Luke’s Weekend Review – Spanish GP 2023

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Spanish Grand Prix Recap: Verstappen Dominates, Pitlane Starts, and Surprising Results

Spain 6

And with that Round 8 has come and go. We have seen Pitlane starts, Penalties, contact at the start and a no retirement race. Overall, the race win went as expected with a Max Verstappen Domination, but the rest of the race have been fairly entertaining.

After yesterday as expected Charles Leclerc started in the pitlane alongside Logan Sargeant as both take on new components after qualifying out in Q3 yesterday. Ferrari have changed the whole rear end of Leclerc’s car changing almost everything and although Leclerc wasn’t complaining about the car, he still only managed to get P11 overall from 18th place. Even though this was an improvement it wasn’t enough for Ferrari’s pace. Carlos Sainz didn’t have the best race himself for Ferrari as even though he had a good start and nearly took Max Verstappen by turn 1 on the start he ended up finishing 5th from 2nd place on the grid which still shows that Ferrari still got some work top do on their SF23.

Pierre Gasly ended up picking 2 x 3 place grid penalties and after an amazing qualifying in 4th he ended up starting in 10th. This really put Gasly starting on his back foot and couldn’t really progress from there as he got into battles with some of the back runners and couldn’t really make any progress. Towards the middle of the race Gasly had a battle with Oscar Piastri and didn’t manage to get past him for a few laps and then on lap 49 managed to get past him after a 10-lap battle. Gasly ended up finishing right where he started in P10 bringing home a point for Alpine. Esteban Ocon on the other hand managed to bad 4 points for Alpine after a respectable performance from him even though on lap 52 he had a questionable defence against his old team mate Fernando Alonso where on the main straight he moved very late to the right to cover Alonso, this was all in vein as Alonso still made it through.

Aston Martin didn’t have the race we all expected them to have after the free practices I was expecting Alonso to qualify higher than he did. The race was also not the best for the Aston Martin pair, but they still managed to get a 6th and 7th spot. Towards the end of the race when Alonso picked up the pace and caught up to Lance Stroll, we hear Alonso come on the radio to his engineer telling him to advise Stroll not to worry as he will not overtake him and take any risks which is fairly surprising to hear from Alonso how helpful he is to Stroll.

My heart went out to Lando Norris as just before the formation lap the McLaren mechanics were working extremely hard on his rear suspension making sure to get the car ready for Lando and ensure he has a good race starting from 3rd place. Unfortunately for Lando in Turn 2 after the start he collided with Lewis Hamilton giving him front wing damage and forcing him to pit. This basically ended Lando’s race as he only managed to finish 17th place due to the damage.

Intense Midfield Battles and Mercedes' Podium Triumph: Spanish GP Recap

The midfield was full of great battles today as we saw a few teams fighting each other, where there was Alpha Tauri battling with Haas and Alpine fighting with Mclaren at points which kept the race interesting for most. In the heat of the moment Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou Guanyu were battling hard and into Turn 1 Tsunoda pushed Zhou off track which on lap 62 the stewards decided that the move warranted him a 5 second penalty. This penalty put Tsunoda out of the points after a stressful drive throughout the race.

All eyes however were on Mercedes as they had an astonishing race and bagging a double podium which put a big smile on both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell which are both hopeful with what the new upgrades have brought to the W14. Hamilton in the post-race interview said that Red Bull still seem to be out of reach for now but maybe by the end of the season or next year they might be there. My favourite part of the race was however around lap 28 when George Russell reported to his engineer that there were some rain at Turn 5 which made me very interested in that moment as I thought chaos was coming for it to only be his own sweat on the visor as he realised a few laps later. I don’t blame Russell to have been so sweaty as he managed to get on the podium when he started in P12 at the start. This result has put Mercedes 2nd in the Constructors Championship over Aston Martin.

Down at Red bull it was business as usual with Max Verstappen driving impressively all weekend long as he managed to be the quickest in FP1, FP2, FP3, Qualifying and then managed to lead all of the laps during the race and also get the fastest lap giving him his 3rd grand slam of his career. This though wasn’t without any scares as even though he always had well over a 10 second lead from the driver in 2nd place he managed to get 3 warnings for track limits and was even shown the Black and White Flag. This however didn’t stop him from going for the fastest lap on lap 63 and after he managed to get it, his engineer begged him to just bring the car home within the white lines. Sergio Perez on the other hand had a pretty good race himself finishing 4th from 11th but I feel like he should have at least finished ahead of Russell with the pace of the Red Bull which makes Russell’s podium that much more special.

Top 10 was formed by Verstappen, Hamilton, Russell, Perez, Sainz, Stroll, Alonso, Ocon, Guanyu and Gasly.

Who do you think was the biggest winners and the biggest losers of the Spanish GP? We now head into a week break before we return back to the track at the Canadian GP.

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