Spanish Heat & Penalty Points: McLaren’s Masterclass

Oscar Piastri dominated, Max imploded, and McLaren looked fast. Spain was hot — in more ways than one.

Barcelona brought the heat (literally and figuratively). This episode covers McLaren’s flawless one-two finish, Verstappen’s strategy gone sideways, celebrity sightings in the paddock, and how the championship battle just got spicier. We’re talking penalties, purple sectors, and a little bit of pit-lane gossip.

You’ll hear:

• Who nailed the start
• Who lost the plot
• Who aced the race

Chapters in todays episode are:

• Race Recap
• Sector Three Showdown
• Fan Flags
• Celebrity Spotlight
• Virtual Safetea

And finally, I want to hear some predictions from you...for the Canada Grand Prix 2025...

1) Who will be pole position in qualifying?

2) Which trio will be the podium winners for the race?

3) Will there be a safety car deployed?

Buckle up, hydrate, and let’s spill the non-telemetry tea.

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to Trackside Tea, your go to for all the F1 drama, fashion, and flair.

Hi, |I'm Rebecca. And today, we're unpacking the sizzling action from the 2025 Spanish Grand Prix at Circuit De Barcelona, Catalunya. Did I just say that right? I think I just said that right.

Sorry if I didn't, but I think I did.

This was a good race to watch. So much going on and so much to talk about. Drama, celebrities, Fernando Alonso, and, yeah, Max Verstappen. Awkward!

So let's start with a small bit of race recap and McLaren's dominance.

So spoiler alert, if you haven't seen any of this year's races, if you haven't, where have you been?

Oscar Piastri nabbed his 5th win of the season, which gave McLaren a one two finish alongside his teammate Lando Norris. Quite frankly to me, it looked like Oscar had a pretty flawless drive. He started on pole position, and he managed to carry on and win the race.

And it was quite a fair margin between him and Lando too, so, you know, good on Oscar. I am not a strategy person. I would make that clear. But this did seem to showcase McLaren's superior strategy with their tyre management in the crazy heat.

While we're on the track of heat, someone who well and truly lost their cool is Max Verstappen.

So a spot a sector three showdown here, which was truly chaotic for Max and a massive game changer.

I mean, he's known for his strong personality and willpower, but it seems one thing after another for Max in Spain. Stopping for one of his pit stops around lap 48, which already seemed a lot of pit stops for him. He came back onto the track from the pit lane with his teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, right in front of him. Now he was a lap behind so needed to move aside so Max could get past, but didn't seem to move quite as quick as he probably should have done.

And Max was then caught up behind him and lost a bit of time. Number one strike for Max.

The next bit of bad luck was when Lando and Max were caught behind a little battle between Liam Lawson and Ollie Bearman as they were jostling for places in their own little race, costing Max more time and to shout out on the radio, "IDIOTS!"

It doesn't end there, folks. Poor Kimi Antonelli's trundled into the gravel with a mechanical failure, which caused the ever anticipated safety car. So a lot of people dropped into the pits with this opportunity as did Max, and he ended up on hard tyres apparently because it's the only ones he had left, and he was the only driver to use them, a little bit on the crazy side.

Max even said on the radio, "Why the have we **** have we? What is this tyre?" I would have thought it'd be better to stay on the ones he hadn't long been on and could have finished the race on. I mean, there was no other mandatory stop. He didn't have to do it, but, hey, that's what they decided to do.

Do you know I might do an episode or a pod splainer on tiles, tiles? Tyres! That might be a good idea. Yeah. Maybe. I will think about that one.

Anyway, lap 60 of 66, and the safety car ended. Oscar broke hard just before he went off, and we actually all cringed in our house thinking that Max, Oscar, and Lando literally were gonna go into each other and take each other out. It literally looked like that at one point. It was quite a scary moment.

But Oscar did his thing and off he went closely followed by Lando. And I hate to say it, but that was also not the last of it for Max. He then suffered a dramatic wobble. They call it a snap, but I like the word wobble, where he lost his back end, which gave Charles Leclerc his chance. He went to sneak past Max, and, unfortunately, the pair of cars touched slightly, and Max was once again annoyed.

Not to be left out, George Russell, who has a bit of a reputation of hanging on behind and being in the right place at the right time to just sneak into a podium place, wanted his chance to take over the Max. They also made a small amount of contact, and Max disappeared off the track to the escape road and gained the advantage. Well, that's what it looked like to start with. And to be fair, Max was then asked to let George pass by his team radio. That did not go down well as you can imagine.

