The race got underway in sopping-wet conditions, with pole-getter George Russell leading a slow-moving field off the grid. For the first five laps the circuit was so soaked that Haas drivers Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hülkenberg, starting on the full-wet tyre rather than the more versatile intermediate favoured by the rest of the grid, made a deep foray into the points from deep in the pack.
By lap 6, however, a dry line was emerging, and Russell, Verstappen and McLaren’s Norris and Oscar Piastri emerged as the frontrunners, moving clear at the front of the field.
Verstappen stepped up the pressure in the drier conditions, closing to within a second of Russell on lap 13, harrying the Mercedes driver to force him into an error. Ironically the Dutchman was the first to blink, running off the road exiting the first turn.
His timing couldn’t have been worse. Norris and Piastri had been biding their time, trading fastest laps, and now the young Briton was all over the back of the title leader. On lap 20 he pounced, powering past the Red Bull Racing car and on the following tour relieving Russell of the lead.
Norris’s pace was spectacular, and by lap 25 he was more than 10 seconds up the road and looking set to dominate the race.
Logan Sargeant, however, brought that dream to an end when he binned his car in the barriers exiting turn 4.
A safety car was called just as Norris hit the brakes for the final chicane. McLaren hesitated, and by the time it decided to pit him for fresh intermediates, he’d already passed the pit entrance.
Verstappen, Russell and Piastri all made cheap pit stops for new intermediate tyres. Norris, who was the first driver stuck behind the safety car, stopped on the next lap and dropped to third.
Verstappen cleanly restarted the race on lap 30, but the action this time was more subdued. Despite some returning light drizzle, the track was continuing to dry, and the goal was to make a clean switch to slick tyres when the time was right.
Pierre Gasly was the first of the gamblers, exchanging his intermediates for dry tyres on lap 40 and immediately running wide off the track.
Three laps later Lewis Hamilton stopped from fifth, and this time it was clear the circuit was ready. A flurry of pit activity ensued as drivers ditched their wet tyres for fresh slick rubber.
Verstappen and Russell had enough of an advantage to wait two laps, until lap 45, before stopping, but Norris again waited longer, until lap 47, to try to squeeze the last of the life from his intermediate tyres in clear air.
It almost worked. He rejoined side by side with Verstappen, but the Dutchman’s warmer rubber ensured he beat him into turn 3, forcing Norris to accept second ahead of Russell and Piastri.
The race had a final twist in store when on lap 54 Carlos Sainz, racing near the back of the pack on an unexpectedly dreadful day for Ferrari, spun on the kerbs at turn 6. Thai driver Alex Albon had been following him closely and couldn’t take evasive action.
Sainz limped back to the pits to retire, but Albon ended up in the barriers, forcing another safety car.
Russell and teammate Lewis Hamilton, running fifth, rolled the dice on another pit stop for fresh slicks. It dropped Russell to fourth behind Piastri, but when the race resumed with 12 laps to go the British duo were on the offensive.
Russell, however, was clumsy in his execution. He botched a pass on the Australian at the final chicane, causing contact and opening the door to Hamilton to pass both.
Russell soon followed his teammate up the road and eventually repassed him, but the melee had been costly for both. Mercedes had designs on challenging Verstappen for victory, but Russell didn’t even have time to challenge Norris for second, settling instead for the team’s first podium of the season.
Verstappen said his hard-fought sixth victory of the year was a rewarding one.
“It’s never an easy race,” he said. “It’s easy to make mistakes, especially on the inters when they were almost becoming slicks.
“It’s a lot of fun to drive these kinds of races now and then. You don’t want it all the time because that’s too stressful! But I had a lot of fun out there today.”
Norris went unchallenged in second but lamented a lost victory through his team’s misstep behind the first safety car.
“We should have won the race today and we didn’t,” he said. “Simple as that.
“We didn’t do a good enough job as a team to box when we should have done and not get stuck behind the safety car. I don’t think it was a luck or unlucky kind of thing… this was just making a wrong call.”
Russell was similarly disappointed not to have had more to show for his pole position, lamenting errors from the cockpit that cost him chances.
“It felt like a missed opportunity, to be honest,” he said. “We made a couple of mistakes out there, just pushing the limits, and paid the price for it.”
Hamilton finished fourth ahead of Piastri and teammates Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll on a quiet afternoon for the Aston Martin pair.
Daniel Ricciardo scored his first Sunday points of the year, having lost two places off the line starting fifth and another through a five-second penalty for a suspected clutch issue that had his car move slightly on the grid before the start of the race.
Alpine teammates Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon completed the top 10 to move the French team past Williams and into eighth in the constructors standings.
Hülkenberg, Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas, Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou Guanyu finished outside the points.
Charles Leclerc retired after engine problems cruelled his race after 40 laps, leaving Ferrari scoreless.
Sergio Pérez’s lamentable afternoon started with a first-lap crash with Pierre Gasly and ended with him spinning into the wall with 19 laps to go.
He limped back to pit lane with a severely damaged rear wing, spitting carbon fibre across the track, for which he’ll serve a three-place grid penalty at the next race.