The Spanish Grand Prix was yesterday, and it was actually pretty exciting for the track. Spain is notorious for some boring races because of the difficulty of overtaking on the track. However, this year there was a fair amount of overtakes and some pretty close and exciting battles.

Once again, Mercedes strategy team for the win. They keep killing the game every race weekend which is giving Mercedes an edge over Red Bull.

As the drivers lined up to start the race, Pierre Gasly stopped his car too far forward in his grid spot, which would later result in a five second time penalty for him. Yuki Tsunoda’s car would be the only car to retire when on lap 8 his engine cut out at turn 10. This brought out the safety car, as it has been ever so well used this season. Overall, it was not a great race for AlphaTauri which is sad to see because they look like they have much more promise. This grand prix was just not the best for them.

As the race got underway, Verstappen made a great start and overtook Hamilton into the first corner. Similarily, the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc breezed beautifully passed Bottas in turn three which sent the Finn driver down to fourth place.

The rest of the race after the safety car went in typical Barcelona fashion with some pockets of excitement but most of the racing pretty tame. There was the time that Mazepin once again ignored blue flags, which prompted the graphic we never knew we needed to come up on the screen of Toto Wolff talking to FIA race director Michael Masi.

The real highlight of the race in my opinion was the amazing strategy that the Mercedes team displayed. While Verstappen was the first of the front runners to pit, he had a slow pit stop by Red Bull standards. While this did effectively deliver an undercut on Mercedes, who kept Hamilton out for a while after, Mercedes pulled a surprise move and brought Hamilton into the pits on lap 41 to put on a new set of tyres. It was a beautiful pit stop, and it saw Hamilton gain unbelievable speed which would later help him to pull off the overtake on Verstappen’s extremely worn out tyres.

We would return to our record holding podium trio with Hamilton winning, Verstappen in second and Bottas in third. Charles Leclerc finished a great race in fourth, followed by Sergio Perez in fifth, Daniel Ricciardo in sixth, Carlos Sainz in seventh, Lando Norris in eighth, Esteban Ocon in ninth, and Pierre Gasly rounding out the top ten.

Overall it was a pretty good race, again keeping the championship fight close. In two weeks time we are off to Monte Carlo for the Monaco Gran Prix, which is my favourite race on the calendar. It is a circuit that Red Bull does well, so we will see how the championship plays out there, and what Sergio Perez can do in his seat.