Perfect Piastri, Hero Hulk and Verstappen’s ‘Mario Kart’ Moment

2025 Spanish Grand Prix Analysis – By Joe Murphy

Calls have come in for Max Verstappen to be DISQUALIFIED from the Spanish Grand Prix after what looked like an intentional collision with the Mercedes of George Russell.

The Dutchman, who managed to win the coveted ‘Driver of the Day’ vote, saw his gap to the McLaren cars increase hugely after a ten second penalty saw Verstappen slip down into tenth.

The race had largely been a monotonous affair, with a first lap pass from Verstappen and also Lewis Hamilton saw them gain early positions, only for the Brit to let the faster Charles Leclerc by in the sister Ferrari with different strategies the name of the game.

And that is what worried McLaren. Piastri led and Norris found himself trading second with Verstappen due to the latter having an extra pit stop in his strategy.

Quite how that would have gone, who knows. But all strategies went out of the window after a mistake from Kimi Antonelli saw him swerve into the gravel and subsequently bring out the Safety Car. Alonso himself had gone off earlier and Liam Lawson had a few brushes with Alex Albon and Isack Hadjar, even retiring the former in the process. Nevertheless, a Safety Car was somewhat of a surprise. And it completely changed the race.

Near enough everybody stopped, but Verstappen had only one set of new tyres left and these were the undesirable Hard compound. He couldn’t stay out on used Softs. He couldn’t change to anything else. It was a real ‘Catch 22’.

The restart saw Piastri race away and Norris tried to keep up but to no avail. However, it’s not this McLaren 1-2 that people are talking about, even though it’s puts the gap to Red Bull at nearly 150 points in the Constructor’s and leaves Piastri and Norris with a ten point gap.

More notably, at the restart, Verstappen couldn’t warm his tyres up and Leclerc was on him in a flash. The two moved towards each other, with the blame appearing equal, although the Moncaoc man got the position. In the next turn, Russell clipped Verstappen, sending him wide and forcing GP to advise Mx to give George the position, somewhat controversially. Max then appearednto reluctantly let the Mercades by before immediately shunting into his side, before giving the position back properly a few corners later. The penalty sent Max down to score only a single point, whilst Hulkenberg’s Sauber coasted by the Ferrari of Hamilton to take what eventually became fifth. Humorously, Lando Norris declared he had done something similar to Verstappen, but only in Mario Kart Gaming whilst Verstappen was in no mood to discuss the incident with press afterwards.

This result moves Sauber level on points but ahead of Aston Martin and leaves Alpine last, although Gasly did ma age to leave Barcelona not empty handed. He took points away, as did Fernando Alonso for the first time this season and an in-form Hadjar in his RB.

A two week break to Canada now, and things are starting to hot up a bit.