F1 Spanish GP takeaways: McLaren and Mercedes optimism, a step up for Alpine (2024)

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The Spanish Grand Prix started as a thriller.

As the lights went out, all eyes zeroed in on Lando Norris and Max Verstappen on the front row. Anticipation had been building at the prospect of a proper fight between them for the win. But out of nowhere, a flash of black, silver and turquoise charged to the front. George Russell flew as he took advantage of a gap left by Norris and Verstappen pushing on the right side of the track, the Red Bull briefly touching the grass.

It only took a few laps for Verstappen to catch Russell and pull ahead to lead the race. The Dutchman took first, but the win wasn’t as comfortable as his past victories. The margins rapidly narrowed as Norris hunted him down in the closing stages. As the checkered flag fell, the lingering question was whether Verstappen won or Norris lost the grand prix.

And if you ask the McLaren driver, he felt he should’ve won it.

Verstappen and Norris arguably are in a class of their own this weekend. The next closest driver was Lewis Hamilton, who took P3 and finished 15.571 seconds behind second-place Norris. With third and fourth-place finishes, Mercedes is climbing back. Meanwhile, Ferrari brought upgrades, and while it took a step forward in feeling, it was the fourth-fastest team in Barcelona.

The Spanish GP marked the first race of Formula One’s first triple-header of the season, and before the paddock packs up and heads to Austria for a sprint weekend, here are our takeaways.

Verstappen remains the driver to beat

Verstappen continues holding the lead in the driver standings, sitting on top with 219 points and seven wins. And while he continues to walk away victorious, the Dutchman’s last three wins (Imola, Canada and Spain) haven’t been a clear cut runaway.

“It wasn’t straightforward,”he said about his win.

Once Verstappen secured the lead after the first few laps, taking the lead from Russell on Lap 3, he built a buffer on the first stint, showing flashes that he may just run away with the victory and enjoy a smooth Sunday drive. He focused on managing tires because of how high degradation is at this circuit, and it soon morphed into a more defensive race, given McLaren’s pace. Verstappen said, “It was quite close until the end.”

With a comfortable gap in the first stint, Red Bull “decided to go for an optimum race in terms of strategy in our stop laps,” team principal Christian Horner said. “McLaren obviously extended, so they had an offset. You look at the gap and think nine seconds is pretty decent but you know that the tire offset six laps on mediums and three or four on the soft, those gaps come back at you pretty quickly.”

Horner said Verstappen needed not to make a mistake, adding that the Dutchman “drove a perfect race.”

“He’s always been fantastic under pressure. Last year was a unicorn year, and now it’s (a) more normal year. It’s not normal to win all the races all the time, and we’re having to fight very, very hard for them, and Max is making a key difference,” Horner said. “We know where we need to improve, We’re getting a better understanding of where our strengths and weaknesses are, and we’re doing enough at the moment to keep growing that championship lead.” – Madeline Coleman

The one thing Norris said ‘cost me everything’

Norris was poised for success.

He secured his second pole position and readied to defend Verstappen heading into Turn 1. The start is critical because it is easy for others to secure a slipstream heading down towards the corner and launch past. He felt they had the quickest car on the grid. But those opening moments became costly.

“I just didn’t do a good enough job off the line, and then that one thing cost me everything,” Norris said. “From Turn 2 onwards, 10 out of 10. I don’t think I could have done much more, and I think as a team, we did the perfect strategy.”

Norris felt his launch at the start was better than Verstappen’s; however, “the second phase, the drive out, was not as good.” He charged to cover the Red Bull on his right, Verstappen touching the grass at one point. Norris reckons that without Russell jumping ahead, he could’ve kept a hold of first place heading into Turn 1.

“I almost think George would have led no matter what, even if my start was two meters better. That’s what happens in Barcelona,” he said. “George got a good start, and I couldn’t do anything about that. I settled in, I had to take third in Turn 2, because if I brake two meters later, I would have taken everyone out with me. I made the correct decision backing out and letting George have it. I don’t know. I need to sit down with my engineers and talk.”

After losing it at the start, Norris got stuck behind Russell in the first stint. The two eventually had a tight fight for position later in the race, and Norris described it as “good fun. It cost me a bit of lap time and hurt my gap to Max in the end. But it was pleasant. It was on the edge, it was close, but respectful.”

