IT’S OVER AND MAX VERSTAPPEN WINS!!!
On debut for Red Bull Racing. Youngest ever podium finisher. Youngest ever Formula One winner. What a fairytale! He’s set a bunch of records today – but most impressive is that at 18 years old, the youngster has managed tyre strategy, sector management and more to stave off a Kimi Raikkonen attack. He’s appreciated by both Ferrari drivers today, as he should be.
A whopper of a race from Max Verstappen – DANIEL RICCIARDO LOSES HIS TYRE! Double podium for Ferrari...
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Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo are in an intense fight for P3 and Ricciardo squeezes Vettel. The German loses his temper – and then uses it to take P3 right back! It’s now looking really good for the young Dutchman though, and his only real competition at the moment is Kimi Raikkonen.
11 laps to go and Max Verstappen has decided he’s quite enjoying top spot! And now it’s 10 laps and Kimi Raikkonen is really decreasing that gap quite quickly! The 2011 World Champion is 0.554s behind Verstappen and trying to close that gap!
And that’s the end of the race for Fernando Alonso...disappointing after his return in Sochi! He’s got “no power,” he says, and pulls over to the side of the track. Looks like McLaren’s reliability issues are back!
Meanwhile Ricciardo is catching Vettel up really quickly – closing up that gap! And elsewhere, another Ferrari is stealthily gaining speed on a Red Bull. That’ll be Kimi Raikkonen 8/100ths of a second behind Verstappen and chasing him quite quickly!
Ricciardo’s holding on to his lead for now and Verstappen is right up there! He's fighting for 2nd place – a podium on team debut – and now Daniel Ricciardo PITS – so for the third time in this race, Verstappen is again in the lead!
Sebastian Vettel enters for his final pit stop - and it’s an extremely quick one! He’s in fourth behind Ricciardo, Verstappen and his own teammate Raikkonen, with Ricciardo on softs and the other two on mediums. Only the Renaults have used hard tyres so far - Soft, Medium and Har three-stopper for Magnussen and Palmer!
Daniel Ricciardo pits and exits – looking like a three-stop strategy for Red Bull today and this gives Verstappen the lead again! Second time this race – and he’s really taking advantage of an excellent qualifying session. He leads Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari by a mammoth four seconds. Verstappen and Kimi are both on the medium tyres, while Ricciardo and Vettel are both on softs. Ricciardo and Vettel are going for a three-stop strategy clearly, but what are the race leaders’ plans?
Does the drama end? Vettel on his mediums is gaining time quickly and catching up the young Verstappen; meanwhile, that’s the end of the race for Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg with flames coming out of his exhaust. Yellow flags on track and there’s some great fighting going on in the midfield at the moment.
Sebastian Vettel leads the race ...and he pits, gets a set of mediums, and rejoins behind the Red Bulls of Ricciardo and Verstappen.
Mercedes AMG Petronas executive chairman Niki Lauda says he ‘blames Hamilton’, says he was “too aggressive.” Meanwhile, Toro Rosso, Renault and a lot of the lower midfield teams are making use of this opportunity to fight for their own positions.
RICCIARDO PITS and Max Verstappen leads! He's now become the first ever Dutch driver to lead a Formula One Grand Prix.
Cars are following the safety car now and 4 laps in we’re looking at the two Red Bulls – Ricciardo and Verstappen – in first and second! Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz takes an absolutely brilliant march to go third fastest behind his former teammate, with the Ferraris still in 4th and 5th. They’re racing again as the safety car goes off track!
GREEN LIGHT and DRAMA! BOTH Mercedes AMG Petronas cars collide and that’s the end of the race for BOTH! Safety car out.
Drivers out on formational laps and it's a fairly sunny track today. Can this be Hamilton’s comeback?
It's almost time for the race! With half an hour to go, Fernando Alonso does a quick walking tour of the track and fans are cheering loudly for their home champion. He’s won the race here twice in the past, and the Spaniard, a two-time world champion, is widely considered a game changer in the world of Formula One.
Despite a 2015 with a highly unreliable Honda power unit, which saw both Alonso and Button near the bottom of the drivers’ standings, Alonso has come back with some great racing this year. He finished in 6th in Sochi, maximising car and tyres to push ahead of several on-track skirmishes.
It’s looking like a three-stopper for most teams today given how quick drivers have been on the soft tyres, and how significantly they are ahead in terms of speed to the mediums and hards.
The fifth race of the season, the Spanish Grand Prix is due to begin at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, and it’s reigning double world champion Lewis Hamilton who is on pole for this race.
He is followed by teammate Nico Rosberg and Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo, with Ricciardo’s new teammate and standout 2015 star Max Verstappen with a fourth-place qualifying finish on debut for Red Bull Racing.
After four consecutive wins for teammate Nico Rosberg and Hamilton facing significant issues of his own, it is the German who leads the championship standings with a maximum 100 points, with Hamilton behind him with 53. The Briton has clawed his way back to finishes this year, however, with a stellar performance at the recently-concluded Russian Grand Prix as he clawed his way back from a 7th-place qualifying finish to a second-place finish behind teammate Rosberg.
Hamilton has had repeated problems this year with his car, and is currently on his fourth MGU-H after recurrent issues. He also faced ‘serious water pressure issues’ during the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi, despite which he managed to slash Rosberg’s 12.9 second lead to just over 7 seconds after a brilliant ride.
Meanwhile Ferrari, who looked powerful in the early practice sessions, with Kimi Raikkonen fairly strong with his race pace and Vettel acing the first two sectors of the track, seriously lost out in qualifying, with Raikkonen and Vettel finishing 4th and 5th respectively.
The pair were outdone by Dutch sensation Max Verstappen, who made his debut for Red Bull yesterday after one entire season and four races in the second with Scuderia Toro Rosso, the Bulls’ junior team. The 18-year-old, who is the youngest driver on the grid, was promoted to Daniil Kvyat’s spot, with the Russian taking Verstappen’s place at Toro Rosso.
Although many had decried the incident as unfair at the time, especially given Kvyat scored the second podium of his career this year in China, Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko revealed that the decision had not been a sudden one, taken in the immediate aftermath of Kvyat’s second shunt with Sebastian Vettel, but had been in the works for a period of time.
Ferrari finished uncharacteristically low in qualifying, with finishes that will worry both drivers significantly.
Asked whether he could score a podium finish at the Spanish Grand Prix, Verstappen said his team had been ‘very good’ in qualifying, and expected to ‘be up front’, but not necessarily ahead of Ferrari.
Predictions
Given Lewis Hamilton has been itching to get back into the groove and has looked stronger with each passing race, the ultra-competitive racer will fight tooth and nail to hold on to pole and convert it to a win. He's shown the tenacity to take victory from even the most impossible positions, and given he has the upper hand here, will use his aggression to stay on top.
Rosberg appears to be running away with the championship, and barring serious, repeated reliability issues for the German looks set to take the title this year, but Hamilton, though is teammate, is perhaps his biggest, most worthy adversary on track today.
After Red Bull’s serious problems with Renault in 2015, they have come back with a renewed vigour in 2016, with consistent high points finishes for Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat and none of the reliability issues the team suffered last year. With an aggressive, almost Michael Schumacher-esque Max Verstappen now behind the wheel, we could possibly see the second Red Bull podium of the year – and the first of Verstappen’s career.
The race begins at 5:30 p.m. IST
