Max Verstappen stamped his authority yet again on this the tenth round of the season.

The Red Bull driver secured a significant win in the Spanish Grand Prix, built on the back of some wheel to wheel duels at the start, first with Lando Norris and then with George Russell.

The Dutchman did a great job of managing the tyres over the course of the race. In fact, the podium featured the top three drivers on the starting grid.

Norris tried a different strategy to Verstappen having been passed at the start, then lengthening his first two stints (eight laps later on the Soft and four later with the Medium) to try and catch the leader in the closing stages on theoretically fresher Soft tyres. However, it's worth noting that Max used his set of new C3s for the final stint, whereas Norris had used his at the start.

Lewis Hamilton was third, back on the podium for the first time since last year's Mexican Grand Prix. It means that, every year since his debut in 2007, for 18 consecutive seasons, the seven times world champion has managed to finish in the top three at least once.

This was Verstappen's 61st win the fourth at this track, where eight years ago he took his maiden Formula 1 victory. For Red Bull, it is win number 120, the seventh from ten races this season and those numbers mean the Dutchman is responsible for just over half the team's total number of wins.

There were no retirements this afternoon, with 11 of the 20 drivers going the full distance, while nine were lapped.

All 19 drivers on the grid started on the Soft C3, while Albon who had to start from the pit lane in his Williams went for the C2.

The pit stops began as early as lap 9 with Tsunoda, but the leaders waited until lap 15 (Sainz and Russell) to switch to Mediums, with Norris and Leclerc lengthening their stints as much as possible, to lap 23 for the former and 24 for the latter.

For the third stint, the Hard also came into play, used by most of the drivers. However, among the leaders, the Soft held sway for the final part of the race, chosen by Verstappen, Hamilton, Leclerc and the McLaren pair. Only Sainz and Russell opted for the Hard.

Just two drivers, Perez and Tsunoda, made three stops, while 12 used all three available compounds: apart from the two already mentioned, the only drivers who did not were Perez, Albon and Bottas. The Finn actually ran the longest stint, doing 37 laps on the Hard, while Zhou topped the list for Medium stints doing 32 laps, and Leclerc managed 24 on the Soft.

w/ Pirelli Media