Max Verstappen finished the race with an impressive lead of 33.7 seconds ahead of Lando Norris. However, Norris had a tense moment towards the end when Sergio Perez threatened his second place position. Eventually, Hamilton also joined the battle and challenged Perez for third place.
Hamilton had a slower start than Verstappen and tried to move to the right on the straight to protect his position, but was unable to stop the championship leader from taking the lead at the first corner.
Since both drivers took wider paths into Turn 1, Oscar Piastri seized the opportunity and skillfully maneuvered his McLaren towards the inner side, emerging in second place.
Verstappen then began to stretch his newly acquired despite the array of tyre management being carried out amid the 29C heat, and spent the opening laps building up his advantage.
Lando Norris, who overtook Hamilton to secure third place during a challenging first lap for the seven-time champion, made a pit stop at the conclusion of lap 17 to switch to a set of hard tires. Piastri would do the same on the subsequent lap.
However, Norris quickly completed a fast out-lap, enabling him to overtake his McLaren teammate and secure second place overall. Subsequent laps around the track allowed Norris to establish a comfortable lead over his teammate.
Verstappen then pitted at the end of lap 23 for the hard tyre, and Norris’s collection of opening laps on that compound closed the gap between the front two to just 5.4 seconds.
Norris could not sustain that speed, and once Verstappen adapted to the hard tire, he once again widened the distance and started to increase his lap time by nearly a second.
Verstappen had established a significant lead of 15 seconds by the 40th lap, and his advantage over Norris kept increasing. However, McLaren decided to bring Norris into the pit at the conclusion of lap 44 to switch to a new set of medium tires.
Red Bull prolonged Verstappen’s time on the racecourse using the hards, and the Dutch driver continued to use those tires until lap 51 when he made a pit stop to switch to mediums.
The gap had shrunk slightly to 10.9s in Verstappen’s favour by the end of lap 53 as Norris had been able to make the most of his own middle compound tyre, but a tilt at the fastest lap yielded a 1m20.504s for Verstappen to put the race beyond doubt.
Red Bull’s consecutive victory streak of 12 surpasses McLaren’s previous record of 11 wins achieved in 1988.
Afterwards, Norris faced a challenging task of fending off Sergio Perez, who had managed to overtake Hamilton through an undercut strategy in the second set of pit stops. Perez then made a strong move into Turn 2 on lap 47 to pass Piastri.
Perez found himself trailing by 6.3 seconds with 15 laps left. Consequently, Norris had to increase his speed in order to hold onto second place. After being urged to go faster, Norris was able to widen the distance to 6.9 seconds. However, he began to struggle as Yuki Tsunoda, who was a lap behind, closed in on him. This allowed Perez to reduce the gap by half during the following two laps.
After both drivers got caught in heavy traffic, Norris managed to regain control and overtook Nico Hulkenberg. He then had a sufficient amount of open track to increase his lead, having a five-second advantage with five laps remaining.
Perez’s place on the podium was then threatened by Hamilton’s late fightback, as the Mercedes driver found great pace towards the close of the race and chiselled away at Perez despite his own traffic navigation.
Hamilton was unable to find the necessary speed in the final moments of the race, resulting in him being denied a podium opportunity, despite only 1.8 seconds separating him from the leader with two laps remaining.
Piastri, who had held the second position in the beginning of the race, was unable to keep up with the pace after the first round of pit stops. As a result, he dropped to fifth place after being overtaken by Perez and Hamilton on the track.
The Australian driver attempted to prevent Perez from overtaking by staying on the outer side of Turn 2. However, the runner-up in the current championship did not want to give up his position and successfully defended against Piastri, who expressed dissatisfaction with the limited space he was given.
George Russell secured sixth place after overtaking Carlos Sainz towards the end of the race, and his position was further improved when Charles Leclerc received a five-second penalty for exceeding the speed limit in the pitlane.
Leclerc successfully maintained his seventh position until the end, as Sainz was unable to get close enough to overtake and secure a higher place. The top 10 was completed by Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll in the Aston Martins.
Alex Albon did not score any points and finished in 11th place, while Valtteri Bottas could only secure 12th position despite Alfa Romeo’s impressive performance throughout the weekend.
Bottas lost positions at the beginning of the race, just like his teammate Zhou Guanyu, who experienced an anti-stall issue and caused the collision in the first corner that resulted in both Alpines retiring.
Zhou was able to start moving again but fell back in the rankings. Unfortunately, he misjudged his braking and accidentally bumped into the back of Daniel Ricciardo, who had just returned to the race. As a result, Ricciardo collided with Pierre Gasly, causing Gasly to unintentionally crash into his teammate Esteban Ocon. This collision resulted in irreparable damage for both Alpine cars.
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