Lewis Hamilton has won the 2018 Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix after an absolutely dominant drive by the current World Champion. Team-mate Valtteri Bottas finished second to complete a 1-2 for Mercedes. Max Verstappen completed the podium after finishing in third place, earning his first podium of the season. Sebastian Vettel finished fourth for Ferrari after a poor strategy call by the team.
At the start, Hamilton got away beautifully from pole and led going into turn 1. Vettel managed to benefit from a 'slipstream' off Bottas and took second place from the Finn. Further back, Romain Grosjean lost control whilst behind team-mate Kevin Magnussen and spun, and ended up colliding with Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly, whose race was over at that point (as well as Grosjean's). Grosjean has been given a 3-place grid penalty for the next race in Monaco. The Safety Car (SC) was deployed due to the incident.
The SC came in at the end of lap 6, and Hamilton got the restart he wanted and quickly opened up a gap out in front and was posting rapid lap times. Fernando Alonso managed to get past Esteban Ocon around the outside of turn 3 (at the SC restart) in an outstanding move by the Spaniard.
At the end of lap 17, Vettel pitted from second place for the medium tyres, possibly fearing that Mercedes might attempt to perform the undercut with Bottas. He re-emerged from the pitstop behind Kevin Magnussen (who had not yet stopped), and as a result of this he was getting held up and it looked like he would actually get overcut by Bottas, but the Finn, who stopped 2 laps later, had a pitstop which was 1.4s slower than Vettel and unfortunately re-emerged behind the German.
On lap 25, Raikkonen (yet to make his stop) retired from the race with seemingly a Power Unit issue. At this point, the order was: Hamilton, Verstappen, Ricciardo (all yet to make their stop), Vettel and Bottas. Hamilton pitted at the end of lap 25, and re-emerged behind Verstappen (still yet to make his stop), but ahead of Ricciardo (still to make his stop) and more critically, comfortably ahead of Vettel and Bottas.
Ricciardo then pitted himself for the medium tyres on lap 33, with Verstappen following suit a lap later. At this point (with all drivers having made a stop), the order was: Hamilton, Vettel, Bottas, Verstappen and Ricciardo. On lap 40, Ocon stopped with an engine failure, which prompted the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) to be deployed, and a key moment occurred here. Ferrari decided to pit Vettel from second place onto a fresh set of mediums, but Vettel ended up dropping down to fourth behind Verstappen after making a completely needless pit stop. Seeing the race, it is possible that Ferrari were fooled into the thinking that Mercedes were going to make a stop for one of their drivers (but didn't), and the Italian team reacted. Whatever the explanation, it certainly was a costly move. During the VSC period, Verstappen rather bizarrely clipped the rear of Lance Stroll's Williams, and lost a part of his front wing, but fortunately for the Dutchman the front wing structure remained intact and he got away with the contact (it certainly could have been worse for the Dutchman). Try as he might, Vettel could not get past Verstappen and it proved how costly making that extra pit stop was as he remained in fourth behind Verstappen till the chequered flag. However, up front there was just no stopping Hamilton who enjoyed a Sunday drive to take his second consecutive win of the season and crossed the line 20.5 seconds ahead of team-mate Bottas, who came home in second place. Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc of Sauber followed up sixth place in Baku with a very solid drive in Barcelona ahead of his home race in a fortnight's time, finishing in tenth place and earning himself a point.
Classification: Lewis Hamilton - Mercedes
Valtteri Bottas - Mercedes
Max Verstappen - Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer
Sebastian Vettel - Ferrari
Daniel Ricciardo - Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer
Kevin Magnussen - Haas-Ferrari Carlos Sainz - Renault Fernando Alonso - McLaren-Renault Sergio Perez - Force India-Mercedes
Charles Leclerc - Sauber-Ferrari
Lance Stroll - Williams-Mercedes Brendon Hartley - Scuderia Toro Rosso-Honda Marcus Ericsson - Sauber-Ferrari Sergey Sirotkin - Williams-Mercedes
Did not finish the race and not classified: Stoffel Vandoorne, Esteban Ocon, Kimi Raikkonen, Pierre Gasly, Nico Hulkenberg and Romain Grosjean
World Championship standings: Lewis Hamilton - 95 points
Sebastian Vettel - 78 points
Valtteri Bottas - 58 points
Kimi Raikkonen - 48 points
Daniel Ricciardo - 47 points
Max Verstappen - 33 points
Fernando Alonso - 32 points
Nico Hulkenberg - 22 points
Kevin Magnussen - 19 points
Carlos Sainz - 19 points
Sergio Perez - 17 points
Pierre Gasly - 12 points
Charles Leclerc - 9 points
Stoffel Vandoorne - 8 points
Lance Stroll - 4 points
Marcus Ericsson - 2 points
Esteban Ocon - 1 point
Brendon Hartley - 1 point
Romain Grosjean - 0 points
Sergey Sirotkin - 0 points Constructors' Championship standings: Mercedes - 153 points
Ferrari - 126 points
Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer - 80 points
Renault - 41 points
McLaren-Renault - 40 points
Haas-Ferrari - 19 points
Force India-Mercedes - 18 points
Scuderia Toro Rosso-Honda - 13 points
Sauber-Ferrari - 11 points
Williams-Mercedes - 4 points