• Chronicle Hamilton joins forces with strategy to destroy Verstappen's dream

  • Catalan Grand Prix Fernando Alonso regrets Alpine's "a bit suicidal" strategy

We started the season warning that

Red Bull

was strong, that this year was going to be different from previous ones, that Mercedes was not going to have it easy and that

Max Verstappen

was finally going to have a car with which to force

Lewis Hamilton's

weak points

.

All true.

After four races I don't give up on anything.

It is exactly like that.

However,

Hamilton and Mercedes are leaders in their respective

drivers 'and constructors' championships and with each passing race the difference increases.

Hamilton has won three of the four (he was second in the other), has made pole in two of them (

Bottas

in another) and except for his mistake in

Imola

, which ended almost without consequences thanks to a stroke of fortune, no cracks have been seen.

There is still a long season left, but

Barcelona

is always a turning point. It is the perfect X-ray and serves to confirm which car is fast and which is not.

One lap, Red Bull is faster

, but has only achieved one pole. For exceeding the limits of the track, for losing a few hundredths in a corner at a decisive moment, for not achieving the ideal tire temperature or whatever, but the reality is that in his strongest facet he loses the duel with Mercedes. As the veterans say, qualifying is important, but points are shared on Sunday and in that regard, taking race pace and strategy into account, Mercedes is also teaching its Red Bull "friends" a great lesson.

The Barcelona race was one more doctoral thesis.

Verstappen did everything well

, but he alone is not enough to beat the star empire. He needs help on the

Checo Pérez

track

, away all weekend, and fundamentally from the wall where in races like Barcelona, ​​where overtaking is a chimera, strategy is everything. But Mercedes was smarter again.

In Barcelona there are three key points: the grid position, the start and the strategy. Red Bull only won the start and that was Max's doing. When he won the duel against Hamilton in the first few meters, the only option that Mercedes had left to win was in the strategy and what they thought worked. While some debated whether to go to a stop or two, Mercedes called Hamilton to the pits. One lap later Red Bull did not react. It had room to respond to the attack, but, unlike Mercedes, it had no other set of medium tires. First error. Of the remaining options

Red Bull chose the worst: not to stop.

They were able to stop him and make him soft, even hard, but opted to leave Verstappen on the track to his fate, with tires disintegrating at the same time as his chances of winning the race. Result: Mercedes 3, Red Bull 1.

Hamilton more leader and Mercedes with 29 points of advantage.

And something worse, perhaps a suspicion of having witnessed a new missed opportunity, a bullet fired into the air, another moral victory for the rival.

It was special to see some of the public again in the stands of the Circuit. Yes, only a thousand spectators, but these small battles won are savored with great pleasure after so much bitterness and desolation. Too bad the thousand attendees left a bit disappointed with the result of ours. They were not the only ones,

Carlos Sainz

left disappointed and angry with himself. He failed in the classification, little is true, just one tenth, but that this year makes you lose four positions. He also twisted the exit where this time, he ever has to pass, he ran into a pack and lost some duels. Everything else was positive: good pace, good strategy, good saves and good points.

The case of

Fernando Alonso

is peculiar.

Write what I write now to some it will sound like an excuse, like the devil's advocate.

For those who think that Fernando is older

, that he does not feel like it, that he has lost his freshness, even those who now fill their mouths on social networks and come up saying that he has never been as good as we said, I can only say that I

know they are wrong

.

I have stayed calm after seeing him in Barcelona because he is too.

Fernando enjoys his return to the fullest, he is learning with the same

illusion of a child

and also does not mind admitting that he still has to improve.

Qualifying was a disaster because on the preparation lap they took him far behind and ate the final funnel.

So stuck was he that he had to pull the clutch on the chicane, it chilled the tires so much that he almost spun on gas to start the lap.

He went through the traffic light in the absence of a second and with almost twenty kilometers per hour less than normal.

The start was regular and the team's strategy a disaster.

They were the last to learn that going to a stop was suicide.

The only good thing is that the

Alpine

was confirmed in

Barcelona

as a car that does not go bad.

We will see him many times this year with

Ferrari

and

Mclaren

because, fortunately, the

Portimao thing

was not a mirage.

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