| 2017 Spanish Grand Prix | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Race 5 of 20 in the2017 Formula One World Championship
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 Layout of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya | |||||
| Race details[1] | |||||
| Date | 14 May 2017 (2017-05-14) | ||||
| Official name | Formula 1 Gran Premio de EspañaPirelli 2017[2][3] | ||||
| Location | Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya Montmeló,Spain | ||||
| Course | Permanent racing facility | ||||
| Course length | 4.655 km (2.892 miles) | ||||
| Distance | 66 laps, 307.104 km (190.825 miles) | ||||
| Weather | Sunny | ||||
| Attendance | 177,984[4] | ||||
| Pole position | |||||
| Driver | Mercedes | ||||
| Time | 1:19.149 | ||||
| Fastest lap | |||||
| Driver |  Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | |||
| Time | 1:23.593 on lap 64 | ||||
| Podium | |||||
| First | Mercedes | ||||
| Second | Ferrari | ||||
| Third | Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer | ||||
Lap leaders | |||||
The2017 Spanish Grand Prix (formally known as theFormula 1 Gran Premio de España Pirelli 2017) was aFormula One motor race held on 14 May 2017 at theCircuit de Barcelona-Catalunya inMontmeló,Spain. The race was the fifth round of the2017 FIA Formula One World Championship and marked the forty-seventh running of the Spanish Grand Prix as a World Championship event since the inaugural season in1950, and the twenty-seventh time that a World Championship round had been held at Catalunya.
Both of Friday's practice sessions finished with an identical top six on the timesheet, withLewis Hamilton heading the list, his Mercedes teammateValtteri Bottas second and the Ferraris ofKimi Räikkönen andSebastian Vettel third and fourth respectively. Next came the Red Bulls, withMax Verstappen fifth in both sessions andDaniel Ricciardo sixth.[5][6] McLaren Honda's run of poor reliability continued, with home favouriteFernando Alonso sitting out most of the first session after his car suffered a major engine failure during his first lap.[7] Alonso was able to take part in the second session, but had to wait until almost half an hour into it while his team was completing an engine change.[8]
The third practice session, on Saturday morning, finished with Räikkönen quickest, Vettel second, and Hamilton third.[9] Bottas was fourth after his engine suffered a water leak and he was only able to run towards the end of the session, once Mercedes had changed the engine.[10] The Red Bull pair of Verstappen and Ricciardo were again fifth and sixth.
Lewis Hamilton claimed pole position from Sebastian Vettel by 0.051 seconds. Vettel was initially ordered to stop the car on track for an engine problem in Q1 but he questioned the decision and the problem was resolved and allowed him to continue. Valtteri Bottas and Kimi Räikkönen filled up the second row followed by the Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo. Fernando Alonso delivered a shocking result to get his underpowered McLaren into Q3 and then qualifying as the best of the rest behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull. The top ten was filled out bySergio Pérez,Felipe Massa andEsteban Ocon.
Vettel had a better start than Hamilton and led into the first corner. An incident with Bottas, Räikkönen and Verstappen meant that both Räikkönen and Verstappen retired with suspension damage and Bottas was left slightly handicapped. The incident also caused Felipe Massa to obtain a puncture, while also forcing Alonso off the track, leading them to eventually finish the race outside of the points. This left the top ten as Vettel, Hamilton, Bottas, Ricciardo, Pérez, Ocon, Hülkenberg, Magnussen, Sainz and Grosjean. Hamilton stuck with Vettel for fourteen laps, when Ferrari decided to cover off the undercut by pitting for softs. Hamilton meanwhile stayed out on track for seven extra laps and rejoined around seven seconds behind Vettel on the medium tyres. Vettel lost around four seconds to Hamilton trying to get past Bottas, who hadn't pitted yet, before completing a spectacular overtake on Bottas.
