The inaugural Madring grand prix was ok, the new venue offering some interesting aspects such as the long and banked turn 12 and testing high-speed sections between continuous and unrelenting walls and barriers. It all had a feeling of work in progress. We know they lost a lot of time in the build process with particularly bad weather, and as a temporary race track adjacent to the international airport, and effectively racing around the Madrid equivalent of the Birmingham NEC, it had its challenges.
The pitlane and paddock were simply vast, creating some logistical challenges for all and, much more importantly, the track layout was not conducive to overtaking, to say the least. As the cars swung at high speed from side to side through some of the more tortuous sections, and with a reasonably fast corner onto the not especially long pit straight, along with an energy dense layout meaning hybrid batteries would be replenished far more easily than on the four high speed and long straights just a week earlier in Monza, the only way to overtake was a highly risky lunge, or wait for rivals to make a mistake. It's not as challenging to overtake as Monaco, but not that far short either.
Given the extremely long pit lane which feeds back onto the inside of turn three, it took a lengthy 25 seconds to pit under green-flag conditions. However, under a virtual or actual safety car, due to the speeds and geography of the layout, there was a chunky 12-second advantage in pitting under the safety car while rivals are travelling much more slowly. And that decided who would win the race.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player With so little circuit knowledge, especially for Lando Norris who had missed virtually a full practice session with car gremlins, and for others who had had sizeable shunts along the way, this meant that all three available tyre compounds were represented on the grid. On the front row, pole sitter Norris, after a sensational qualifying lap, and fellow front-row sitter Kimi Antonelli had medium compounds. Max Verstappen was on soft compound tyres, like Lewis Hamilton.
Others like Charles Leclerc's Ferrari and George Russell's Mercedes were on the hard compound tyres. And that's how they set off. Norris got away reasonably well and aggressively covered off Antonelli.
The young Italian would fail to slow enough, and bypass both of the two early chicanes, hitting the throttle hard through the run-off areas. This meant he would clearly have to give back to Norris the lead he now had, but Verstappen read this very well, and using his speed, guile, and soft compound tyres, he would not let Antonelli simply hand the place back to Norris without helping himself to second place. However, in the melee early after the start, Verstappen too had a straight run through a chicane, in his view to avoid a shunt with Hamilton.
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