For almost half a game, nothing seemed to go the way Verstappen wanted on the Catalonia circuit. Due to a gust of wind that surprised him, he ended up in the gravel box early in the race. Once he was out of there, suddenly there were two cars and ten seconds between him and his title rival Leclerc. The chance of winning the race was therefore virtually nil for Verstappen.
He then got stuck behind George Russell’s slower Mercedes for nearly twenty laps. Just like in qualifying on Saturday, Verstappen had a problem in his DRS system. Through this system, drivers can temporarily open their rear wing at the push of a button if they are less than a second behind another car. With the overtaking trick they gain about 10 kilometers per hour. That was exactly the speed that Verstappen lacked to be able to overtake Russell decisively.
Lap after lap, the frustration mounted in Verstappen’s cockpit. He grumbled at his team and cursed his DRS system. Meanwhile, World Cup leader Leclerc calmly drove away from him. The Ferrari driver took full advantage of Verstappen’s struggle and drove more than ten seconds ahead of the rest of the field, until on lap 27 of 66 everything suddenly changed.
Sputtering Ferrari
Leclerc’s Ferrari engine made a strange noise and started to sputter. The Monegask knew immediately that the race was over. At a snail’s pace, he drove back to his team, where he parked his car in the garage. The problem came out of nowhere, he said resignedly to Viaplay’s camera after his first outing of the season. “But this is part of racing. Sometimes it’s not your day.’
Shortly afterwards, another Ferrari engine (that of Alfa Romeo driver Zhou) died, suggesting that the Italian powerplants were struggling with the sweltering conditions in Barcelona. At the start of the race it was about 36 degrees, which made good cooling even more important than usual.
Barcelona remains magical for Verstappen
Due to Leclerc’s failure, a disappointing race for Verstappen suddenly became a full prospect: his Red Bull team still had more than half a race to devise a strategy for the race win, with the reassuring thought that the biggest competitor is no longer on the asphalt used to be. Within fifteen laps it was all over and Verstappen and his teammate Pérez drove in front.
Then Pérez was instructed to let Verstappen overtake him, in order to allow the Dutchman to score as much as possible compared to Leclerc. Verstappen never ran into problems in the final laps.
He thus won for the first time since his first F1 win in 2016, on his debut for Red Bull, again at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. And again at an important moment; in one race, a nineteen-point deficit in the World Cup turned into a six-point lead for the reigning champions. It may soon be that Verstappen took an important step towards his second world title in ‘his’ Barcelona.