Luis Hamilton won a sure victory in Catalonia and climbed the podium for the 156th time in his career, ahead of Michael Schumacher. No other rider has been able to enter the Top 3 so often during their career.
The record of Schumacher’s victories could soon fall. The German achieved 91 career successes, while Hamilton had his 88th career victory, and he has won on the Barcelona track for four years in a row, and this year and last year Hamilton was in the lead for the entire distance from start to finish.
Hamilton laid a great foundation already on Saturday, winning the 200th pole position for the Mercedes engine manufacturer (117 times for the factory team, 76 times with McLaren, 5 times with Brawn GP and once with Williams and Force India). . Hamilton himself started from the first row for the 150th time in his career.
In second place, Max Verstapen crossed the finish line. His first pit stop was only 1.90 seconds long. So fast this season, no rider’s tires have been changed yet. Significantly, the second fastest pit stop was made by the Red Bull team, serving the formula of Verstapen teammate Alex Albon.
Kimi Raikonen has not yet scored this season, but on Sunday he broke Fernando Alonso’s record for the most kilometers in Formula One. In his long career, which began in 2001, Kimi has covered 84,013 kilometers in racing mode, which is more than 185 times to travel from Riga to Daugavpils and back.
The drivers of the Racing Point team finished in fourth and fifth place at this stage, so the team called ‘pink Mercedes’ rose to the third place in the designers’ cup. If it had not been deprived of the points won by the Styrian GP, the handicap over McLaren in 4th place would have been much greater, but the distribution of seats would not have changed.
Meanwhile, the Ferrari team has dropped to fifth place (Racing Point 63 points, McLaren 62, Ferrari 61). If the distribution of positions remains the same until the end of the season, this will be the first time since 1981 that Ferrari ends the season below fourth place.
Although Mercedes looks better than its competitors this year, they have managed to win only one double victory in the first six stages. It happened in the Styrian GP. Austrian GP Hamilton was left without a pedestal penalty after a collision with Albon, in Hungary Verstapen beat Botas, British GP “Mercedes” tires exploded in the last laps, in the 70th anniversary race Verstapen won, but in Spain Botass could not regain the second place. Last year, Mercedes started the season with five double victories.
Charles Clecker continues to fail catastrophically in the sixth race of the season. For the third year in a row (the fourth, if also Formula 2), he does not reach the finish line in the sixth start of the season.
The fastest laps of the Spanish Grand Prix
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