Kimi Antonelli wins the Spanish Grand Prix – as the inaugural Madring track fails to entertain

Kimi Antonelli’s dominance of the F1 season continued after winning the Spanish Grand Prix – in a race that failed to excite.

Antonelli was the beneficiary of the timing of the virtual safety car at the expense of reigning world champion Lando Norris.

Norris, who qualified on pole, was comfortably in the lead when the VSC was called on lap 15 after he had passed the pit lane. This meant that Antonelli and Max Verstappen – who finished second – were able to pit under VSC saving them time, with it ending before Norris could do the same.

When he did eventually pit, which happened to be a slow one, Norris came out in fifth.

Credit to the McLaren driver for eventually finishing third as the new Madring track in Madrid made overtaking virtually impossible.

Norris’ pain was Antonelli’s gain who has now won eight of the 14 races so far this F1 season – including last week’s Italian GP. The Italian is now 81 points clear of Mercedes team-mate George Russell – who finished fifth – and 101 points ahead of Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, who retired early on with brake failure.

‘It’s good to win but it doesn’t feel as good because Lando deserved to win,’ Antonelli said.

Norris said: ‘We’ll take it on the chin. There could be more wins this year.’

Charles Leclerc finished fourth ahead of Russell with Liam Lawson (sixth), Franco Colapinto (seventh), Oscar Piastri (eighth), Arvid Lindblad (ninth) and Nico Hulkenberg (10th) rounding out the top 10.

What’s next in the F1 calendar?

F1 leaves Europe and heads east for a triple-header of races which begins with the Azerbaijan Grand Prix across September 24-26. The race has been brought forward to the Saturday (12pm BST start) to to avoid a clash with an Azerbaijani national day on the Sunday.