The "shock" that gave Mercedes its edge back in Spain

Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes didn't automatically think they'd win the 2020 Spanish Grand Prix - and certainly not in the manner in which they ultimately did. One week on from Max Verstappen's stunning victory for Red Bull in the 70th Anniversary GP, the reigning champion squad had arrived at the Barcelona track eager to make up for its defeat and looking to put the lessons it had learned as a result into practice.

Indeed, the team hadn't taken a day off - according to team boss Toto Wolff - as they sought to understand the manner of their first defeat of the season "in the office", despite the punishing 2020 schedule meaning the Spanish race was the end of a second triple header, with a third looming.

It was always going to be a somewhat different story this time, but Mercedes was nevertheless unnerved by Verstappen's pace in Friday practice. The long run data-gathering that takes place in FP2 can never give a full prediction of what will happen in the race, but Verstappen's 0.291-second per lap advantage over Hamilton on the medium C2 tyre made Mercedes believe he was a real threat once again. Wolff went as far as saying he was the favourite for victory.

PLUS: Why F1 may get another Mercedes/Red Bull showdown in Spain

In a similar way to the previous event, the start of the race unfolded pretty perfectly for Verstappen. Valtteri Bottas seemed to react well to the lights going out from second on the grid, but felt "Lewis had a tiny bit better reaction". Then, as he later explained, a small amount of wheelspin in the second phase of the getaway cost him dearly.

Verstappen got alongside the Mercedes and picked up the critical tow from Hamilton's car on the long run to the first corner, which cost Bottas what he had thought ahead of the race would be his best chance to challenge his team-mate for the win. And it got worse from there, as Racing Point's Lance Stroll launched so well from fifth he immediately passed his team-mate Sergio Perez and then got such a strong tow from Verstappen and Bottas he dived down the inside of the right-hand first corner.

Bottas knew he was "sandwiched", with Verstappen sweeping into second and Stroll - thinking "I'm not sitting here in fourth, I'll get past a Mercedes for a few laps" - muscling his way by on the inside to take third.

Verstappen chased after Hamilton, who had made a serene getaway from pole and had a 1.492s lead at the end of the first tour. From here, the gap between the leaders initially remained reasonably steady, with Verstappen telling his Red Bull team that Hamilton was circulating "super-slow". But the leader was doing so with good reason, which all came back to the tyre punishment Mercedes had endured the week before.

"Obviously we had a good start," Hamilton said later, "but, balancing the gap between Max and I, [was just about] trying to gauge where they were. Because we didn't know how far they could go and how much wear they would have compared to us - in the last race it was much better."

And so, the two leaders toured around at fairly sedate pace in the 1m24s, while Bottas took until lap five of 66 to get back past Stroll and into third, using DRS to shoot by on the main straight. Then, on lap 10, Hamilton turned the screw. The world champion's 1m23.618s on that tour was the start of a series of fastest laps, and Verstappen couldn't match him.

"I had much better deg today than I had through FP1 and FP2 and I think that's what ultimately made the difference" Lewis Hamilton

Over the next 10 laps, Hamilton was able to stay in the lower half of the 1m23s (other than a 1m22.767s on lap 13 and a slip to 1m23.505s on lap 19), while Verstappen couldn't, fading to the 1m24s by the time of his first stop on lap 21. That meant the gap between them by then had grown to more than seven seconds - and at the same time it was giving Mercedes more strategy options, as the team was not seeing a high rate of wear on the softs all the top 10 starters were running when the lights went out.

"We didn't know how the tyres would behave and how long we needed to go," explained Wolff. "So there wasn't really any push lap at the beginning, and we were able to extend the first stint on the soft."

This surprised Hamilton, who said the tyre behaviour in the opening stint was "a real shock".

"We were not expecting tyre performance to be as it was today," he added. "On my side, I had planned to manage the tyres as I did but sometimes you go with that plan and it doesn't work out. Sometimes you have more deg than you thought, but I had much better deg today than I had through FP1 and FP2 and I think that's what ultimately made the difference."

