The 2020 Spanish Grand Prix Sucked
Every year, the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Montmeló hosts the 2020 Spanish Grand Prix, and unlike FC Barcelona and Manchester City fixtures in the Champions League, this particular Formula 1 race is almost always a snooze fest.
F1 can be a strange sport in that way. There are other good circuits in Spain, yet every year, F1 returns to Montmeló. Every year, we are supposed to accept the event will be boring because of the lack of overtaking opportunities, and to be potentially excited about the marginal possibility of tire problems brought on by the heat.
Unlike Monaco, where the racing is also dismal, there is no significance to racing at this particular circuit in Spain, so there’s no reason F1 should always return to it. But every year, it does, and every year, F1 fans watch the race, fully knowing it will suck.
Was the 2020 race any different?
Nope.
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Lewis Hamilton won, to the surprise of nobody and in the process setting a new podium record, possibly to the surprise of those who had, at the end of 2006, not expected Schumacher’s enormous tally to ever be surpassed, let alone so soon. Little did they know that an even more dominant team than Brawn/Todt’s Ferrari would come along to help Hamilton pad his stats and that the FIA, instead of enacting rules to stop the dominance as it did in 2005, has instead maintained restrictive development regulations that make it difficult for teams to catch up.
Max Verstappen finished second, ahead of Valtteri Bottas, also to the surprise of nobody because Verstappen is an actually good driver while Bottas, though competent and sometimes funny in that weird Finnish way, continues to waste the potential of one of the most dominant cars the sport has ever seen.
At the wheel of the Red Bull-Honda, Alexander Albon was barely faster than AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly, whom he replaced last year. It’s hard to know whether the gap to his teammate is as massive as it is because Verstappen really is god’s gift to racing, as Ziggo Sport would have you believe, or because something about the pressure of driving for Red Bull Racing is too much to bear for the young drivers that have been given the seat in the last two years (that “something” could very well be named Max Verstappen, mind you).
Racing Point continued to show that its idea of copying last year’s championship-winning car was a stroke of genius, without which McLaren’s improvements over 2019 would probably look impressive rather than just solid. Ferrari, meanwhile, continued to look as embarrassing as FC Barcelona’s management. First, Charles Leclerc’s engine randomly shut itself off. He was able to turn it back on, but because he had forgotten to refasten his seatbelt, he had to retire. Ferrari was thus forced to remember it had another driver, a little-known four-time champion named Sebastian Vettel who it effectively sacked without the courtesy of a head’s up. Oh, right, that guy.
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As Ferrari could not longer use Vettel as a pawn to boost his teammate’s results, the team seemed at a loss for what to do next. In subsequent radio exchanges, Vettel was heard instructing his engineer what calculations to make to determine the best course of action. It was an elucidating insight into the inner workings of what passes as a strategy team over at Maranello.
It has long been a meme that Vettel himself is Ferrari’s Chief Strategist. But after the 2020 Spanish Grand Prix, it’s less a funny meme than a sad joke — that is, unless you don’t support Vettel or Ferrari, in which case it’s a hilarious joke, or as Fernando Alonso would say, a yoke. Then again, what else can we expect of a team that can’t even provide its drivers with COVID-19 masks that don’t constantly slide off their noses when doing interviews?
I have to wonder how Carlos Sainz feels about his move to Ferrari next year. Daniel Ricciardo, who is taking over Sainz’s seat at McLaren, probably can’t wait. Still, of all the drivers, Hamilton is probably the one who has the most to look forward to. Because the much-needed 2021 regulations were pushed back to 2022, there isn’t much cause to expect the next season will significantly differ from this one, particularly as Bottas was confirmed to stay on at Mercedes, much to the chagrin of more deserving drivers.
In other words, Hamilton’s 8th title is probably already assured even as he has yet to claim his 7th. Hamilton is a sublime driver who has, of course, done nothing wrong but beat his teammates with ruthless consistency. Nonetheless, I hope my prediction proves false.
Kurt Verlin was born in France and lives in the United States. Throughout his life he was always told French was the language of romance, but it was English he fell in love with. He likes cats, music, cars, 30 Rock, Formula 1, and pretending to be a race car driver in simulators; but most of all, he just likes to write about it all. See more articles by Kurt.