MOTORSPORT: Hamilton easily, Dan struggles

Lewis Hamilton has extended his lead in the Formula 1 driver’s world championship with a flawless victory in the Spanish Grand Prix.

Sadly, our man Daniel Ricciardo couldn’t quite clamber into the points from 13th grid slot, finishing 11th in his Renault RS 2.0.

For Hamilton the main threat was getting passed on the long drag down to the first corner, but he made a great start from pole position and controlled the 66-lap race from there to win by more than 20 seconds.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was second after qualifying third and sweeping around Hamilton’s Mercedes-Benz teammate Valtteri Bottas in turn one.

From there, the Dutchman was also unchallenged in a race where extreme heat forced everyone into tyre conservation mode.

Bottas dropped back as far as fourth before re-passing fast-starting Racing Point driver Lance Stroll. But fastest lap and the bottom step of the podium was scant consolation for the Finn, who conceded post-race the F1 title was “drifting away”.

Hamilton, the six-time and defending champion, scored his 88th win and a record 156th podium and now leads Verstappen in the title chase by 37 points, with Bottas a further six points back.

The gulf from the top of F1 to the rest was emphasised starkly in Barcelona. In qualifying trim the Benzes were 0.8sec clear of Verstappen and in the race the top three finishers lapped the rest of the rest.

If not for Verstappen’s ability to wring the maximum from the Red Bull, Mercedes-Benz’s domination of the championship would be complete.

Traditional challenger Ferrari is nowhere, enduring its worst ever Spanish GP qualifying with Charles Leclerc in ninth and Sebastien Vettel 11th. The Frenchman was the race’s sole retirement with an electrical issue while the four-time world champion used a single-stop strategy to finish seventh.

Ricciardo tried the same thing after missing Q3 by just 0.03sec. He then missed a top 10 race finish by a second.

While the carsales global ambassador said all the right things post-race, team principal Cyril Abiteboul admitted what everyone already knows – the car isn’t good enough.

“Barcelona is a good test when it comes to the aerodynamic efficiency of the car, so it says something about the areas we have to improve. We’ve made some steps in the winter, but not enough to be on the leading side of the midfield here,” he said.

“We have a clear area of focus and we will be pushing to accelerate the next upgrades on the car.”

Stroll ended up fourth, taking advantage of teammate Sergio Perez’s five-second penalty for ignoring blue flags when Hamilton was coming up to lap him. Spaniard Carlos Sainz was sixth for McLaren.

Australian fortunes were much better in Formula 3, where Oscar Piastri and Alex Peroni scored a 1-2 in Sunday’s race, where the top 10 grid order is reversed.

Piastri, brilliantly, was in the lead by turn four from fifth on the grid, while Peroni eventually quelled pole-man, Italian Matteo Nannini in an intense tussle for second. In Saturday’s race Piastri finished sixth and Peroni eighth.

Piastri has now fought back to within one point of series leader and Prema teammate, Logan Sargeant. Peroni is eighth on the table.

The other Australians in the event finished further down the order. Jack Doohan went 14-15 and Calan Williams 25-14.

F1 and F3 resume at Spa in Belgium on August 28-30.