Five winners, five losers: Spanish Grand Prix
- Peter Johnson
- Jun 9
- 9 min read
Written by Peter Johnson, Edited by Pranav Sharma
The Spanish Grand Prix had its fair share of controversial moments and surprise points scorers. Who will remember the weekend fondly and who will be keen to move on?
Winner - Oscar Piastri
After a barren spell of two whole races without a victory, Oscar Piastri was back in imperious form in Barcelona to claim his fifth win in 2025.
The young Australian took the most dominant pole position of the season on Saturday afternoon, eclipsing teammate Lando Norris by over two tenths of a second.
Piastri kept his nose clean at the start of the race, building up a commanding advantage after a sluggish start from Norris left him stuck for several laps behind Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.
The gap at the front did come down, but there was never any doubt that Piastri had the race firmly under control and even with the help of a late safety car, Norris never looked likely to usurp him.
Given Piastri’s relentless consistency and exceptional speed over the first nine races, it almost beggars belief that he only holds a ten-point lead in the Driver’s Championship, almost entirely down to his one mistake in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
That incident remains proof that the Championship could yet be decided by one mistake here or there, but it seems almost unfathomable on current form that Piastri will falter so dramatically again.
Winner - Nico Hülkenberg
While Nico Hülkenberg’s seventh-placed finish at the Australian Grand Prix may have been aided by a rather large dose of good fortune, there was absolutely nothing lucky about his fifth-placed finish in Spain.
The incident-packed, rain-soaked curtain-raiser in which the German picked up his first points of the season masked the real pace of his Sauber, which was to be brutally exposed over the seven races that followed.
In fact, Hülkenberg’s twelfth place in Imola was the closest the team had come to adding to their points tally before the Spanish Grand Prix weekend.
Arriving in Barcelona, though, the Sauber looked like a different beast in the hands of both drivers.
On Saturday, it was Gabriel Bortoleto’s turn to shine as he recorded a career-best twelfth place in Qualifying, but his more experienced teammate came to the fore on Sunday.
Having started 15th, by the beginning of Lap 2, Hülkenberg was already running in the points. By the end of the safety car period on Lap 60, the German was eighth, making light work of Isack Hadjar in the RB before, to the surprise of absolutely everybody, swooping past the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton into Turn 1 to take sixth place on the road.
While a post-race promotion to fifth place following Max Verstappen’s penalty was fortuitous, there can be absolutely no asterisk against the Sauber’s pace this weekend.
Whether it is a sign of greater things to come is an impossible question to answer at this stage, but at the hands of Hülkenberg, the Sauber was legitimately faster than both the Aston Martin and the Alpine, who both dropped a place in the Constructors’ Championship to the Swiss outfit despite scoring points themselves.
Winner - Isack Hadjar
What a season Isack Hadjar is having!
The young Frenchman was already the second-highest finishing Red Bull driver at five of the first eight races this season, despite being the only one of the four not to have a stab at the top team. He went one better in Spain, out-scoring even Max Verstappen following the Dutchman’s penalty.
Over the last two race weekends, Hadjar alone has scored more points (14) than both Red Bull drivers combined (13). He has also convincingly outperformed his teammate, Liam Lawson, leading their Qualifying head-to-head 6-1 and beating the New Zealander in every race.
Furthermore, a seventh-placed finish in Spain yielded a third points-scoring outing in as many weeks for Hadjar as he leapt to ninth in the Drivers’ standings.
Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner weighed in after the race: “I think he’s been the most outstanding rookie. He’s exceeded all of our expectations.
“He’s been fast, consistent and constantly delivered. His future, if he keeps performing as he is, is very, very bright.”
Seizing every passing race weekend as a new opportunity to impress, the image of the broken young Frenchman being comforted by Anthony Hamilton in the Melbourne paddock back in March feels a very distant memory.
Winner - Fernando Alonso
While Aston Martin may have fallen behind Sauber in the Constructors’ Championship, Fernando Alonso managed to get a huge monkey off his back by scoring his first points of the season in front of his home crowd.
An uncharacteristic unforced error at Turn 5 in the opening stint of the race saw the veteran Spaniard lose a bunch of places, and at one stage, he ran right down towards the back of the field with his compatriot Carlos Sainz.
It looked to be a disappointing afternoon for the Spanish supporters until the safety car on Lap 55 brought Alonso right back into play. Sitting in 13th place and armed with a brand-new set of soft tyres, he saw off Esteban Ocon, Gabriel Bortoleto and Liam Lawson to break into the points-scoring positions for the first time in 2025.
Another beneficiary of Max Verstappen’s penalty, which doubled his points haul from one to two, Alonso finally left a Grand Prix weekend with a result his performances this season have merited, especially after falling agonisingly short in both Imola and Monaco.
Winner - Pierre Gasly
While his eighth-placed finish may have been overshadowed by Nico Hülkenberg’s heroic P5 and home hero Fernando Alonso’s popular ninth place, not to mention Max Verstappen’s antics, Pierre Gasly quietly assembled a very solid weekend for Alpine.
Sneaking into Q3 on Saturday, Gasly lined up on the fourth row for Sunday’s Grand Prix and truly held his own throughout the race.
