Background Fernando Alonso returned to racing for
McLaren, after missing the previous round in
Monaco to participate in the
Indianapolis 500. Tyre supplier
Pirelli made the soft, supersoft and ultrasoft tyres available to teams for the race.
Free practice Mercedes'
Lewis Hamilton went fastest in first practice, setting a time of 1.13:809. He was followed by the
Ferrari of
Sebastian Vettel and his teammate
Valtteri Bottas in second and third.
Fernando Alonso's
McLaren continued to suffer from reliability issues as he broke down and retired from the session. In second practice the Ferrari of
Kimi Räikkönen was fastest followed by Hamilton and Vettel. In Q3 Lewis Hamilton secured pole position with a 1:11.459 matching Ayrton Senna's second all-time highest pole record,
Race At the start,
Max Verstappen advanced three positions to head into turn two right behind Hamilton who was in the lead. Third and fourth were Bottas and Vettel, the latter had sustained slight front wing damage from contact with Verstappen heading into turn 2.
Daniel Ricciardo moved into 5th when he passed
Kimi Räikkönen on the first lap. Räikkönen would eventually finish 7th after falling behind the Force Indias and struggling with brake problems in the late stages of the race. Also on the first lap, an incident occurred causing the retirement of
Carlos Sainz and
Felipe Massa, and a pit stop front wing change for
Romain Grosjean. The
safety car was brought out to allow marshals to clear the track. At the restart Vettel's damaged wing partially collapsed as he accelerated back to racing speed. He pitted on lap 5 to repair the damage and dropped to 18th (last) position. On lap 11, Verstappen's
Red Bull lost electrical power and forced his retirement from 2nd position. As the race continued,
Canadian Lance Stroll worked his way up into 9th position for what would be his first points in F1. On lap 66
Fernando Alonso's
McLaren suffered an engine failure preventing him from scoring his team's first points of the season. Hamilton finished the race 20 seconds ahead of teammate Bottas with Ricciardo in third. Sebastian Vettel overtook
Sergio Pérez on the penultimate lap to finish in 4th position close behind Ricciardo, following a race-long charge from the back and an alternate two-stop strategy. Earlier Pérez had ignored requests from his team to allow his faster teammate
Esteban Ocon past in order to challenge Ricciardo for the last podium place. ==Classification==