Kimi Antonelli is showing no signs of slowing down. One week after winning at Monza, the Mercedes driver claimed another victory at the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid, aided by two fortunate developments that he exploited with consistency and intelligent tyre management. Lando Norris was left with the biggest disappointment after another extremely fast McLaren failed to convert its pace into victory, while Ferrari’s ambitious strategy with Charles Leclerc ultimately fell short.
For Ferrari, however, the Madrid gamble was not simply a reckless attempt to manufacture a result. With Charles Leclerc on the hard compound and the race unfolding around a Virtual Safety Car, the Scuderia had very few realistic alternatives. The Monegasque driver eventually finished fourth after briefly leading, while Lewis Hamilton retired early with a brake problem, completing another frustrating afternoon for Maranello. A detailed account of the two Ferrari races can also be found in the Spanish Grand Prix race review.
Kimi Antonelli turns good fortune into another Spanish GP victory
Only a week earlier, Mercedes had dominated the long straights at Monza. The 22 corners of the Madring brought the W17 back to a more conventional level of competitiveness. Mercedes was strong in Spain without establishing itself as the outright benchmark, but it had enough pace to remain in the leading group and be ready to capitalise whenever an opportunity appeared.
That is precisely what Kimi Antonelli did. Two fortunate moments helped shape his victory. The clearest was Lando Norris’s slow pit stop immediately after the Virtual Safety Car period, while a few laps earlier Kimi Antonelli had also inherited second place from Max Verstappen as the Red Bull driver was forced to hand positions back, with Lewis Hamilton also involved in the sequence behind the Mercedes.
Kimi Antonelli still deserves considerable credit for converting those circumstances into victory, particularly because of the pace he produced after his stop. The Italian initially matched Charles Leclerc while following instructions from the Mercedes pit wall to maintain enough distance to protect his tyres rather than degrading them unnecessarily.
When Max Verstappen and Lando Norris eventually closed in during the final phase of the race, Kimi Antonelli still had enough tyre life available to increase his pace and move back out of immediate danger. The result delivered another hugely important victory and increased his Drivers’ Championship advantage over George Russell to 81 points.
George Russell could manage only fifth after paying the price for stopping during the Virtual Safety Car. That decision meant abandoning the hard tyres. Mercedes switched him onto mediums but later decided it was too risky to try to reach the chequered flag on that set, bringing George Russell in for a second stop. The additional visit to the pits cost him the position to Lando Norris and, in all likelihood, also to Charles Leclerc.
The Spanish Grand Prix therefore moves both world championships another step towards Mercedes, which is also preparing to introduce significant aerodynamic and power-unit updates as it looks to put the title battles beyond the reach of its rivals.
McLaren had the fastest car but Lando Norris loses Madrid win
The biggest loser of the afternoon was undoubtedly Lando Norris, who was denied what appeared to be a thoroughly deserved victory. The timing of the Virtual Safety Car clearly compromised the reigning world champion’s race, although the enormous pace of the MCL40 also raises the question of whether McLaren could have delayed the stop and attempted to build a larger advantage over the cars behind.
The five seconds lost during the tyre change certainly did not help, although it is difficult to say whether avoiding that delay alone would have changed the final outcome. Lando Norris’s bigger problem was not simply the time lost to the lead, because he was ultimately able to recover much of that deficit. The positions surrendered on track proved much more damaging.
Madring confirmed that overtaking is far from straightforward, while McLaren once again had reason to regret the MCL40’s limited straight-line speed. Nevertheless, the Madrid performance, following victories in Budapest and Zandvoort, strengthens McLaren’s belief that it can attack Ferrari for second place in the Constructors’ Championship. That ambition could become even more realistic once the updated Mercedes power unit arrives in a few races.
Ferrari’s position has consequently become increasingly uncomfortable after another weekend without a podium. The Scuderia’s current run and the implications of Charles Leclerc’s fourth place are examined further in the overview of Ferrari’s four-race podium drought.
Lando Norris’s recovery eventually ended behind Max Verstappen, who finished second. It was a second consecutive podium for the Dutch driver and Red Bull, this time on a highly technical circuit. That result could represent another indication that the team is making progress in understanding the RB22.
