Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari have delivered an brilliant performance with a gutsy strategy call and a little help by the VSC to win the Grand Prix of Barcelona-Catalunya. An emotional 41-year old Hamilton was joined on the podium by George Russell and Lando Norris.

With high ambient and track temperatures, and the tyres being a step softer than last year, the Spanish Grand Prix was set to become a strategical one, and a matter of who would best be able to judge the tyre degradation, and manage it.

Already at the start there were important differences with Hamilton and Verstappen going for soft tyres opposite to the mediums on the Mercedes cars. Hulkenberg was also on softs with the rest of the top ten on mediums. The only two on hard tyres were the Aston Martin duo.

The formation lap went without issues, resulting in a clean start of the Spanish Grand Prix with 21 cars on the grid and Alonso starting from the pitlane after numerous car changes following a disappointing qualifying result for the home hero.

When the lights went out, Russell had a great getaway, leaving Hamilton with no choice but to follow him in the slipstream and despite the soft tyres see Russell sprint away. Antonelli held on to third ahead of Norris and Verstappen. Piastri gained a position into 6th while Leclerc moved up into 7th, then Lawson, Hulkenberg and Lindblad breaking into the top 10 after lamenting missing out on Q3 in yesterday's qualifying.

On lap 5 Stroll was already in the pit, clearly not for a scheduled tyre change. The Canadian was pulled rearwards into the garage.

At the same time Leclerc only just managed to avoid crashing into the back of Piastri at the end of the straight, surprised by Piastri's early braking. Leclerc kept it on the track though and two laps later was in a similar position. Piastri defended the inside line for Turn 1, compromising Turn 1 and thereby enabling Leclerc to exit Turn 2 faster and sweep past round the outside in Turn 3. The move gave Leclerc wings that would soon bring him in striking distance of Verstappen.

Hadjar had done a similar feat a lap eaerlier by overtaking Colapinto, a move he soon followed up by overtaking Lindblad. Hadjar had a very poor start but steadily worked his way back up.

The first regular pit was for Hamilton, pitting from second place to switch his softs to a fresh set of hards. Hamilton rejoined the track in 7th place, 11 seconds behind Piastri. Lawson pitted on the same lap while Russell and Verstappen stopped on the next lap. Russell emerged back out in 5th, just a second ahead of Hamilton while Verstappen was 9th.

At the rear, Alonso got away from last place by overtaking Bottas for 20th on lap 13. Bottas would be called in 4 laps later to retire his car.

Norris and Hulkenberg pitted yet another lap later, both changing to hards. Antonelli and Piastri stopped yet another lap later, bringing Leclerc into the lead. That didn't last long though as Leclerc's pace was more than a second a lap slower than what Hamilton managed, so after only two laps in the lead he pitted too, returning to the track on hard tyres, 8s behind Verstappen and 2s ahead of Piastri.

By lap 20, everybody bar Alonso had made a stop, with all but two on the hard tyres. Only Verstappen and Lindblad opted for medium compound tyres for their second stints.

That stint saw Antonelli close the gap to Hamilton, Leclerc reducing the deficit to Verstappen even faster and Lawson leading Hulkenberg and Gasly on a prescribed pace after Colapinto was asked to let Gasly past.

At the end of lap 27 Hamilton was again the first to take the second stop, this time switching to mediums. Hamilton was starting to lose time on Russell and didn't have much on Antonelli anymore. He rejoined the track behind Piastri with blistering pace. He was 1.7s faster than Russell on that out-lap and quickly passed Piastri at Turn 3 the next lap.

Verstappen switched to hard tyres one lap later as Hamilton closed to 3.3 seconds of his teammate.

Up in front, Antonelli was rapidly closing in on Russell as the two Mercedes were battling traffic. When they got through, Antonelli was just 0.5s behind of the race leader while Hamilton followed at 15 seconds. Leclerc kindly moved aside to let his teammate pass as soon as possible.

The next lap Russell had to defend the inside into Turn 1, but he held on. The next lap more or less the same, but as the Mercedes duo stayed close to one another, Hamilton really pushed on and kept on going a second and a half a lap faster.

By lap 35, the Mercedes are told to not waste time fighting and keep the advantage to Norris up. Norris meanwhile pitted at the end of that lap, a wonderful present for Hamilton as he didn't have to worry about wasting time trying to overtake the McLaren.

At the end of lap 36 Russell then pitted at a time when Antonelli was just 1 seconds behind and Hamilton 5 seconds. Antonelli got pitted another lap later, bringing Hamilton in the lead for the first time in this race. Mercedes had no option as they wanted to cover Norris, which they narrowly did, bringing Antonelli out again in 4th, less than a second ahead of the McLaren.

As the drivers started lap 39, Hamilton had 15.2s on Leclerc. Russell followed 1.3s further down with Antonelli another 1.7s behind. Norris was up next closely behind with Verstappen an extra 6 seconds further back.

By the end of that lap Russell overtook Leclerc with the latter following that up by diving into the pitlane.

Moments later, Alonso parked in Turn 9, bringing a Virtual Safety Car period when Hamilton was only in Turn 3. Lucky for Ferrari, the VSC period lasted long enough for Hamilton to do a cheap pitstop. The Briton pitted and returned on track still in the lead moments before the VSC ended.

At the start of lap 43, Hamilton was 2.8 seconds ahead of Russell with 5 laps fresher tyres than the Mercedes driver. Having been anxiously communicating with his engineer during his soft stint, curious whether his pace was good enough, this VSC and this new situation surely must have given him a major boost.

Hamilton breezed away from the cars behind him in seemingly effortless fashion. Second to fourth meanwhile were bunching up together. Antonelli got within a second of his teammate while the Italian was just one more warning at Turn 9 track limits away from a 5-second penalty. The Italian reported he had much more pace, triggering a message to Russell to pick up his pace.

Antonelli really kept on pushing Russell, unfazed by the possibility of a penalty and not troubled by the fact he kept on leaning his head against the headrest through the high speed Turn 3. At the end of lap 60 Antonelli suddenly was extremely close, giving him the ability to make a pass through Turn 1. Russell tried to fight back but at Turn 4 it was clear there was no more grip to fight back.

Half a lap later though, Antonelli slowed down and parked his car. And just when he stopped, Leclerc was seen slowing down as well, first off at Turn 2 and then reporting a steering issue. As the VSC was activated to recover Antonelli's Mercedes, Leclerc returned to the pits to retire. That's the 6th retirement of the day.

That was effectively the end of the race as the VSC lasted until Lewis Hamilton crossed the finish line, winning his first race for Ferrari.