"I was ahead. He ran me off the road", he shouted. Max made it look like he was letting him by. And when George did, Max sped up. And in the words of George, "He just crashed into me!".

So in a heated moment, Max did something silly and was now under investigation for it. And what's worse is the incident that he was told to let George pass for was deemed no further action by the stewards. So silly, Max. Now I get the team thought it best to give the place back to George. Better to do that than overtake again than being caught by the stewards and then them giving them a penalty or something similar, but I really don't think they imagined Max to react the way he did.

He was handed a ten second penalty for that. And I fully admit, we're all shouting at the TV because we could not believe that's all he got. He did it on purpose! He crashed into George on purpose! And all he got was a ten second penalty! Admittedly, that knocked him down to 10th place, which meant that he only got one point, but still, it just didn't seem enough. He did it on purpose! Oh, so frustrating.

We'll come back to that in a minute.

Now for fan flags moment, it's shout out time. During all this drama playing out in the top five, there were some epic notable performances. Nico Hulkenberg got 5th place, having started in 16th! And he was so happy that he was like, "Yeah baby", on the radio. Absolutely brilliant.

Isaac Hajjar, who I have to admit, I think is doing really well at the moment and only went to prove it again by getting 7th place, and that's more points for him. Just one less spot than his previous race, which was really good. But I have to say, in amongst all the drama that was going on, my absolute epically favourite moment was the fact that Fernando Alonso got points at his home race. He did not have points at all until this race.

It was so exciting. I was so excited. I was, like, really chuffed for him. I was driving the family nuts because I was like, oh my god. I'm so excited about it.

So he got his two points. It would have been one point, but thanks to Max, it was two because, obviously, Max went down to which meant, Fernando went up to 9th.

Celebrity spotlight. There was no Brundle Trundle this week, but they were still wandering the starting grid. But it did seem the whole of the England football team were there.

Now I'm not up on my football, so, I was didn't realize this was the England football team. Although, I did recognize Harry Kane who they did interview, and apparently, it was his race time viewing of a race ever. It's got to be an epic to be there physically at the event rather than just watching it on TV, so I hope you had a good time.

Now, Jude Bellingham, who apparently is now Real Madrid, I want to say. Sorry if that's wrong. He was in the Mercedes garage, and they panned onto him after Kimi Antonelli's crash, and he seemed to be smiling. Not sure what that was about. I mean, if you're in the team's garage, you don't want to be caught smiling at a team downfall. It just seemed a really odd moment. I'm hoping it was out of context, and he was smiling at something else. Maybe somebody told him a joke or something similar, and it wasn't at that particular issue that he was smiling at. So, let's just hope.

And then one last celebrity, doing post race interviews with the podium folk, Terry Crews. Who here watches and who has watched Brooklyn Nine Nine? Gotta love it. Absolutely gotta love it and love him. So there you go. That's my celebrity call outs.

So finally, I guess I should do a little bit of a roundup. Currently, Oscar Piastri now leads the driver's championship with a 186 points, followed by Lando with a 176 points, and Verstappen is now trailing with a 137.

And that wasn't even the last for Max. More issues.

Afterwards, he got points on his license, which means he now has 11 out of 12. So he's just one point away from a race ban. Oh my goodness me, Max. What's going on there? He's gonna have to keep his nose clean for the next couple of races because if he gets even one more point, that's it. Race ban. He's got till the June, I think it is before two of them disappear off, because it's a rolling twelve months. So, good luck, Max.

Now one last thing today. This one has got me up to date. So next week's race is Canada.

I've got some questions for you guys. Predict this. One, who will be pole position in qualifying?

Two, which trio will be the podium winners for the race?

And three, will there be a safety car deployed? Will there? Now I fully admit my prediction on safety cars, I've said yes every single time, and I think it has happened. I'm sure it's happened every single race so far.

But who do you think will be pole position in qualifying?

And which trio will be your podium winners?

Let me know. I think it'll be Oscar in pole position. And my podium winners, Oscar, Lando and let's go George this time around. Let's throw George in there.

That's all for this episode of Trackside Tea. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review if you like. Join us next time, and we delve into the drama of the upcoming Canadian Grand Prix. Until then, keep it sassy and speedy.