In Pictures: Spain 2020
There are few words to describe what Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton are doing in F1 but utter domination. If Valtteri Bottas had not done the fastest lap of the race, Hamilton would have positioned himself just one short from Jim Clark’s eight Grand Slams in F1, a record that has stood since 1965.
The 2020 Spanish Grand Prix was Lewis Hamilton’s 88th victory of his Formula One career, his fourth of the 2020 season and fifth at the Spanish GP. Also on lap 23 of the race, the Mercedes F1 Team reached 25,000 laps raced in F1, and on lap 37, Kimi Raikkonen broke the record for longest distance covered in Grand Prix racing (83,847km), and by the end of the Grand Prix, the record for most laps in F1 history (16,845). No one has raced farther than the Iceman!
With his 7th place, Sebastian Vettel became only the second driver in history to surpass the 3,000 points mark with a tally of 3,001.
QUOTES FROM THE PODIUM
““This feels absolutely incredible. I was just in a daze out there, I didn’t even know it was the last lap in the end, that’s how in the zone I was. I can’t remember the last time I felt like that. It was really special and a real surprise after our recent tire problems. We brought all of our learnings from the previous weekend into this one and that enabled us to do well today. A fantastic effort from everyone in the team, I’m so grateful for all their hard work and for continuing to push, so a huge thank you to everyone at the factories. I got the perfect start and then it was all about tire management. It was so hot out there and very demanding, but I was just focused on protecting the tires and bringing the car home. What an incredible result.””
““It’s a great result for us to split the two Mercedes cars today after they have been so quick and I’m very happy with that. Overall, it’s been another strong weekend with a good amount of points which we should be happy with. Second is of course good but that’s not why we are here, we are here to win so you can never be fully satisfied unless you do that. At the moment we’re in-between the two Mercedes cars and of course we’d like to push Lewis harder but you have to be realistic as they still have the faster car.””
““Of course, this is very disappointing, I’m not here to finish third. The start was really the key point for my race – it just wasn’t good enough, so I lost a few positions. We’ll have to look into what happened, but ultimately the guys behind me got a good tow and were able to overtake me. On a track like this, where overtaking in the race is so difficult and track position is everything, your race becomes very tricky if you lose places. So, I think with a different start the end result would have been very different. Overall, it wasn’t the race I had hoped for, but sometimes that’s just the way it goes. We’ll analyze everything from the race and move onto the next one.””
2020 Spanish Grand Prix Poster by Salracing