In a very dramatic and action packed finish to the 2025 Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, Oscar Piastri claimed his fifth win of the season, with his teammate and current title rival, Lando Norris, coming in just behind him for McLaren’s third one-two finish of the season.
Meanwhile, coming off of his best finish of the season in Monaco, Charles Leclerc displayed an outrageous amount of pace and strategy as he battled his way up to the last spot on the podium after a late safety car within the final laps of the race.
This came as a huge surprise to me, as Ferrari hasn't been looking up to par so far this year, but both Leclerc and Hamilton had a strong race which suggests the Prancing Horses may yet mount a comeback with a little more than half the season left to go.
Before I get too far into this post, I would like to highlight a quote from Carlos Sainz that was taken from a recent interview with Motorsport.com, where he discussed the performance challenges that drivers face while racing for a new team:
“To perform at 100%, you need to be calm and in an environment like Max [Verstappen] or Charles [Leclerc] have – where you know everything, and everything revolves around you.” - Carlos Sainz in an interview with Motorsport.com
Max Verstappen during the Spanish Grand Prix. Source
What stands out most to me is the final phrase of his statement (emphasis mine):
“and everything revolves around you.”
In my opinion, this has been Red Bull’s greatest strength and their biggest weakness in the past few years. While they’ve managed to build a car that is perfectly suited to Verstappen’s driving style, it seems to be nearly undrivable for anyone else behind the wheel.
Over the past two seasons, not one of Verstappen’s teammates (whether it’s Sergio Perez, Liam Lawson, or Yuki Tsunoda) has been able to consistently drive the car to its full potential. To me, this suggests that everything from car design to the upgrades and setups at Red Bull quite literally revolves around Max, while being extremely inconsiderate of their second driver’s performance.
Verstappen showed outstanding pace and was in the front running during all of qualifying, as he has consistently done all year, and would ultimately be starting behind both McLaren’s in P3. I wasn't very surprised that Piastri and Norris locked out the front row, but it was nice to see them have a little more competition for this race, and shows that the other teams are making good strides with their upgrades.
Tsunoda seemed to struggle a bit behind the wheel during qualifying, where he was knocked out in Q1 for only the second time since replacing Liam Lawson at Red Bull at the Japanese Grand Prix during Round 3. Tsunoda would have started from P20, but after making a few last minute adjustments to the vehicle, he would end up starting the Spanish Grand Prix from the pit lane instead.
Both Verstappen and Mercedes’ George Russell made a great start off of the line, immediately putting pressure on Norris and going three-wide down the straight into Turn 1. Verstappen was able to muscle his way past Norris as he defended against Russell's attack towards the inside, jumping the Red Bull up to P2 in the process.
Despite starting from the pits, Tsunoda did manage to have a decent drive throughout the race, but only made three legitimate overtakes on track that I noticed, and two of them were against Franco Colapinto in the BWT Alpine machine. All the other positions he gained were while his opponents were in the pits themselves, and from other drivers being forced to retire, which (despite the outright lack of pace) does show a good strategy plan and tire conservation by him and his team in my opinion.
Verstappen’s aggressiveness at the start seemed to take a tremendous toll on his tires, which saw him lose a considerable amount of pace and ultimately losing P2 to Norris on Lap 13. This saw him immediately dive into the pits for a fresh set of soft tires, but unfortunately, his race didn't really get any better from there.
Leclerc makes the overtake on Verstappen for P3 at the safety car restart of the Spanish GP. Source
The Red Bull veteran held on to P3 up until a safety car was deployed with less than 10 Laps to go, which is when he made his fourth, and final, pitstop of the race. Little did he know that all the team had left were a set of hard compound tires, leaving him at a massive disadvantage coming into the restart, which was clearly evident at the final turn.
A dramatic restart! 😱
— Formula 1 (@F1) June 1, 2025
This was a heart-in-mouth moment between Verstappen and Leclerc 👀#F1 #SpanishGP pic.twitter.com/xO8Qz3USJa
This temporary loss of control by Verstappen was enough to allow Leclerc (shown above) to jump into P3, and also started a pretty heated, yet very childish, clash between Verstappen and George Russell (shown below).
Drama in the closing stages of the race! 😱
— Formula 1 (@F1) June 1, 2025
Max Verstappen drops to P10 following a 10-second penalty for causing a collision with George Russell #F1 #SpanishGP pic.twitter.com/anhkyJ92pk
When asked about the incident with Verstappen in a post race interview, Russell stated that:
“It's something that I've seen numerous times in sim racing and on iRacing. Never have I seen it in a Formula 1 race.”
I thought that this statement was very fitting because Verstappen does compete on iRacing quite frequently, and has been known to stay up late before a race competing online.
According to the article sourced above, Verstappen is actually a part of the Team Redline professional sim racing team, and has his own high end sim racing rig installed in his F1 motorhome so he can, you guessed it, participate in sim racing tournaments no matter where his “full-time” career takes him.
I did think that statement was pretty comical coming from Russell though, given how he overtook Alex Albon off track in Monaco, and blatantly disregarded his engineer's instructions to give the position back. In my opinion, that was definitely a sim racing move if I've ever seen one, and the Drive Through penalty that he received was well deserved.
Either way, as a Sim Racer myself, I know how easy it is to become overwhelmingly frustrated, bump into your opponent after a back and forth skirmish down a straight, or overtake someone off track, but that shouldn't be acceptable at this level of racing. However, I do feel like this shows a lot about Max's character as both a F1 driver and as a sim racer, and the 10 second time penalty he received for his actions was a little too lenient.
He did end up receiving three penalty points on his FIA license as well, and is now one point away from getting a race ban, so he will have to keep his head down and his emotions under control for a little while until some of those points drop off.
After the penalty was added on to his time, Verstappen dropped from P5 to P10 overall, his worst finish of the season, resulting in only one point to add to his championship bid for the year. Tsunoda only managed to finish in P13, narrowly missing out on the points, which isn't a terrible result by any means since he started from the pits, but considering he was lapped by the front runners before the restart doesn't look so good on the newest addition to the Red Bull team.
This is also the closest that the Red Bull teammates have finished to each other all year, and it only took a 10 second penalty to get them that close! Honestly, it's just strange to see such a big gap between teammates, considering every other team's driver pairing finishes within 3 or 4 places of each other. Red Bull on the other hand is the only team to have one driver fighting for podiums, while the other is getting lapped by the top 10.
Personally, I believe that Red Bull is heading downhill at an alarming rate, which is really surprising to see in my opinion. I'm not an expert by any means, so I have no idea if they can bounce back from their recent struggles or not, but what is very clear is the fact that they need to stop building a vehicle suited only to Verstappen's driving style, and try to close the gap that has formed between their drivers.
With Round 10 of the 2025 Season taking place in Montreal for the Canadian Grand Prix, can Tsunoda unleash more pace to start fighting for the front, or will Red Bull continue to revolve around Verstappen even with Tsunoda suffering behind the wheel?
