Hamilton breaks podium record with a dominant Spanish Grand Prix victory

Sam Hall
Sunday 16 August 2020 16:51 - Updated: 16:52

Lewis Hamilton has won the Spanish Grand Prix to break Michael Schumacher's to become the driver with the most podium finishes in the history of Formula 1.

Mercedes had been wary of the pace of Max Verstappen and Red Bull ahead of the Barcelona race, but this threat quickly dissipated on Sunday with the Dutchman suffering higher levels of tyre wear than his Mercedes counterpart.

In taking victory, Hamilton scored his 156th F1 podium finish to take the all-time record away from Schumacher, and add it to his own list of F1 honours.

Only a last lap effort from Bottas to take the fastest lap away from Hamilton prevented the six time champion from completing another career grand slam.

In the opening exchanges, Hamilton made a perfect start but his Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas struggled and dropped back to fourth off the line. Max Verstappen and Lance Stroll both passed the Finn and, although he was able to pass Stroll in a handful of laps, Verstappen would remain a step to far for the duration.

Only the top three drivers would finished on the lead lap, the lowest number seen since the 2018 Austrian Grand Prix.

Racing Point retained its fourth and fifth place starting positions, but a five second penalty for Sergio Perez for ignoring blue flags switched the order, with Stroll coming home fifth ahead of Perez.

Carlos Sainz came home seventh for McLaren while, for Ferrari, it was another bruising encounter. Charles Leclerc had been battling in the midfield after starting ninth when an electrical problem forced him out of the race.

Sebastian Vettel started 11th, and completed 36 laps on a set of soft tyres to finish seventh.

Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly and Lando Norris rounded out the points paying positions with Daniel Ricciardo narrowly missing out in 11th.

In 14th, Kimi Raikkonen took the record for the most miles raced in F1 - his total eclipsing the previous record of 53,099 miles.