Norris once again found himself hunting down Verstappen in the closing stages. While he says he was comfortable and had the pace, it became a question of if he had enough laps to close the gap. In the end, the gap was 2.219 seconds, and he now sits second in the driver standings.

It’s the second consecutive race that Norris walked away feeling that he should’ve won, the other being Montreal two weekends ago. Norris said that this one in Spain was more frustrating. The Canadian Grand Prix boiled down to what he felt was “an incorrect decision or a lack of decision-making” and that McLaren was not the quickest car on track. That was Mercedes. But in Spain, it was different.

“(Sunday), we were the quickest, we had the best car,” Norris said. “And I didn’t maximize it. The start is down to me and doing what I got told, and executing that. Without that, or with a good start, we easily should have won.” – Madeline Coleman

Mercedes should be ‘carefully optimistic’

After qualifying fourth on Saturday, Russell said, “This is for sure the most confident we have been over the last three years of what we’ve brought to the car.”

Mercedes enjoyed a dominant reign before the current set of regulations took effect in 2022, and since then, it has struggled. Throughout this season, it’s been putting together a stronger package and making gains in recent race weekends. Russell feels that where things stand right now, the future looks more promising.

“We’re fourth in the constructors’ championship at the moment. We’ve got more wind tunnel time than all of our rivals and we know what we need to do to make these big strides now. So, we’re all feeling excited for the remainder of the season. I’m confident we’ll win races this year now and going into next year,” Russell said. “Who knows what can happen. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves but, the pace we showed last week and the pace we showed this week, you know, we’ve led two races in two weekends now since having the upgrades. I don’t think we’d have expected that at the start of the season.”

Earlier in the season, Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya would have been more challenging for the Silver Arrows, but they locked out the second row for the start of the Spanish Grand Prix, Russell lining up fourth and Hamilton third. Though Russell held the lead for the opening laps, Mercedes didn’t have the pace to keep up with Verstappen and Norris. Both drivers executed a two-stop strategy, but Hamilton was fitted with softs tires on the final stint while Russell took the hard compound.

Focusing on Russell’s race, taking the hard tire and the slow pit stop both muddled his race, as Wolff highlighted. But Hamilton’s race showed promise. Wolff said, “If you look at where Lewis was, 15 seconds behind the leaders, whilst taking the pace out at the end, so maybe call it 10 seconds, so that’s much closer. They weren’t holding back, Max and Norris. So there’s a reason to be carefully optimistic that we are much closer and will be able to fight.”

Hamilton says the team is becoming more consistent. On his side of the garage, he feels he needs better Saturdays (qualifying) to make Sundays easier. “My Saturdays have been so bad for the last like 15 races so it’s good to have a clean weekend.”

The bigger question looming over the team is whether a win is possible. Hamilton discussed how being consistent is key, but “we aren’t yet currently in a position to be able to fight them for wins.”The next few tracks are places where McLaren and Red Bull are expected to be strong, as well.

“We just got to keep bringing upgrades, we’ve got to keep improving the car,” Hamilton said. “There’s a clear improvement, and there’s just clear areas where we need to bolt on performance so that we can be in the fight with them.” – Madeline Coleman

Ferrari comes away with points and mild frustration

It’s fascinating how swiftly the glory of Charles Leclerc’s Monaco triumph has receded into the rearview mirror. The Prancing Horse followed up that victorious weekend a month ago with a double-DNF in Montreal and a weekend in Spain where it never looked like a podium threat.

Don’t get us wrong — the Ferrari pace over a single lap was as strong as McLaren and Mercedes at times through practice and qualifying. But the drivers qualified on the third row, “further from pole than we expected,” per Leclerc. The team felt good about its pace but qualified well off pole. That’s just how tight the margins are right now.

That held during the grand prix. Ferrari tried a split strategy, leaving Leclerc out as long as Norris before pitting. It didn’t work nearly as well as it did for McLaren, with Leclerc grumbling about the gameplan after he came out behind Pierre Gasly in seventh and struggled to pass. Ultimately, the Ferraris finished right where they started, with Leclerc in P5 and Sainz in P6.

“Not happy, unfortunately,” Leclerc said in the TV pen. “We came just one lap short of P4, which was a bit of a shame, but that’s the best we could do today. The strategy, we did well to offset ourselves a bit with the people around. Shame we lost a bit of time between the cars at the beginning. But, it’s like this.”

