Verstappen apes Alonso
In the 2013 race in Barcelona, Fernando Alonso charged to victory after executing a daring around-the-outside pass of Lewis Hamilton at Turn 3 on the opening lap. This year, Max Verstappen’s nigh on identical first-lap pass of Sebastian Vettel at the same corner was every bit as impressive and - in a race where track position was crucial to success - equally pivotal. Would the Dutch teenager still have triumphed without making this move and forcing Ferrari’s hand on strategy? Possibly not…
Anyone for ping pong?
Sebastian Vettel has been known to enjoy a game of badminton, but it was ping pong that he had on his mind after Daniel Ricciardo’s bold-as-brass – but ultimately fruitless – overtaking attempt at Turn 1 on the 59th lap. Vettel has since shied away from his criticism of the Australian, but looking from the rear-view camera on the German’s car you can see why he was startled by the move - Ricciardo comes from a long, long way back and with incredible commitment. If he’d made it stick, it surely would have been one of the overtakes of the year. As it was, all the Red Bull driver got for his troubles was a derisory shake of the fist from his former team mate.
No love lost at Haas…
Rosberg and Hamilton’s opening-lap clash dominated the headlines, but it wasn’t the only intra-team confrontation in Barcelona - in fact there were several. One of the spiciest involved Haas drivers Romain Grosjean (who we ride with in the video above) and Esteban Gutierrez, the latter of whom unceremoniously elbowed his way past his team mate on lap 34 to take P12. Was the Mexican a little heavy handed, or was he just seizing his opportunity? Team owner Gene Haas comes from a Nascar background, so perhaps he’d simply see this as a case of rubbin’ is racin’…
… or Sauber…
The next case of team mate-on-team mate warfare came at Sauber where Marcus Ericsson (our pilot in the video above) spent much of the latter half of the race trying to find a way past Felipe Nasr’s identical C35. “He’s moving everywhere in the braking zone!” the Swede remonstrated angrily at one point, though in this example his trip into the Turn 1 run-off area looked to have been caused more by a combination of frustration and indecision than anything Nasr was doing...
…or Renault!
Make no mistake: every driver wants to beat his team mate, whether battling for the lead or - as in the case of Renault’s Jolyon Palmer and Kevin Magnussen - 13th place. In this case, the squabble went right down to the wire, with Magnussen making the most of his fresher tyres to launch a final, strong-arm move three corners from home on the last lap, which we can now present to you for the first time from the Dane’s point of view. Was it too aggressive? Yes, according to the stewards, who hit K-Mag with a 10-second post-race penalty for causing a collision.
Three wheels on his wagon, Ricciardo presses on
Daniel Ricciardo’s pursuit of Sebastian Vettel ended when he picked up a puncture on the penultimate lap - and if you listen carefully to the above video you can hear the exact moment the tyre tread begins to work its way off the left-rear wheel rim. But while third place was lost, the Australian’s skilful hustle of his ailing machine – which, as you can see from this onboard view, only had two tyres in contact with the road at various points – meant that he could return to the pits for fresh rubber and salvage fourth place.
Max soaks up the adulation
It’s a common sight for marshals to wave flags in appreciation of the race winner on the slowing down lap, but it takes a special kind of victory to get the men in orange bowing in unison. That was the sight that greeted Max Verstappen as he approached Turn 5 on his lap of honour, by which time he had already punched the air several hundred times. Little wonder that his celebrations gave him cramp, as he jokingly admitted after the race...
