At 18 years old, Verstappen’s victory made him the youngest victor in Formula One history, but the Catalunya title could very easily have been heading down under as Ricciardo had led for 31 laps.
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Ricciardo, victor of three races in 2014 when, like Verstappen, he moved up from Toro Rosso to the main Red Bull team, had led after Mercedes pair Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton collided on the opening lap.
Verstappen, 18 years and 227 days old, also became the first Dutch victor as he pushed the Ferrari pair of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastan Vettel into second and third place; Daniel Ricciardo suffered a puncture on the penultimate lap but still hobbled over the line in fourth.
Rosberg and Hamilton had sensationally collided on the approach to turn four, with the German championship leader having overtaken his team-mate around the outside at turn one. “I couldn’t believe that I was leading the race”.
“I was thinking “don’t look at it, focus on the tyres and bring it home”.
“We felt that once Sebastian had passed Carlos Sainz and was running in clean air, you could see that his pace was strong, stronger than ours and the obvious way that they were going to navigate themselves past us was through a three stop”, Horner said.
Verstappen ended that season with two fourth places and three awards from the governing International Automobile Federation ( FIA ) – for Rookie of the Year, Personality of the Year and Action of the Year.
Niki Lauda, Mercedes’ non-executive chairman, was in no doubt about who was the guilty party. To win straight away, in my first race, it’s an fantastic feeling. And Rosberg and Hamilton haven’t always gotten along, either.
After another poor start, Hamilton got a good run off Turn 2 and was faster than Rosberg, who moved to the inside to defend his position and squeezed the three-time world champion onto the grass. They are both pretty upset because they know about the effort. “He has won in everything he did until now, but it’s too early [to be in F1]”.
Toto Wolff, head of Mercedes motorsport, didn’t want to blame either of the drivers, noting that similar incidents must be avoided in the future.
Jenson Button scored his first points of the season with a late charge through the midfield to ninth, though McLaren’s afternoon was tempered by a stoppage for teammate Fernando Alonso on lap 47. Lewis tried to dive in, Nico closed the door so I would say let’s wait for what the stewards say. From a teams perspective we have looked at all the pictures and looked at the data and it is not clear cut. Mercedes at the time confirmed that stewards would be investigating thee incident.
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“I think there’s a lot of smoke at the back of my auto”, Nico Hulkenberg casually informed his technician.
