Piastri wins in Spain as Norris bins it and Verstappen smashes into Russell

Oscar Piastri got off the line superbly, but teammate Lando Norris had a poor start, prompting Max Verstappen to launch an attack on the outside into Turn 1. Although George Russell was on the inside of Norris he had to back out on the entry into Turn 1 as he wasn’t enough alongside the McLaren driver, which opened the door for Lewis Hamilton to tke over P4.

Fernando Alonso then set out to attack Isack Hadjar but lost Nico Hulkenberg, as Charles Leclerc overtook Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli to close up to his teammate Hamilton who seemed to lack the pace to challenge the frontrunners. The situation continued for three laps, until the Brit let Leclerc through.

On lap 12, Norris started edging into Verstappen who was complaining of a lack of grip, who despite his woes was still keeping up with Piastri in the lead.

As Verstappen boxed for fresh rubber, his rivals also started coming in, bringing the Dutchman up to P1. However, Verstappen pitted for softs and Piastri and Norris pitted for Mediums.

However, nearing the equator of the race the Dutchman pitted again for Mediums revealing his hand, as his race strategy was evidently a three-stopper.

Verstappen then set off to the pursuit of Leclerc, current P3, as they were both in contention with each other for the last podium place, and on lap 36, the Dutchman retook his original starting spot.

Norris tried to close the 3 second gap to Piastri out front, but they were quite evenly matched, with momentum in the lap swaying from one to the other, as Piastri was able to ultimately increase the gap to 4.6.

On lap 47 Verstappen pitted, as McLaren followed suit with Norris the following lap.

Reaching the race's end, Antonelli spun off beaching his Mercedes in the gravel, which prompted a safety car, which everyone took advantage of to switch tyres, but Max Verstappen was not happy with Red Bull's tyre choice as they had donned Hards on his car, which prompted a disconcerted Verstappen to hammer on about the tyre choice.

With Verstappen trying to fire up his tyres, he nearly lost the backend of his car coming out of the final corner, which allowed Charles Leclerc to gain the position from the Dutchman. After which he complained about the Monegasque 'ramming into him.'

Russell went for an inside move, Verstappen took the off-road whichresulted in Red Bull Racing instructing the Dutchman to give the position back to Russell. At Turn 5 though, Verstappen went straight on crashing into the side of the Mercedes driver.