Their races had taken different routes, different forms - but, when they bunched up behind a Safety Car with 15 laps to go, Red Bull's Max Verstappen and Ferrari's Carlos Sainz were more-or-less back at parity: both were on hard tyres and Max was in front; Carlos, on the other hand, had had a slight top speed advantage all day - and was now running newer tyres.

And so they raced - nose to tail, cat-and-mouse. There were no overtakes..but the tension was palpable. It was F1 at its 2022 best. It was Max who won the sprint, from Carlos - and it was an ebullient Lewis Hamilton who finished third for Mercedes, as Peter Windsor recounts.


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