Eighth place meant Carlos maintained his record of scoring every time he’s contested the Spanish Grand Prix. It was a busy weekend for him because, for the first time in his career, he was fully in the spotlight as opposed to compatriot Fernando Alonso. The commitments can take their toll on a driver but, as Carlos acknowledges, the huge and generous support of the fans more-than compensates for the fatigue.

The car receives new parts at every race – but a larger upgrade like the one delivered for Barcelona is a targeted event. A comprehensive aero upgrade took to the track. For comparison, the team ran both the new and the old spec aero packages in practice, and that meant a vast array of carbon composite assemblies in the garage, plus several spare pairs of (very experienced) hands brought out from the factory.

However sophisticated the simulation tools, and however good the correlation between simulation and track, there’s always a little doubt when upgrades are first fitted to the car. Lando got the new package for FP1 and there was a definite unwinding of tension before FP2 when the data showed that, yes, the upgrades were doing what they were supposed to do and could be fitted to both cars for the afternoon.

Carlos' points were a great team effort. During the late Safety Car interlude, the strategic decision – based on his relative position to the Safety Car – to delay a pitstop for an extra lap, catapulted him from 11^th to 10^th. With a set of used Soft tyres fitted versus the Medium compound used by others, Carlos was able to achieve better tyre warm-up which helped him jump Daniil Kvyat at the restart to move up to ninth. And there was enough life left in them to pass Romain Grosjean and steal eighth, seven laps from home.

About that pit-stop. There were 37 stops during the race and ours were the first, second and third fastest. Carlos pitted on lap 24 and spent 21.468s in pit-lane, Lando found himself in pit-lane for 21.579s two laps later, and then Carlos’ stop under the Safety Car was a 21.545s. The headline-grabbing times are unquestionably satisfying, but it’s the consistency that is most pleasing.

Many messages between the race engineers and drivers during the race were along the lines of: “you’re doing well, pace is good.” The drivers don’t need mollycoddling, but sometimes that message is strategically significant. Both drivers, particularly Carlos, believed they were struggling with a car lacking pace and rear grip. The engineers, able to see the bigger picture, could tell them everybody seemed to be having the same problems and it was the track conditions, rather than their car or tyres.