Barcatimes

MONTMELO, Spain— Max Verstappen had warned that his Red Bull team was good enough to win every single race of the Formula One season. On Sunday he took one more step toward that ambitious sweep by easing to victory at the Spanish Grand Prix. The two-time defending champion started from pole position and never was challenged as he breezed to his fifth win in seven races this season. Verstappen beat Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari to the first corner and then eased his superior car around the 2.8-mile Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya to finish well ahead of Mercedes pair Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. “It is a big pleasure to drive a car like this and it showed on a day like this,” Verstappen said. “Hopefully we can keep it up throughout the year.” His dominant race performance came after he secured pole position with intimidating ease Saturday. Verstappen set an untouchable top lap time and then watched the rest of the pack scramble for the other spots on the grid from his garage. The Dutchman had said before practice for the Barcelona race that while the Red Bull cars were fast and reliable enough to win every single race, he figured that “We will always have tracks where it doesn’t work out exactly, bad luck in qualifying, mistakes, whatever.” Nothing went wrong, at least not for Verstappen, this weekend. As expected given the superior speed of the Red Bull, the 66-lap race was largely decided in the 595-meter run from the starting line to Turn One. Sainz tried to get the jump o...