Hamilton cruises to Spanish GP win, Verstappen beats Bottas to second

Lewis Hamilton claimed an easy win at the Spanish Grand Prix, where Max Verstappen managed to split the Mercedes drivers on the podium. 

Hamilton was cruising from the moment he retained the lead into the first corner from pole position, claiming his 88th F1 win and leaving him three away from matching Michael Schumacher's all-time victory record. Hamilton's race was so comfortable he lost track of the lap count. 

"I was just in a daze out there," he said after the race. "I didn't even know it was the last lap at the end, that's how zoned in I was, I was ready to keep going"

Valtteri Bottas' race unraveled at the start after he made a slow getaway and dropped behind Verstappen and Lance Stroll. Although he got back past Stroll on Lap 6, he entered into a losing strategic battle with Verstappen, which played out across both pit-stop windows. 

While Verstappen beat one Mercedes, he had to settle for a distant second behind the other, at one point telling Red Bull to stop focusing on the gap to Hamilton and accept their race was not with the world champion. Bottas made his second stop eight laps later than Verstappen but was unable to close the gap with his tyre advantage. 

Reflecting on the result afterwards, Bottas said: "I think the start was the key point. The start was not good enough and I lost the positions.

"On the first stint I, obviously, had to push more to make up some ground, so then you struggle with the tyre life. On the second stint I was right behind Max and everyone knows how difficult it is to overtake at the track. In the end I think the start was the bad thing..."

The result increases Hamilton's championship lead over Verstappen to 37 points. Bottas claimed an extra point for fastest lap but still lost ground to Verstappen -- he is now four points behind the Dutch driver. 

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The Racing Point pair Stroll and Sergio Perez finished fourth and fifth. Perez actually finished ahead of Stroll on track, but was demoted behind his teammate due to a five-second penalty for ignoring blue flags when race leader Hamilton came to lap him. 

Carlos Sainz claimed sixth for McLaren, ahead of the man he will replace at Ferrari next year, Sebastian Vettel, who executed an unlikely one-stop strategy to claim an unlikely seventh position. Despite airing some frustrations with Ferrari's communication over the radio, it was a welcome return to form for Vettel after a difficult back-to-back slate of races at Silverstone. 

Vettel's result was the only points Ferrari scored, with Charles Leclerc's car suffering an electrical issue in the closing stages which suddenly cut off his engine. Leclerc got the car going again but had dropped to last position, with the issue prompting Ferrari to retire the car several laps later. 

Red Bull's Alex Albon finished eighth, narrowly ahead of Alpha Tauri's Pierre Gasly. Given Albon's gap to Verstappen and Gasly's tremendous form at Red Bull's junior team, the result will only increase speculation of whether Red Bull makes another driver change in the near future. 

Lando Norris rounded out the points-paying positions in the other McLaren.