It´s Mother´s Day in Finland today and there isn´t a better way to spend it than watch intense Formula 1 action! At first the Spanish GP seemed to be a boring race but towards the end the battle for positions intensified and we saw some proper wheel-to-wheel racing.
Bottas in P4 took a stunning start and the Finn jumped 3rd right away. Hamilton maintained his lead but Rosberg was right at the Briton´s tail. Ricciardo lost the position to Bottas but it was obvious that the Australian was going to do anything to overtake the Finnish Williams driver. I was utterly happy that Kimi was able to keep Alonso behind him. Button in his McLaren starting from P8 had a poor start and he dropped down to P13.
Maldonado at the wheel of his E22 seemed to be completely unable to stay out of trouble. As if it hadn´t been enough that the Venezuelan crashed to the wall in qualifying, on lap 3 he was back in the lime light in a very questionable way. He collided with Caterham´s Ericsson which made Ericsson drop at the very back of the field. A moment later Maldonado was handed a 5-second stop and go penalty due to his foolish action.
The Mercedes duo rapidly pulled away from their rivals and disappeared to the horizon. In the first stint it really seemed that Bottas could actually fight for a podium place. Vettel was the first driver to pit and his tyre choice was the harder compound. Kimi chose the mediums and I was glad to see him exit the pits right in front of his team-mate Alonso, who had also chosen the mediums for the second stint. Bottas pitted not until on lap 20 and the Finn had absolutely no chance to keep Ricciardo behind. Unfortunately the Finn couldn´t match the Red Bull driver´s pace.
The Mercedes drivers had a different tyre strategy. Hamilton put the mediums for the second stint whilst his team-mate Rosberg chose the hard tyres. On lap 24 we saw an impressive overtaking move by Kimi Räikkönen as he overtook Lotus´s Grosjean and moved up to the 5th place. After the first half of the race Sebastian had managed to make his way higher up in the pack and his pace seemed excellent.
Towards the closing stages of the race the battle for positions seemed to come alive. Both Mercedes and Ferrari team-mates had different pit stop strategies. At the end of the race Hamilton in the lead had old hard tyres whilst Rosberg had fresher mediums. Alonso on the other hand had stopped three times and also had fresh medium tyres at the end whilst Kimi had stopped only twice and had dying hard tyres at the end. It became obvious that Rosberg was going to do everything he could to pass his team-mate!
By the time there were still 10 laps to go Vettel with a 3-stop strategy had closed the gap to Kimi and was right at the Finn´s tail. Kimi was told on the team radio not to waste time with racing Sebastian because the German was so much quicker so Kimi let Sebastian easily past him. Kimi was in serious trouble with his old tyres and only three laps before the chequered flag also Alonso managed to pass Kimi in the DRS zone. That was a depressing incident to see! After passing Kimi Sebastian started chasing Bottas in P4 and in no time he was close enough to make his move and Bottas had no chance to defend his position. At the same time Kimi was lapped by the Mercedes duo which was a very crushing moment indeed and told all about the superiority of Mercedes AMG.
Rosberg managed to get within DRS distance in the battle with Hamilton but the German simply run out of laps to make an overtaking move. So a very dominant 1-2 for Mercedes AMG for the 4th time in a row this season and the first ever win for Hamilton on the Spanish soil. The Mercedes seem to drive in a whole different series compared to their rivals as they won the race with a 50-second margin over Ricciardo, who finished 3rd! Sebastian finished stunningly 4th, which was an awesome job in terms of the fact that he started from P15! Sebastian even set the fastest lap time in the race! It was a huge pleasure to watch Sebastian make his way through the field. It kind of gave a glimpse of last year's Sebastian and reminded that his skills haven't disappeared anywhere. Bottas came 5th, Alonso 6th, Kimi 7th, Grosjean finally 8th, Perez 9th and Hulkenberg 10th.
Hamilton grabbed the lead in the championship standings from his team-mate. Mercedes´s lead in the constructors´ standings is absolutely crushing: they have 197 points whilst Red Bull in the 2nd place have only 84 points! And only 5 races have been driven so far... Red Bull clearly seem to have improved their performance but an awful lot of work still needs to be done if they intend to catch up Mercedes! Monaco in a fortnight will, however, be a totally unique venue and I can´t wait to see Sebastian and Kimi back in action in the streets of Monaco.
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