While a mixture of tyre strategies muddied the picture, the Frenchman looked on track for a solid points-scoring finish throughout. He may have been one of the drivers to benefit most from the safety car, trading ageing medium tyres for a fresh set of softs in a free pit stop, but his pace was genuine.
With Sauber and Aston Martin also having impressive weekends, Gasly’s four points were not enough to prevent Alpine dropping to the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship, but with a second points finish under his belt this season, he will surely feel there is more to come.
Losers — Max Verstappen
By failing to make the top three in either Monaco or Spain, Max Verstappen went back-to-back Grands Prix without finishing on the podium for just the fourth time since the start of 2021.
His eventual tenth-placed finish also marked his worst result in a race he completed since the 2017 Italian Grand Prix.
While this in itself is hardly cause for concern for the Dutchman, the way in which the final seven laps of his race in Barcelona transpired surely is.
The World Champion’s audible frustration at being fitted with new hard tyres for the safety car restart led directly to a catalogue of scarcely believable moments once the race resumed. Within just a few hundred metres of the restart, Verstappen saved his car from a huge moment of oversteer, had a side-by-side collision with Charles Leclerc and took evasive action to avoid a coming together with George Russell.
While the FIA would later rule that there was no need for him to do so, the irate Dutchman was instructed by his team to allow Russell through.
What happened next was truly remarkable, as Verstappen, who appeared to slow down at Turn 5, collided with his rival’s Mercedes. On-board footage eventually revealed beyond any reasonable doubt that he had deliberately initiated the contact.
Picking up a ten-place time penalty and three penalty points on his licence, the World Champion must survive the next two Grands Prix in Canada and Austria scot-free, or else he will receive a one-race suspension.
Loser - Lance Stroll
In a surprising development on Saturday evening, Aston Martin announced that Lance Stroll would sit out Sunday’s Grand Prix following medical guidance.
An announcement from the team said that the Canadian "had been experiencing pain in his hand and wrist", possibly related to an operation he underwent in 2023 after breaking both of his wrists in a cycling accident.
Meanwhile, several sources revealed that Stroll had damaged equipment and swore at team members following his Q2 elimination, in an outburst resembling his actions after Qualifying at the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix.
With no cameras capturing the alleged incident, however, an Aston Martin spokesperson said simply that “Lance was upset”, while another source from within the team denied that anything was broken or that Stroll had sworn at his engineers.
What is more certain, however, is that the Canadian’s struggles in Spain are likely to have ramifications for his home race next weekend, with anticipated surgery on his wrist calling his participation in Montreal into question.
Loser - Williams
The Spanish Grand Prix was just the second time this season, after Bahrain, that Williams have walked away from a weekend empty-handed.
In truth, points looked to be a long shot from the start of the race, as Alex Albon sustained front wing damage at Turn One, necessitating a pit stop soon after. He would then damage his new wing in a tussle with Liam Lawson several laps later, picking up a ten-second penalty and eventually retiring from the race.
Carlos Sainz, meanwhile, was unable to make significant inroads from his lowly 17th-placed start, crossing the line in 14th and failing to score points for the first time ever in his home Grand Prix.
Loser - Lewis Hamilton
The story of Lewis Hamilton’s first nine races for Ferrari has been that for every step forward, there have immediately been two steps back.
First came the sprint race victory in China, instantly followed by a disqualification from the Grand Prix on Sunday and a lowly seventh place at the following race in Japan.
Next came the Bahrain Grand Prix, when an upbeat Hamilton said he felt he was finally getting his head around his new Ferrari machinery. What followed was a “horrible” weekend in Jeddah seven days later, where the Briton finished over 30 seconds behind teammate Charles Leclerc, and a Q2 elimination in Miami at the following event.
This cycle has once again repeated itself after an encouraging Sunday at Imola, when the seven-time World Champion climbed from 12th to fourth during the race. We have since seen a publicly frustrated Hamilton struggle in Monaco, with his frustration turning to absolute despair a week later in Spain.
An utterly dejected Hamilton told the assembled media after the race in Barcelona that he had learned “absolutely nothing” from the latest trio of races in Italy and admitted that he just wanted to go home.
With a trip to Canada, the site of his first ever victory in Formula One, on the horizon, he is surely due a more positive weekend.
Loser - Andrea Kimi Antonelli
What started off so well for Andrea Kimi Antonelli has turned into a miniature nightmare in recent weeks.
The Italian rookie achieved points finishes in five of his first six races, but came away from the recent triple header empty-handed, with retirements at Imola and in Barcelona and an 18th-placed finish in Monaco.
With the arguable exception of Monaco, when he could potentially have avoided Mercedes’ disastrous race strategy by not crashing in Qualifying, this blip in results is in no way his own fault.
His other two no-scores in Italy and Spain were due to engine failures, both occurring while he was running in the points. Despite the obvious potential implications for the Championship, this illustrates grave concern for Mercedes, whose power unit for so many years seemed indestructible.
Don’t forget George Russell’s power unit failure in Monaco Qualifying either, or Fernando Alonso’s Mercedes-powered Aston grinding to a halt during the race.
It is fair to say that these are worrying times for Mercedes, and young Antonelli has so far borne the brunt of the manufacturer’s power unit troubles.
With some surprise points scorers and controversial incidents, who enjoyed their weekend in Barcelona and who couldn’t wait to go home?
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