A note from Race Control confirmed that they had investigated an altercation between Gasly and Hülkenberg at Turn 7 but ultimately decided against taking further action before Leclerc – who had just defended himself robustly against Russell – finally stopped to put on new tyres on lap 37.

With Tsunoda and Gasly having done the same, Piastri was the last driver still using his starting set of tyres, but the Australian and McLaren changed that when they pitted for new hard tyres on lap 39, surrendering a temporary second place behind Norris.

After these stops, Norris was more than 20 seconds ahead of Verstappen, with Russell a further 15 seconds behind in third place. Hamilton was hot on the heels of his teammate in fourth place, but was soon caught and overtaken by Piastri, who made the most of his fresher tyres.

Sainz and Leclerc were in sixth and seventh place ahead of Alonso, Hülkenberg and Perez. Colapinto was now outside the points in P11, followed by the RB duo Ricciardo and Tsunoda. The latter called over the radio that he could go through.

Both RB and Ferrari swapped driver positions at the end, which promoted Leclerc to P7 and Tsunoda to P12. “If you keep this pace up, we should catch Hamilton at the end,” Leclerc was told after lighting up the timesheets with green and purple sector times.

Further ahead, Piastri continued his attack, closing in on Russell and overtaking the Mercedes on the outside at Turn 7. Could he manage to challenge Verstappen? With an 18-second gap and just 16 laps remaining, it would be a difficult task.