Autosport 75: How Verstappen scored his first F1 win

The longer this goes on, the more Max Verstappen looks set to become a phenomenon in Formula 1. If he continues to progress at this rate, he may come to dominate his sport in a similar fashion to the way Novak Djokovic rules tennis, Stephen Curry owns basketball, or Lionel Messi dazzles in football.

To take victory in the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix – 18-year-old Verstappen’s 24th start in F1, just his 72nd race in a car of any kind, and becoming the youngest-ever winner of a GP and the first teenager to win in F1 – represents a remarkable achievement.

It further justified Red Bull’s decision to take Verstappen straight from Formula 3 to F1 with Toro Rosso in 2015, and vindicated its next bold move to promote him to Red Bull Racing in place of Daniil Kvyat four races into this season, re-signing him to another multi-year contract in the process.

Verstappen came into the weekend talking about simply getting comfortable in the car and learning about his new team, but came away a GP winner. As Red Bull boss Christian Horner said, this was “fairytale stuff”.

But it was a fairytale made possible by a total nightmare for rival team Mercedes, which should have celebrated an easy 1-2 result in this race, but instead left with zero points after its drivers collided on the first lap.

Reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton, armed with a fresh MGU-H and turbo assembly on his W07, looked set to put the disappointments of Russia, China and Bahrain firmly behind him after securing his third pole position of the season in Spain.

He was in sublime form on Saturday and made a good start to the race. But the run to Turn 1 is quite long at the Barcelona circuit, and Hamilton knew that Nico Rosberg – who also made a decent start from the dirty side of the grid – would use the slipstream to attack.

Hamilton covered the inside, but that compromised his approach to the corner. Rosberg simply went the other way and swept boldly around Hamilton’s outside to take the lead. But as they blasted up the hill and navigated the long right-hander at Turn 3, Rosberg realised there was a problem.

Hamilton and Rosberg colliding on the opening lap split opinions in the paddock to who was at fault

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“I was really excited about the first-corner move to get the lead, and from then on I was pretty sure it was my race to win,” he said. “Coming out of Turn 3 I noticed I was down on engine power, which in hindsight is because I was in an incorrect [engine] mode.”

Hamilton was aware of this too, realising immediately that his team-mate would be vulnerable, with Rosberg temporarily starved of what Hamilton estimated to be 180bhp while he fixed the mistake. “I could see the de-rate light,” explained Hamilton. “But then it switched off, so I wasn’t making any assumptions. I could see I had a better run through the corner. He didn’t have the power.

“He did make a switch change afterwards, but when you make that change it doesn’t click in for 100 metres or so at that speed, so I was gaining on him at a fairly decent pace.”

“There are some people in the team with racing experience and when we looked at the incident the opinion differed between all of us. It was an incident that could’ve been avoided by both sides” Toto Wolff

Hamilton sensed his moment to seize back the initiative and powered his Mercedes up the inside of Rosberg’s as they exited Turn 3. “Where he positioned the car was a car-width to the right of the racing line,” said Hamilton. “At the speed I was catching him, I had to decide whether to go left – which was a small gap – or right.

“The inside line is always the line you’d go for and it was a much bigger gap, so I went for it.”

Rosberg moved across to the right to block Hamilton’s advance. At the speed Hamilton closed on Rosberg he had no choice but to jink right as the gap disappeared. Hamilton suddenly found himself out of control on the grass. He lost the rear of his car and clattered into the back of Rosberg as the race leader slowed for Turn 4.

Hamilton put his hands to his head as both Mercedes slithered into the gravel trap and out of the race.

With both Mercedes drivers out on the spot, it was a huge opportunity for its rivals to capitalise

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“I saw Lewis closing in, and as soon as I could I closed the door,” said Rosberg, who pressed his ‘overtake button’ in an attempt to counter his loss of power. “I covered the inside with a clear, strong move to make sure he understood there would not be space there. I was very surprised he went for it anyway, and that’s it – we ended up in the sand trap…”

Mercedes’ Niki Lauda was quick to blame Hamilton in the aftermath, calling his move “too aggressive”, while fellow three-time world champion Jackie Stewart also felt Hamilton was at fault, suggesting he had been too desperate to win the race on the first lap.

After speaking with both drivers, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff suggested the incident was less clear-cut. The stewards agreed, calling it a racing incident after post-race investigation.

“There are some people in the team with racing experience and when we looked at the incident the opinion differed between all of us,” said Wolff. “It was an incident that could’ve been avoided by both sides. The result was unfortunate, but making the manoeuvre was what he [Hamilton] should’ve done.

“Equally you can’t blame Nico for closing the door. It’s so difficult to attribute percentages of blame. The difference of speed triggered the incident.”

That’s probably not far wrong. If you’re Hamilton, you will feel aggrieved you were already partly alongside as Rosberg closed the door; if you are Rosberg, you will feel perfectly within your rights to have moved to the inside line to defend position.

But Rosberg’s temporary loss of power complicates matters. Should he have been more circumspect, given his car was not running at full racing speed? Or should Hamilton have realised sooner that Rosberg had him covered, given the positioning of Rosberg’s car exiting Turn 3?

It was the extreme closing speed between the two cars that made it more difficult to judge, and ultimately it was this that created catastrophe for Mercedes – but opportunity for Red Bull and Ferrari.

