Piastri wins Spanish GP despite late safety car

Qatar Tribune

5 days ago

DPA
Barcelona
Championship leader Oscar Piastri of McLaren claimed his fifth Formula One win of the season at the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday, as not even a late safety car disturbed his win.
'It has been a great year and this weekend has been exactly the kind of weekend I've been looking for. It is a lot of fun winning races at the moment,' Piastri said.
Team-mate Lando Norris, who won the Monaco Grand Prix last weekend, was second ahead of the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.
Norris had closed the gap in the standings to Piastri to three points, but will leave Spain 10 points behind the Australian.
'Oscar drove a very good race today, didn't quite have the pace to match him but we gave it our best shot,' Norris said.
Piastri had a great start to retain his lead, but also gave Red Bull's Max Verstappen a little tow, which helped the four-time defending champion to make a move on Norris for second place.
The race was focused on the tyre strategy and McLaren did a great job to keep Piastri away from any trouble, while Norris recovered second place and Verstappen dropped to third.
It looked like this was going to be the final top three, but the safety car was deployed on lap 55 after Kimi Antonelli parked up his Mercedes in the gravel with what looked like a mechanical issue.
The leading trio took the chance to pit, with Verstappen taking a set of hard tyres.
While Piastri and Norris on softs had no problem at the restart, Verstappen locked up and Leclerc made his way through to complete the podium.
'I mean when my engineers told me that Max was going on a new hard for the last stint, I was very optimistic as I knew how bad the hard was so that was when I knew I had to have a good restart!' Leclerc said.
Nightmare race for Verstappen After being overtaken by Leclerc, Verstappen was also under pressure from Russell heading into the opening chicane and the Dutchman had to use the escape road as space quickly closed.
Red Bull told Verstappen to let Russell through, but as he was preparing to let the Mercedes by, the two collided.
Russell took fourth regardless, but Vertappen was handed a 10-second time penalty for causing a collision and dropped from fifth to 10th.
That meant Kick Sauber's Nico Hülkenberg was eventually fifth, his best finish since 2019, when he crossed the line in the same position.
The German was praised by race winner Piastri, who said: 'I saw Hülkenberg finished fifth, which is pretty impressive so well done to him!' Hülkenberg did a move on seven-time Lewis Hamilton in the final laps, as the Ferrari man had to settle for sixth, followed by Isack Hadjar of Racing Bulls and Pierre Gasly of Alpine.
Home favourite Fernando Alonso of Aston Martin was ninth and Verstappen completed the top 10.
F1 returns on June 15 at the Canadian Grand Prix.