In fact, Hamilton's opening stint went so well, he sailed past his target lap for his first stop, which Pirelli had suggested could have been as early as lap 16 on the soft-medium-medium strategy Hamilton and Verstappen both employed. He and Mercedes even briefly considered trying a one-stop strategy. As it was, the team called him in two tours after Verstappen.

"I mean, the guys don't know - I think I know," Hamilton cryptically replied when Autosport asked how he had been able to extend his opening stint. "It was just in the management and the strategy that I chose in terms of when and where to push. How I was able to implement that was not necessarily what the team initially thought that that was what we needed to do. But it was the execution that was just on point."

The second stint was remarkably similar to the opening phase. The gap between Hamilton and Verstappen when the former rejoined after his first stop was 4.272s, which was largely down to a slow left-rear wheel change that meant Hamilton was stationary for 4.3s when Red Bull had serviced Verstappen in 1.9s.

This had critically got Verstappen back out just ahead of the Racing Point pair that were already a pitstop adrift of the three leaders, who would go on to lap everyone up to and including fourth-placed Stroll by the finish.

The gap remained stable between laps 24 and 30, actually coming down to a low of 3.488s, before, again, Hamilton was able to pick up his pace - easing to a 1m23.007s on the 31st tour. Verstappen, again, could not live with the pace, especially when Hamilton then moved into the 1m22s for a run of 16 laps (that included two in the 1m21s). Given in Friday practice Verstappen had the edge on the medium rubber the two leaders had taken at their opening pitstops, this was the moment that the race really appeared to be lost for Red Bull.

As for Verstappen, he had recognised that his chances of challenging Hamilton for the win were over way before then.

"Towards the middle of that first stint when Lewis started to pick up the pace I couldn't really follow so I knew that that was it for today," he explained. "[I thought] 'I'm just going to manage my race from now on and try to make the best of it'."

Hamilton brought his advantage to bear as he opened up his lead across the second stint, with Verstappen's attention turning back towards the recovering Bottas, which meant he pitted on lap 41, leaving Hamilton to his relentless 1m22s. Apart from the first pitstop, everything was going right for the leader.

"Even when I was catching traffic I was gaining time rather than losing time, which is never the case," said Hamilton.

The Briton had enough in hand that he didn't need to worry about covering Verstappen's second stop and he remained out for another nine tours before coming in for his own second and final stop. Here there had been a moment of apparent confusion, as Mercedes had wanted Hamilton to come in and take the softs for his final stint, such was that tyre's performance in the opening part of the race. But he overruled the team, which meant he came in on lap 50 to get the medium tyres he wanted.

"It was the logical choice to go on the soft for the last remaining 15 or 20-odd laps, nothing really indicated that that tyre wouldn't perform," said Wolff. "So that was not a mistake from the team. On the contrary, the soft is the quickest tyre.

"In terms of not making any mistakes, delivering lap-upon-lap-upon-lap, I was in a perfect zone and that's the zone that I dream of being in" Lewis Hamilton

"But the call that he made is impressive, because he was adamant to get onto the medium. What I'm really happy about is the open conversation and transparency that we have between the driver and the team."

From there, the only real danger Hamilton faced was a piece of debris from Romain Grosjean's Haas, which had flicked off as he bounced over the Turn 2 runoff speed bumps following his late clash at Turn 1 with Antonio Giovinazzi (which the stewards later deemed a racing incident as "Giovinazzi had substantially completed the overtake on the inside at Turn 1 and had the right to the line").

"It was right by where my right-front tyre would normally go," said Hamilton. "It was a big flap. And luckily, in a split second, I managed to put it underneath the car - my wheels either side."

Given the suspicions that debris had played a part in his near-race-losing puncture at Silverstone only two weeks previously, which Pirelli has since dismissed as a factor in that incident, it looked like another perilous moment for Hamilton. But inside the cockpit he was largely unconcerned, and indeed ran clear to the flag to take his fourth win of the 2020 season by 24.177s. After Bottas had been quickest in FP1, Hamilton had topped every subsequent session and led every lap of the race on his way to taking his 88th career victory.

Beyond the facts of the performance, what was really notable about Hamilton's latest remarkable victory was his reaction to his own magnificence.