Red Bull held track position but faced a quicker rival in Ferrari

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Red Bull now found itself running 1-2, while the Ferraris took a few laps following the safety-car restart to clear the feisty Toro Rosso of Carlos Sainz, after a poor start by Kimi Raikkonen and a wobble exiting Turn 3 on the first lap by Sebastian Vettel.

With both Ferraris released into clean air, the race was delicately poised. Having underperformed disastrously in qualifying, Ferrari knew it had the faster car, but the disadvantage of inferior track position. For Red Bull it was a case of defending its position at all costs, on a circuit where overtaking is notoriously difficult.

All four frontrunners switched onto the medium tyre at their first round of stops, when Red Bull opted to split strategies in anticipation of a Ferrari attack. It switched erstwhile leader Daniel Ricciardo onto a three-stop tactic and put him back onto the soft tyre on lap 28 of 66. Ferrari did the same with Vettel on the next lap.

“Normally the guy in the lead gets the better strategy, but it didn’t work out today. It’s frustrating because we just threw the win away” Daniel Ricciardo

This is where the race unravelled for Ricciardo. Vettel unleashed his Ferrari’s pace on soft tyres and closed to within 1.2s of the Red Bull before diving back into the pits for a third visit on lap 37.

Ferrari put its charge back onto the medium tyre, while Ricciardo waited another six laps before making the same move. Those extra laps on fresher rubber allowed Vettel to jump Ricciardo when the Red Bull stopped for the third time on lap 43.

Ricciardo now found himself running fourth, behind Verstappen, Raikkonen and Vettel, but with much fresher tyres than the cars ahead. This looked like a silly move from Red Bull, as it gave precious track position away to Ferrari. Certainly Ricciardo struggled to understand the call.

“It just didn’t make sense,” he said. “At the time I thought we did it because everyone else was going to do it, but they didn’t. Normally the guy in the lead gets the better strategy, but it didn’t work out today. It’s frustrating because we just threw the win away.”

Red Bull’s strategy for Ricciardo backfired, sending him from first to fourth

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Well, for Ricciardo yes, but not for Red Bull.

Verstappen initially looked a bit more comfortable than his team-mate on the mediums. He was 0.117 seconds per lap faster on average during the first 14 laps of that second stint, which he extended by another six laps before diving for the pits for a second time on lap 34.

Red Bull opted to keep Verstappen on the medium tyre. Ferrari covered this by doing the same with Raikkonen on the next lap.

“It was always going to be tricky to keep them behind us,” said Horner. “We felt Sebastian’s looked to be the fastest car on the circuit in clean air, so it was a question of how are we going to beat Vettel? The obvious way they were going to try to navigate their way past us was a three-stop.

“Splitting strategies gave us options from a team perspective. It wasn’t transparently clear. We knew the two-stop would be under a lot of pressure at the end of the race in terms of degradation.”

So it seemed at this stage that Verstappen and Raikkonen might actually be racing for third, because surely they couldn’t make their second sets of mediums last a mammoth 32 laps…

As it turned out, they could. Verstappen displayed the extraordinary tyre-management skills that have so impressed Red Bull since he entered F1 to nurse his rubber to the end. But within 10 of those final 32 laps Raikkonen had closed his Ferrari to within DRS range of the Red Bull. That meant 22 tortuous tours fending off a faster car if Verstappen was to clinch an extraordinary maiden F1 win.

“As soon as we pitted I knew we were going to the end, so the first few laps I didn’t really push,” explained Verstappen, who admitted to cramping up on the final lap at the excitement of realising he was about to clinch his first grand prix victory.

Holding off Raikkonen while in DRS range for the final 22 laps secured Verstappen his maiden F1 grand prix win

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“I knew the Ferraris were a bit faster, so it was just about keeping the gap. It worked well until eight laps from the end – we were catching traffic and I was driving on ice, sliding a lot. It was all about managing the last sector and getting a good exit. That’s how a lot of races are won here.”

Raikkonen has had a difficult time since returning to Ferrari in 2014, but he is an extraordinarily talented driver, particularly adept at tyre management too, so for a driver as inexperienced as Verstappen to beat him at his own game, as it were, was no easy feat.

“I got close but I could not get a good enough exit on the last corner,” rued Raikkonen. “I gave quite a hard time to my tyres following him for so many laps. It’s always disappointing when you don’t win, but when you get this close it’s harder to accept.

“We had quite a difficult weekend. If we were offered second and third after qualifying we would happily take it.”

The day belonged instead to his new team-mate: Max Verstappen, F1’s latest race winner. Take a well-deserved bow. This could be the start of something big

There was a chance Vettel and Ricciardo could have joined battle at the front in the closing stages, but they got embroiled in a testy fight of their own for the final podium place. Ricciardo annoyed Vettel by unsuccessfully “having a crack” a few times at Turn 1 in the closing stages, particularly with an initial lunge that forced Vettel to jink left to avoid contact. But he stayed ahead, Ricciardo’s tyres turning to mush, then his rear-left punctured on the penultimate lap, forcing him into the pits before trailing home a distant fourth.

At least the gap back to Valtteri Bottas’s fifth-placed Williams was such that Ricciardo could still make that stop and then retake the position, but it was a bad end to a day on which he had a golden opportunity to take his fourth GP win.

As it turned out the day belonged instead to his new team-mate: Max Verstappen, F1’s latest race winner. Take a well-deserved bow. This could be the start of something big.