It was a particularly feisty weekend for the Ferrari drivers. Leclerc was fortunate to escape with a reprimand after a collision with Norris during practice. Sainz and Leclerc made contact into Turn 1 on the opening lap, and Leclerc felt Sainz was too aggressive in the race’s final laps.

“I understand it’s his home race and a very important moment of his career, so I guess he wanted to do something spectacular, but I probably wasn’t the right person to do that to,” Leclerc told F1TV.

Amid the razor-thin margins among the top four, tensions are high. But Ferrari must put its head down. Both drivers finished in the points, after all, and as team principal Fred Vasseur noted to F1TV, the tight fight isn’t going away any time soon. The characteristics of Austria and Silverstone should play to the car’s strengths, so a return to the podium shouldn’t be too far off.

“The most important thing is to be able to win when you are able to win and to score points when you are not,” Vasseur said. “And, so, for today, we did a decent job. I don’t think that needs to be that we missed something.” – Patrick Iversen

Alpine discovers some pace

The last month or so has not been kind to Alpine, which landed atop the F1 news pile a few times for reasons unrelated to race pace. The vibes haven’t been great since Esteban Ocon upset his team with a costly move at Monaco. The fact the team hired Flavio Briatore, who was briefly banned by the FIA for his role in the “Crashgate” race-fixing scandal in 2008, last week didn’t exactly paint a rosy picture around the French outfit even as development has gradually increased the performance.

As Ocon candidly admitted, the team was bracing for another tough weekend. However, during practice and qualifying, a remarkable turn of events unfolded: Alpine discovered its pace. Good pace. Gasly finished fourth-fastest in FP2, and both drivers made it into Q3. Alpine found a good grip around this circuit, which kept it competitive during the race as other issues cropped up and competitors pressed the advantage.

It was good enough for the team’s second double-point finish of the season, with Gasly in P9 and Ocon in P10.

“The race that I had was a super long one,” Ocon said to F1TV. “And we found some issues with the front of the floor in the car. The engineers told me at the end of the race that we were lacking some downforce to the front of the car. So honestly, it was super hard, the race. I kept falling back and almost not being able to to hold Nico (Hülkenberg) at the end. We had a lot of sliding, a lot of degradation.”

As Ocon noted, this outcome was unimaginable earlier in the season, when any setbacks would have condemned the Alpines to a low-ranking finish. “But at the end of the day, we finished behind the four fastest cars,” Gasly said in the TV pen. “And it was normal conditions, on pure pace.”

It’s easy to get out over your skis when one of these developing teams has a good weekend. Alpine is not back, baby. But it may have hit that sweet spot in a development cycle where something finally clicks and lets the team and drivers stride forward on surer footing for the rest of the season.

“I’ve got a clue of what it is – I think the team knows as well what it could be,” Ocon said. “And if that’s the case, we should be okay for the next three.” – Patrick Iversen

Notebook

• Disappointing home race for Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin. “The whole weekend we have struggled with our pace,” Alonso said in the team’s post-race release. At this point last season, Aston was still in the hunt for a top-four finish in the constructors’. Now it’s a distant fifth.
• Williams and RB would like you to forget they even participated in F1 this weekend. RB brought hope and upgrades but lacked pace on its worst weekend of the year as Daniel Ricciardo finished P15 and Yuki Tsunoda finished P19. “Something wasn’t quite right,” Tsunoda admitted afterward in the team’s post-race release.
• Williams’ two drivers were slowest in qualifying, and Alex Albon had to start from pit lane after Williams changed elements on his power unit, which put him beyond the season limit. (They also didn’t inform the FIA technical delegate.) Albon finished P18 and Sargeant in P20. “In some ways a bit of a reality check,” Albon told F1TV.
• Norris jumps into second ahead of Leclerc in the drivers’ championship, but Verstappen extended his lead to 69 points. Meanwhile, in the constructors’ championship, Red Bull is now 60 points clear of Ferrari. That’s a good start to the triple-header for the reigning champions.
• Go take a nap. Two more races over the next two weeks!

We all needed a quick lie down after a race that eventful 😅

It's on us for getting the comfy sofa, really 🤷#F1 #SpanishGP pic.twitter.com/EmbZGizPRE

— Formula 1 (@F1) June 23, 2024

(Lead image of Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Lando Norris: Rudy Carezzevoli, Chris Graythen/Getty Images)