"In the chase for perfection and being in that zone, you could be very close but still be slightly out and not be quite in your perfect rhythm," he reflected in the post-race press conference. "But for whatever reason, today, I don't know, I can't quite pinpoint why, but today I felt like I was in the most... it was like a clear zone.

"The clarity that I had today while I was driving was... I'm sure I've had it before, but not always. I don't even know how to really get into that zone, it's hard to say what helps you get into that space.

"Of course I will evaluate this weekend and the feeling today, but honestly I felt fantastic in the car. It was physically challenging but in terms of not making any mistakes, delivering lap-upon-lap-upon-lap, I was in a perfect zone and that's the zone that I dream of being in."

That helped explain the "daze" Hamilton had spoken of once he climbed from his car in parc ferme, and why he was unaware he was on the final lap as he thought only of his team-mate's late quest to get the fastest lap. He had found the almost mythical 'form' elite sportspeople speak of in the almost reverential terms Hamilton uses above.

Where everything is on such a high plain, things feel, look and react differently - for the better. The grinding chore becomes serene - and that's what Hamilton was last Sunday. Nothing (bar a bit of Haas bodywork) and nobody could touch him. His description of his feelings inevitably drew comparisons with his hero Ayrton Senna's qualifying performance at the 1988 Monaco GP, but Hamilton downplayed such comparisons.

"It's not an out of body experience," he said. "The zone that I was able to get into and stay in for a long, long, long time was... I've just got to evaluate how I got there, because it was evident in the gap that I added, it was evident in how I managed the tyres. I'm always talking about perfect races. That was one of them."

Verstappen's second stop had come when he was just 1.61s in front of Bottas, who immediately upped his pace on his 18-lap-old mediums. This resulted in a 1m21.857s and a gain of 1.477s on his previous lap, followed by two laps in the 1m22s, but from there he was not able to close further as Verstappen's fresh mediums brought him into the 1m22s and eventually the 1m21s.

Mercedes therefore left Bottas out until lap 48, when he then came in for the second time and went back onto the soft tyre. Given the medium was the best race tyre and the soft had surprised Mercedes with its performance this seemed perplexing - as Bottas now had a 7.124s gap to close - but he felt "if I went for the mediums, there would be no chance unless he made a mistake or something".

"That was the absolute maximum we could have achieved today, Max has got everything he can out of the car" Christian Horner

"Because there was just not enough time delta," Bottas added. "But in the end the soft wasn't quite good enough. You can't really push that tyre, it just overheats. I think the main opportunity I had personally would have been just before Max stopped. There were a couple of points that I was pretty close, but we didn't take those."

By lap 63 it was clear the gap between the pair wasn't going to come down enough and Mercedes turned its attention to the fastest lap. Both Hamilton and Bottas gave it everything they had, with Bottas coming out on top by 0.072s. But then Mercedes opted to pit him again with two laps to go and he returned to the mediums, blasting to a 1m18.183s fastest lap - 1.567s quicker than his previous best - on the final tour.

After the high of defeating F1's crushingly dominant leading squad a week earlier, Verstappen's second place - 20.575s clear of Bottas at the flag - naturally felt like a disappointment. His pace in practice had only intensified expectations and, where the previous week his radio messages had been light and determined, his chatter had been strained and frustrated from midway through the first stint, when he'd realised defeat was coming this time around.

But to beat a Mercedes W11 in essentially a straight fight from the start of the second stint - where Bottas's deficit considering the tyre life he'd had to expend getting back by Stroll was erased - this was a good result for Verstappen and Red Bull.

"That was the absolute maximum we could have achieved today, Max has got everything he can out of the car," Red Bull team boss Christian Horner told Sky Sports F1 before he dashed off to catch his flight home. "To split the Mercedes who had a quicker car than us, yeah we couldn't have got more than that."

By losing out to Verstappen, Bottas saw his points gap to second place in the standings climb three more points to six against the Dutchman. But it is the 43-point gap to Hamilton that concerns him even more.

"It's way too big," he said after explaining Verstappen's relentless pace meant he was "not really surprised not to be able to get close".

He concluded: "I can see again the championship drifting away." And with Hamilton in such perfect form there's only one place its heading right now.