The Spanish Grand Prix 2017 was the 5th round of the 2017 F1 season, and took place at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Montmeló, Spain, on May 14th.
Lewis Hamilton won the race from the pole, followed by Sebastian Vettel, and Daniel Ricciardo completing the podium.
Final results
Race evolution
Pit Stops
There were a total of 37 pit stops during the race.
The most popular pit stop windows were:
- Laps 12-16: 9 stops
- Laps 31-34: 12 stops
The fastest pit stop was Lewis Hamilton's, stopping the clock at 21.544 seconds during his pit stop on lap 21, while the slowest one was was Felipe Massa's, who stopped the clock at 40.612 seconds, 19.068 seconds slower than Hamilton, during his pit stop on lap 1.
These times include the time the driver spent going through the pit lane, as well as the actual time he stopped for the mechanics to work on his car.
Strategy
We saw a variety of options in terms of pit stop strategies during this race, however most drivers chose a 2 stops. Only 3 drivers tried a 1 stop, and 4 drivers tried a 3 stops.
The race winner, Lewis Hamilton, was on a 2 stops strategy.
1 stop
-
2Stoffel Vandoorne
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14Valtteri Bottas
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7Pascal Wehrlein
2 stops
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10Daniil Kvyat
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2Lance Stroll
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5Carlos Sainz
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-Sebastian Vettel
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7Nico Hülkenberg
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5Esteban Ocon
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4Sergio Pérez
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5Marcus Ericsson
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4Romain Grosjean
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-Lewis Hamilton
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3Daniel Ricciardo
3 stops
-
4Felipe Massa
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2Jolyon Palmer
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5Fernando Alonso
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3Kevin Magnussen
Excluding those drivers who could not finish the race, those on a 1 stop strategy gained 7 positions on average, the ones on a 2 stops strategy gained 4.09 positions on average, while those on a 3 stops strategy lost an average of 2.5 positions.
Despite of the average possitons gained or lost, and considering a deeper analysis of the performance of each strategy, we consider the 2 stops strategy as the optimal for this race.
It is important to note that this might not always be the case for other races held at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, as the conditions might change from year to year, in terms of wheel degradation, accidents, safety cars, etc.
Incidents
There were some incidents during the race, with 4 drivers who didn't manage to cross the finish line.
These included, Valtteri Bottas, who had a power unit failure on lap 38, Stoffel Vandoorne, who retired dure to damage caused by a collision with other cars on lap 32, and Max Verstappen, and Kimi Räikkönen, both retired dure to damage caused by a collision with other cars.
Power Unit
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Valtteri BottasLap 38
Collision
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Stoffel VandoorneLap 32
Collision damage
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Max VerstappenLap 1
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Kimi RäikkönenLap 0
Qualifying
Lewis Hamilton dominated all the qualifying sessions and took the pole by 0.051 seconds, with a final lap time of 1:19.149. Right next to him, completing the first line of the grid, was Sebastian Vettel.
Track evolution
As the qualifying session went on, with the track rubbering in, and the drivers testing the limits of the grip of their cars, the times per lap dropped, and all of the drivers that took place in Q2 improved their times in this second session.
The Q3 is the time were all the remaining drivers put all their cards on the table, even those with a superior car who might have been managing their times in Q1 and Q2 push their cars to the limit in Q3. It therefore comes as no surprise that 8 out of the 10 drivers that took place in Q3 were able to improve their times.