With just over thirty laps remaining, the McLaren ofVandoorne drove into Massa and retired with suspension damage, earning him a grid penalty at the next race. The Virtual Safety Car (VSC) was brought out so his car could be removed and this allowed Hamilton to pit for the faster soft tyres, while not losing much time to Vettel due to the limited speed. Vettel then pitted for the slower medium tyres as was required, just when the VSC had finished, resulting in Vettel coming out of the pitlane alongside Hamilton. They touched wheels and Hamilton was forced off the track and had to fall behind Vettel. Then on lap 38, the Mercedes of Bottas suffered an engine failure (from the engine he had used for all previous races) and this promoted Ricciardo into a podium place. Meanwhile,Pascal Wehrlein who was doing a one-stop, used the VSC to his advantage and came out of the pits in eighth; he then got promoted to seventh following Bottas's retirement. However, he received a five-second penalty for an error in entering the pit lane.
Hamilton, with faster tyres, then managed to overtake Vettel for the lead on the pit straight on lap 44 and held on to the lead to win the race, reducing Vettel's lead in the championship to 6 points and increasing Mercedes's lead in the Constructors' Championship to eight points over Ferrari. Ricciardo finished third for his first podium of the season and took the fifth place in the Championship from Verstappen. Despite new upgrades, his Red Bull was 75 seconds behind Hamilton, the furthest back they had been all season, and Ricciardo was the only other car apart from the two leaders to finish on the lead lap. The next to cross the line were the Force Indias of Pérez and Ocon. Then Nico Hülkenberg finished in sixth place for Renault, their highest finish since returning to the sport in 2016. Wehrlein crossed the line in seventh but was demoted to eighth with his penalty, still picking up four valuable points for the struggling Sauber team, with the Toro Rosso of Carlos Sainz being promoted to the seventh in his stead. Kvyat and Grosjean finished ninth and tenth respectively after Kevin Magnussen, who was running in ninth, suffered a late puncture due to contact with Kvyat and fell to fourteenth. Fernando Alonso finished in twelfth, the first time he had finished a race in the season, but he admitted he was lacking the race pace to go with his superb qualifying.[11]
| Pos. | No. | Driver | Constructor | Laps | Time/Retired | Grid | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 66 | 1:35:56.497 | 1 | 25 |
| 2 | 5 |  Sebastian Vettel | Ferrari | 66 | +3.490 | 2 | 18 |
| 3 | 3 |  Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer | 66 | +1:15.820 | 6 | 15 |
| 4 | 11 |  Sergio Pérez | Force India-Mercedes | 65 | +1 Lap | 8 | 12 |
| 5 | 31 |  Esteban Ocon | Force India-Mercedes | 65 | +1 Lap | 10 | 10 |
| 6 | 27 | Nico Hülkenberg | Renault | 65 | +1 Lap | 13 | 8 |
| 7 | 55 |  Carlos Sainz Jr. | Toro Rosso | 65 | +1 Lap | 12 | 6 |
| 8 | 94 | Pascal Wehrlein | Sauber-Ferrari | 65 | +1 Lap1 | 15 | 4 |
| 9 | 26 |  Daniil Kvyat | Toro Rosso | 65 | +1 Lap | 19 | 2 |
| 10 | 8 | Romain Grosjean | Haas-Ferrari | 65 | +1 Lap | 14 | 1 |
| 11 | 9 |  Marcus Ericsson | Sauber-Ferrari | 64 | +2 Laps | 16 | |
| 12 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | McLaren-Honda | 64 | +2 Laps | 7 | |
| 13 | 19 |  Felipe Massa | Williams-Mercedes | 64 | +2 Laps | 9 | |
| 14 | 20 |  Kevin Magnussen | Haas-Ferrari | 64 | +2 Laps | 11 | |
| 15 | 30 | Jolyon Palmer | Renault | 64 | +2 Laps | 17 | |
| 16 | 18 |  Lance Stroll | Williams-Mercedes | 64 | +2 Laps | 18 | |
| Ret | 77 |  Valtteri Bottas | Mercedes | 38 | Engine | 3 | |
| Ret | 2 |  Stoffel Vandoorne | McLaren-Honda | 32 | Accident | 20 | |
| Ret | 33 |  Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer | 1 | Collision damage | 5 | |
| Ret | 7 | Kimi Räikkönen | Ferrari | 0 | Collision | 4 | |
| Source:[13] | |||||||
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| Previous race: 2017 Russian Grand Prix | FIA Formula One World Championship 2017 season | Next race: 2017 Monaco Grand Prix |
| Previous race: 2016 Spanish Grand Prix | Spanish Grand Prix | Next race: 2018 Spanish Grand Prix |
