors’ Championship

·         Mike Sansoni, Senior Performance Engineer, accepted the Constructors’ trophy on behalf of the team


 

The 50th Spanish Formula 1 Grand Prix was particularly difficult for Scuderia Ferrari, because apart from a performance level that did not live up to expectations, it also had a reliability problem, which forced Charles Leclerc to retire. The only positive came from Sebastian Vettel who turned things around after a poor qualifying and managed to go from eleventh on the grid to seventh at the flag, running a two stop strategy that saw him do a 36 lap stint on the Soft tyres.

Early stages
As the cars lined up on the grid, track temperature was 55 degrees. When the lights went out, Charles lost a place to Pierre Gasly, but managed to pass Lando Norris thus maintaining ninth place from where he had started. Sebastian did the same, eleventh as they crossed the line for the first time. Both Scuderia drivers did a longer stint than the others, so that by lap 28, they were fifth and sixth. At the pit stops, with both drivers coming in on the next lap, Charles took on Mediums and dropped to 12th, while Seb went from Medium to Soft and was 14th. The aim, at least for the Monegasque was to go to the flag without a further stop.

Blackout
For a long time, the two SF1000s were in a queue of cars from fourth to thirteenth places, until on lap 37, at turn 13, Charles spun following an electrical problem. He managed to restart the car, but by then he had undone his seatbelts and had to pit to have them retightened. At this point, his race was more or less over, so the team decided to retire him.

Proof of character
After lap 40, the second pit stops started for those drivers who had made the earliest stops and that allowed Sebastian to move up to fifth. With a risk of rain, the team extended his stint to lap 50 as his tyres were still in good condition and the decision was taken to try and go to the flag. At this stage of the race, Sebastian excelled himself, running at a strong pace while looking after the tyres. However, he could do nothing against Lance Stroll and Carlos Sainz, both on fresh rubber, but he did manage to fend off Alex Albon in the Red Bull to cross the line in seventh place, with Soft tyres that had done 36 laps. Sebastian became only the second driver ever to score more than 3000 points and today’s result was a good morale booster after the two difficult races at Silverstone.

Next round
This race concluded the season’s second triple-header. The frenetic programme now takes a brief one week break, with the engines firing up again at the end of the month at Spa-Francorchamps, for the Belgian Grand Prix on 30 August.

Lewis Hamilton #44
F1 W11 EQ Performance /04
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. 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.

Valtteri Bottas #77
F1 W11 EQ Performance /03
Of course, this is very disappointing, I’m not here to finish third. The start was really the key point for my race – it just wasn’t good enough, so I lost a few positions. We’ll have to look into what happened, but ultimately the guys behind me got a good tow and were able to overtake me. On a track like this, where overtaking in the race is so difficult and track position is everything, your race becomes very tricky if you lose places. So, I think with a different start the end result would have been very different. In the first stint, I had to push hard to make up ground which worked fairly well. In stint two, I was pretty much right behind Max all the time, but it is so difficult to overtake here, and you need a really big time difference. We had a free pit stop at the end, so I could pit for fresh tyres and got the fastest lap. Overall, it wasn’t the race I had hoped for, but sometimes that’s just the way it goes. We’ll analyse everything from the race and move onto the next one.

Toto Wolff
I’m very happy for the team. To have understood the difficulties from Silverstone, recover from them and come back with a great set-up and fantastic tyre management – that just shows the strengths of this team. A massive well done to all the people at the factories and here at the track for their hard work. Everyone pulled together and overcame what we have seen as our biggest weakness. Lewis was in a league of his own today; he controlled the race very well and did a brilliant job. He managed the tyres extremely well and ultimately his call to go to Mediums for the last stint was the right one. Valtteri unfortunately suffered a tricky start and lost a few places which is a shame, because he had the pace to finish second. The Soft tyre wasn’t the best compound to attack Verstappen in the end, so we need to understand why that was the case. But overall, first and third and the extra point for the fastest lap makes for a great recovery after Silverstone and an almost perfect result.

Andrew Shovlin
There’s been a lot of work going on in Brackley over the last week to understand what went wrong in Silverstone, so it’s really satisfying to win here in hot conditions. It’s been a challenging weekend given the temperatures. We did good work on Friday and had a clear understanding of how hard life was going to be for the tyres with the track at nearly 50°C, but we didn’t know how we’d be on relative pace. That certainly turned out towards the better end of our expectations; Lewis managed for the first ten laps, but when he started to pick up the pace we had a bit of an edge in terms of pace and degradation. He drove a perfect race and managed the tyres brilliantly. Valtteri’s day wasn’t so straightforward. He lost places off the line and got squeezed into Turn 1 so had to work through a couple of cars early to get back into the fight at the front, all without taking too much out of the tyres. He was able to follow Max closely and we may conclude that there was a small window where we could have gone for an undercut in that middle stint, but Red Bull covered the situation well. A reminder that they race well and never give us anything for free. Valtteri had the chance for to go for fastest lap at the end on fresh Medium tyres and it was some consolation to see him break the lap record and get the extra Championship point. We’re looking forward to a few days back in the UK to prepare for the next triple-header. There are some amazing tracks coming up with Spa, Monza and Mugello and they all present their own unique challenges, so we’ll be using this time to understand how to get the best out of the W11 in each of those races.

