The safety car 12 laps from the end of Formula 1's 2025 Spanish Grand Prix sure mixed things up - but didn't change the McLaren 1-2 as Oscar Piastri converted his pole into a convincing victory ahead of team-mate Lando Norris.
So much for the new Barcelona wing flex technical directive making the difference some were expecting. The insertion of an extra stay in the McLaren's front wing to meet the new requirement cost the team around £50 and next to no laptime. Not in qualifying at least.
Maybe in the race, as it committed to a two-stop on a hot day around a fast, long-corner track and Red Bull - with nothing to lose, so significant was McLaren's apparent pace advantage - went instead to a three-stop for Max Verstappen.
The three-stop was not on paper a faster strategy. But was that worth the paper it was written on when everyone was even less certain than usual about tyre degradation rates? Given how the slow-corner understeer/fast-corner oversteer trait might have been expected to have been amplified by the new technical directive and how that surely meant greater tyre punishment?
As it turned out, the combination of a three-stop and Verstappen's irrepressible push did put McLaren under real pressure. He was fast enough in his second stint that when McLaren asked its drivers to push for a bit more of a comfortable gap, both Piastri and Norris replied that they didn't believe they could afford to push much harder, given how on edge the tyres were and how many more laps they needed to make the strategy work.
Verstappen had won out in a territorial contest with Norris into the first corner to take up position behind Piastri. It took Norris 13 laps to find a way by the Red Bull, by which time Piastri had built a cushion of over four seconds. He was always able to maintain that. Verstappen immediately pitted, confirming the three-stop plan, much to McLaren's surprise.
Eventually, Verstappen's challenge did fade enough to allow McLaren to breathe easy again. And so that's how it was going to be, with Max an honourable third having put McLaren under pressure for a while and being comfortably clear of the Ferrari/Mercedes contest behind.
But then the fateful loss of oil pressure in Kimi Antonelli's seventh-placed Mercedes and the safety car it triggered. That severely punished the Red Bull three-stop, as the team had no more soft or medium tyres left and it was imperative for everyone that they pit for new rubber or be left a sitting duck on the restart. All Verstappen had left was a set of new hards.
"Why?" he radioed in once he realised the stripes on the sidewalls were white as he circulated behind the safety car. "That was our only option," replied race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase.
Actually there was a set of used softs but they'd done four laps of qualifying and three pre-grid laps and so were no better than the set he'd put on seven laps earlier.
There was another option, of course - which was to have stayed out and assumed the lead then fought the new (soft) tyred McLarens. He'd have almost certainly have been quickly overtaken such was the high degradation rate and therefore the performance difference between a new and used set.
But assuming Piastri and Norris had indeed repassed, he might have had a fighting chance of keeping the rest of the pack behind. These are hindsight points of course, but Verstappen was audibly crestfallen as he understood the challenge he faced upon the restart.
The hard C1 was a poor tyre around Barcelona. It took way too long to bring the fronts up to temperature and the mismatch between front and rears lasted for many laps – and there were only six racing laps left once the safety car pulled off. Verstappen was weaving for all he was worth trying to generate that heat. Charles Leclerc, close in his wake, stayed arrow-straight so as not to overheat the Ferrari's fresh softs.
Piastri only added to Verstappen's woes on that prep lap by slowing the pace to a crawl until very late in the lap, losing Verstappen any tyre heat he'd managed to achieve. So as he rounded the final turn and got on the power, the understeer he'd got snapped into a tank-slapping oversteer which he did well to rescue. The lost momentum meant Leclerc was alongside almost instantly and a Senna-Mansell-like game of chicken ensued, except they actually touched sidewalls.
As the Ferrari steamed down the inside into Turn 1, George Russell dived in there too, Verstappen took to the run-off and rejoined still ahead of the Mercedes but behind the Ferrari.
The choreography of that, who touched whom on the straight, who was ahead/wasn't ahead at Turn 1 and what that meant in terms of the driving guidelines was one thing. Verstappen's emotional reaction to the bad hand fate had dealt him was quite something else.
At just the moment he was insisting that Leclerc had barged into him (he hadn't, but had simply held his line and refused to move over as Verstappen tried to push him onto the dirty part of the track) and that he should give the third place back, he was told by the team that he should give Russell the fourth place! (The stewards later said they were not intending to apply a penalty for the Turn 1 incident but Red Bull had acted on its own initiative, suspecting Verstappen be penalised).
Furious, Verstappen left a space for Russell into Turn 5 before then barging hard into him as he came alongside. He then surrendered the place properly later in the lap.
Meanwhile Nico Hulkenberg, his Sauber on brand new soft tyres (he had a set left over through not making it out of Q1), had ambushed Isack Hadjar's Racing Bulls for seventh upon the restart – and followed up a couple of laps later with a pass on Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari for sixth! That became an official fifth when Verstappen was given a 10s penalty for the Russell collision, dropping him down to 10th, two behind the Alpine of Pierre Gasly who led Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin across the line.
Leclerc's strategy of saving a set of mediums had probably cost him a grid position or two but it allowed him the flexibility in the race to push hard enough on his mediums in the second stint that he was keeping Verstappen and Norris in sight. Both Hamilton and Russell had surged past Russell into the first turn off the grid – with Hamilton then switching positions with his team-mate.
Unhappy with the deteriorating balance of the car and suffering with a mechanical problem Ferrari was reluctant to specify, Hamilton fell away from Leclerc and was later undercut by Russell before the late Hulkenberg ambush.
Not a great day at the office for Hamilton. Nor for Verstappen.
But a great one for Piastri and McLaren.
