Sergio Checo Pérez left Charles Leclerc composed and without a Sprint prize. The Mexican knocked out the Ferrari on the straight with a DRS hit and frustrated the Monegasque's victory in the first short race of the year, after having dominated the two qualifying sessions, the long one on Friday and the new Sprint Shootout on Saturday morning .
The first Sprint Race of the year (of the six scheduled) started with tension at the start. Leclerc retained command from pole, followed by Pérez, but Verstappen, third, went wrong, he was paired with George Russell, who took him against the wall and Red Bull brushed the wall and lost a position. Behind, Sainz remained in fifth place and Alonso climbed one, from eighth to seventh, behind Hamilton.
However, a loose wheel on the track, voting on its own, of Yuki Tsunoda's Alpha Tauri, forced the neutralization of the race with a virtual safety-car, so the tension dropped.
The race resumed on lap 6 with a jump start in which Leclerc and Pérez maintained the first two positions, Verstappen regained third from Russell, and Alonso aggressively passed Hamilton to occupy sixth place.
Although the most spectacular thing was seen two laps later (8/17) with the superb overtaking of Checo Pérez over Leclerc taking advantage of the slipstream of Ferrari, which seemed untouchable during the weekend, after achieving the two pole positions.
The Mexican's Red Bull pulled DRS to overcome the Monegasque's Ferrari on the inside, who could not engage and in a few laps he fell off the hook. With two laps to go (v. 15/17), Leclerc was almost 3 seconds behind, unable to catch Pérez, and with the threat of Verstappen behind, 0.9s away and with the possibility of opening the DRS.
Going into the final lap, the Dutchman was just 0.7 seconds behind the Monegasque. He had 20 turns to try. But nothing changed anymore. Verstappen could not get any closer or put his nose in and had to settle for third place, Leclerc signed for second.
Outside the podium they were in the same order as Russell, fourth: Sainz, fifth; Alonso, sixth; and Hamilton, seventh.
At the end of the race, Verstappen went to recriminate Russell for the touch on the first lap. "You should have given me space," the Dutchman told the Englishman, who excused himself by saying that he did not have enough grip at that point. "I don't understand why I had to risk so much on the first lap, when we are all on cold tires, it doesn't make sense to me," lamented the champion.
Others who complained at the end of the race was Fernando Alonso, who asked the commissioners to grant him fifth place from Carlos Sainz. The Asturian complained about an action from Madrid: "He took me against the wall, it's a bit surprising."