Sebastian Vettel #5
“Today we tried something different and it paid off. I was struggling in the first stint, even on medium tyres, while in the second one I felt a lot better, despite having the soft tyre for many laps.
There was some rain forecast at some stage so we extended our stint on softs. In the end we were in a position in which we had nothing to lose, so we took the risk and decided to try and make it to the end. Luckily it worked and this result reflects the maximum we could do today with the car.
There is still lots of work to do, but at the moment this is our true pace, that’s why sometimes we have to take some risks in order to have more or different options to finish ahead of our competitors.”

Charles Leclerc #16
“It’s a shame that we couldn’t finish the race today. I think we had a good chance to finish around P6 or even higher. We were very competitive on the softs and were also quick on the mediums, which we couldn’t fully show because of traffic. The plan was for me to do a one-stop and it was going quite well.
Unfortunately, we had an issue around midrace. Suddenly my screen and engine switched off and the rear wheels locked. We are not yet sure what happened and are investigating the cause. The car eventually started up again, but it was already too late to continue because I had undone my seatbelts and had to return to the pits. Although this year is a little bit tougher than last, we are all motivated to bring home the best results possible for the team and we will keep working hard to achieve this.”

Mattia Binotto Team Principal
“A very disappointing weekend, not just because of the result, but also because of the way we managed it. In qualifying yesterday, we didn’t make the most of the potential at our disposal and we know how important grid position is on this track where overtaking is so difficult.
Despite that, in the race we had a genuine chance of fighting for fourth place with Charles, but a reliability problem put him out of the running. A malfunction in an electronic control unit resulted in his car shutting down, causing him to spin, effectively ending his race.
Sebastian moved up the order well, showing great tenacity and driving very cleanly: doing a 36 lap stint on used Soft tyres is quite something. The same observation goes for him as well as for Charles: starting further up the grid he could have aspired to do better than seventh.
We have dropped out of third spot in the Constructors’ classification, even if by just a few points. We must always get all the potential out of our car if we want to achieve this goal and we must continue to work hard to close the gap to those who today were out of reach for us, namely the only three cars that completed all the laps of this Grand Prix.”

Frédéric Vasseur, Team Principal Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN and CEO Sauber Motorsport AG
“It’s disappointing not to bring home any points after a race weekend where we looked more convincing than in previous weeks. Both drivers executed a good race, attacking where needed and pulling off some very good overtaking moves, but in the end that was not enough for a place in the top ten. It is important, though, to keep moving in the right direction: we have seen an improvement both yesterday in qualifying and in today’s race, so we need to build on this for the next triple-header.”
 
Kimi Räikkönen #7
Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN C39 (Chassis 05/Ferrari)
“The car had a really good pace in the final stint, on the soft tyres, and I wish we had another set to use as they worked really well. Unfortunately we didn’t, so the end result is a bit disappointing as I felt we could have had a bit more. All in all, I think we were a bit better this weekend: we have to keep trying new things to maximise our car’s performance and find more speed. We need to keep improving in this direction.”
 
Antonio Giovinazzi #99
Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN C39 (Chassis 04/Ferrari)
“We have some positives to look at today. In the end it was a difficult race but, starting from the back, I think we achieved all we could from this Sunday. We finished ahead of our direct rivals in the championship and we showed good pace, especially in the final stint on softs. Of course, we still need to do a lot of work but we can get some encouragement from today.”

 

1

44

Lewis Hamilton

Mercedes-AMG

1:31:45.279

66

2

33

Max Verstappen

Red Bull

+ 24.177

66

3

77

Valtteri Bottas

Mercedes-AMG

+ 44.752

66

4

18

Lance Stroll

Racing Point

+ 1 Lap

65

5

11

Sergio Pérez *

Racing Point

+ 1 Lap

65

6

55

Carlos Sainz jr.

McLaren

+ 1 Lap

65

7

5

Sebastian Vettel

Ferrari

+ 1 Lap

65

8

23

Alexander Albon

Red Bull

+ 1 Lap

65

9

10

Pierre Gasly

AlphaTauri

+ 1 Lap

65

10

4

Lando Norris

McLaren

+ 1 Lap

65

11

3

Daniel Ricciardo

Renault

+ 1 Lap

65

12

26

Daniil Kvyat *

AlphaTauri

+ 1 Lap

65

13

31

Esteban Ocon

Renault

+ 1 Lap

65

14

7

Kimi Räikkönen

Alfa Romeo

+ 1 Lap

65

15

20

Kevin Magnussen

Haas F1 Team

+ 1 Lap

65

16

99

Antonio Giovinazzi

Alfa Romeo

+ 1 Lap

65

17

63

George Russell

Williams

+ 1 Lap

65

18

6

Nicholas Latifi

Williams

+ 2 Laps

64

19

8

Romain Grosjean

Haas F1 Team

+ 2 Laps

64

NC

16

Charles Leclerc

Ferrari

Electric

38