A victory before the end of the season no longer appears an unrealistic target for Max Verstappen, even though Red Bull has already shifted much of its development focus towards 2027. Franco Colapinto, meanwhile, could celebrate a personal triumph of his own. The Alpine driver finished seventh and best of the rest, with the team’s recent updates breathing new life into its challenge against Racing Bulls for fifth place.
Why Ferrari had no real alternative to Charles Leclerc’s Madrid gamble
Ferrari was another major talking point on Sunday in Madrid. Charles Leclerc spent a substantial part of the race in the lead as the team waited for the fortunate interruption that never arrived. It would be easy to criticise Maranello for basing its entire strategy around a gamble, but the reality is that Ferrari had very few alternatives available.
Calling Charles Leclerc into the pits during the Virtual Safety Car would effectively have committed him to a two-stop race. Because he had started on the hard tyre, Ferrari still needed to use another compound. Switching immediately to the soft would have left Charles Leclerc trying to make a set of the most delicate tyres last approximately 40 laps, which was not considered realistic.
Charles Leclerc therefore remained on the hard tyres and briefly gave Ferrari supporters hope that he might be able to resist the pace of the chasing cars. In reality, those behind him were managing their own tyres rather than showing their maximum potential.
Ferrari could have stopped Charles Leclerc earlier than it eventually did and fitted soft tyres for a late recovery drive. However, the team was aware that the softer compound was unlikely to perform as effectively as the hard tyre over the relevant distance, something that became apparent during the closing stages.
With little to lose, Ferrari therefore played its final card: leave Charles Leclerc on track for as long as possible and hope for another neutralisation that could dramatically reduce the cost of his mandatory stop. The Scuderia eventually brought him in at the latest useful moment, partly to protect his position from the rapidly approaching George Russell.
The sequence was a particularly clear example of how race circumstances can restrict strategic choices rather than simply creating a choice between a conventional and an aggressive approach. Ferrari’s wider pit-stop trends and tactical decisions throughout the season can be compared through the Ferrari Pit Stop & Strategy Statistics.
Lewis Hamilton retirement prevents a true Ferrari pace comparison
It would be difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the genuine race pace of Charles Leclerc’s SF-26 because his strategy was completely out of sequence with the leading rivals. His performance was also masked by the exceptional durability of the hard tyres. Lewis Hamilton’s pace would therefore have provided a particularly interesting comparison.
Instead, Lewis Hamilton was forced to retire because of one of Ferrari’s relatively rare reliability problems this season. The British driver reported an abnormally long brake pedal, with the master cylinder and brake-by-wire system among the suspected areas involved in the failure. The details of Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari brake problem underline how quickly his race unravelled.
The retirement was particularly frustrating because Madrid had already been identified as one of the more demanding events of the season for the braking system. The circuit’s repeated heavy deceleration zones and unusual layout had made brake management one of the key technical challenges at Madring before the weekend began.
Unfortunately for Ferrari, the next opportunity to respond is unlikely to offer much relief. Baku’s long straights are expected to expose the power-unit weaknesses that have already hurt the SF-26 at high-speed circuits, leaving Maranello with another potentially difficult technical challenge.
Madring earns praise from drivers but overtaking remains a problem
More than any individual driver, one of the most eagerly awaited protagonists of the weekend was Madring itself. Formula 1’s new Madrid circuit generally received positive feedback from the drivers regarding its layout and the challenge it presents from behind the wheel.
The picture was less convincing when it came to overtaking. Passing opportunities were restricted by straights that were too short to create sufficiently large speed differences and by braking zones where corner combinations made attacks more complicated.
There is still scope to improve the racing in future editions, and the solution does not necessarily depend only on changing the physical layout. Formula 1 and Pirelli could also influence the spectacle through tyre-compound selection and the parameters governing Overtake mode.
Softer tyres and a larger energy advantage for the chasing car could have produced more passing opportunities during the inaugural race at Madring. They might even have changed the identity of the winner. Instead, Kimi Antonelli leaves Madrid with another victory, an 81-point championship advantage and an increasingly firm grip on both the 2026 title fight and the current Formula 1 landscape.
Leave a Reply