Jhazztan left pwjones one lap short of a first IMS victory, taking the lead on the final tour to complete a Williams one-two in Spain. A team that had left Singapore scoring through one car now had both at the front.
The two-stop chase beat the one-stop defence by 0.662 seconds. It was his second IMS win, and his first since Spa in Season 6.
MartimSilva took third after recovering a place from Aston Martin team-mate rbn on the same lap. Williams collected 53 points to take the constructors’ lead, while Jhazztan moved ten clear in the drivers’ championship.
| Pos | +/− | Team | Driver | Grid | Gap | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | 4 | Williams | jhazztanWilliamsGrid 54 | 5 | 42:50.813 | 30 |
| P2 | 4 | Williams | pwjonesWilliamsGrid 64 | 6 | +0.662s | 23 |
| P3 | 0 | Aston Martin | MartimSilvaAston MartinGrid 30 | 3 | +6.151s | 19 |
| P4 | 3 | Aston Martin | rbnAston MartinGrid 13 | 1 | +9.633s | 16 |
| P5 | 3 | McLaren | TedheadMcLarenGrid 23 | 2 | +11.475s | 13 |
| P6 | 6 | Cadillac | SwithCadillacGrid 126 | 12 | +11.799s | 11 |
| P7 | 3 | Red Bull | ZlooberRed BullGrid 103 | 10 | +11.894s | 10 |
| P8 | 3 | Audi | McBeth655AudiGrid 113 | 11 | +15.541s | 7 |
| P9 | 8 | Mercedes | Pooldiver46MercedesGrid 178 | 17 | +19.803s | 5 |
Williams take different routes to the final lap
Rbn had put Aston on pole with a 1:12.664, beating Tedhead by 0.064 seconds on his first race with a new wheel. “how did i pull a .6?” he asked afterwards. The Williams pair occupied the third row, but Jhazztan led by the end of the opening lap, with rbn and Martim between him and pwjones in fourth.
Jhazztan stopped early and again later, taking two sets of Hards after his opening Mediums. Pwjones made the Medium-to-Hard change once. Each took turns at the front as the stops played out, and the extra visit left Jhazztan eighth at the end of lap 21. Pwjones was second then, behind rbn, and would take the lead a lap later as the Aston completed its stop.
The gap between the Williams cars was 8.969 seconds, with Jhazztan still having traffic to clear. He got ahead of Pooldiver on lap 22 and kyotonic on lap 25, reaching second with eight laps left. By the end of lap 28, pwjones’s advantage was down to three seconds.
Pwjones’s race had not been an uninterrupted exercise in tyre saving. Webbah reckoned he had lost about two seconds while Forestal and McBeth were fighting; Forestal acknowledged the delay, explaining that he had needed to keep the Audi behind. In a race decided by less than seven-tenths, that was time the one-stopper could ill afford.
Jhazztan was quicker on every one of the final twelve laps, but pwjones made him use nearly all of them. The lead was still 1.583 seconds with three laps remaining, then 0.425 with two to go. Pwjones started the last lap ahead; Jhazztan had taken the lead before its first sector was complete.
The winner’s first reaction to his team-mate was admiration:
Ggs no idea how u managed those tyres 😭
— jhazztanPwjones had matched his best IMS finish, but the first win was still waiting. After retiring in Singapore, he had supplied the second score Williams needed and almost supplied the victory as well.
Martim wins Aston’s last-lap contest
The other team-mates at the front had their own late reversal. Both Astons stopped twice, but rbn got ahead of Martim on lap 30 and began the final lap in third. Martim recovered the place before the first sector was complete, finishing just under half a second ahead on track. Rbn’s three-second penalty widened the official difference to 3.482 seconds.
“GG everyone, fighting against fuel last laps,” was rbn’s account. Pole and fourth still left him second in the championship, but the podium went to Martim, whose Singapore race had ended in retirement.
Aston brought both cars home for 35 points. That was enough to move ahead of Ferrari, but Williams had beaten them with both cars after starting behind both Astons.
Tedhead recovers, but kyotonic loses five places
Tedhead’s front-row start had promised a rather easier route to fifth. He said his brake was registering ten per cent on the grid, leaving him under AI control and dropping him to twelfth. By lap three he was ahead of both Swith and Zloober; later he cleared Aardvark and Pooldiver as he worked back towards the front.
The final place came at kyotonic’s expense on the last lap. The Ferrari had been fifth but fell to tenth, and reported that Tedhead had punted him in the Turn 10 braking zone. Tedhead complained that the Ferrari was lagging, describing “Glitches all over the gaff”.
Swith and Zloober finished just behind, separated by 0.095 seconds. Their fight had already changed order twice in the final stint: Zloober got ahead on lap 23, Swith took the place back on lap 26, and the Cadillac kept it to finish sixth from twelfth.
The Spain preview had asked Zloober to make a race live up to his qualifying speed. This time he gained three places from tenth and set the fastest lap, a 1:14.834, but could not get back ahead of Swith. “Good race was a lot of fun” was his assessment.
McBeth took eighth for Audi, improving on his revised eleventh in Singapore, while Online retired. Pooldiver’s one-stop ninth brought Mercedes five points from its only D2 car. It missed the top-eight minimum he had set himself in the Mercedes preview, but got him to the finish and onto the scoreboard after his throttle-hit retirement at the opener.
Making one stop was no guarantee of keeping the tyres intact. Aardvark reported a puncture on the last lap, while Tedhead said he had reached seventy per cent wear in all three of his stints.
Williams turn one scoring car into 53 points
The Williams preview had asked the team to broaden a Singapore return built around four podiums. D2 supplied first and second, after Jhazztan had carried its revised nineteen-point opening score alone.
Cadillac’s 59-point Singapore lead has become a 35-point deficit to Williams, whose one-two puts them top of BOTT on 251 points, one ahead of Aston Martin with E3 still to race.
Williams now lead Aston 72–58, with Ferrari on forty after Tom’s karting absence left kyotonic and Aban to cover Spain. Jhazztan has 49 points to rbn’s 39 and Tom’s thirty. Pwjones goes to Texas having matched his best finish, with a first win still to chase; his team-mate goes there with the championship lead to defend.
▶D2
