The reigning champion increased his lead again to 34 points over Leclerc, who had started from his sixth pole position of the season, and secured his fourth victory in five races over teammate Sergio Pérez by 20.8 seconds.
Verstappen’s 25th F1 victory came after beating first leader Pérez for the provisional lead, with Leclerc out of sync due to a worse response in response to a VSC before his engine exploded in a shocking manner.
With Sainz also eliminated as part of an extreme wear rate for Ferrari-powered cars, it paved the way for Verstappen to win when George Russell completed the podium.
Most of the grille was fitted with new medium compound C4 tires, Sebastian Vettel and Kevin Magnussen bar (used tires), plus Daniel Ricciardo, Valtteri Bottas and the rear row of Lance Stroll and Mick Schumacher, all rubber shoes hard C3.
Perez was encouraged by radio to pull out his “elbows at turn 1” and duly delivered.
Leclerc’s initial breakaway was solid enough, but the skating of the wheels in the second phase allowed Pérez to tie with Verstappen after the best throw of the batch.
The Ferrari driver then closed his left front considerably at the opening of his 90-degree left hand to run very far from the apex and make sure Pérez took the lead in the race.
Verstappen was able to take a look inside Leclerc, but he thought better of it as Sainz tried to get into the act before being left adrift of the three leading cars.
Pérez completed the first lap with 1.3 seconds on his hand over Leclerc to immediately escape the DRS zone and extended it by half a second over the next two laps to consolidate first place.
With Leclerc slipping, Verstappen was able to stay 0.7 seconds behind his title rival.
Leclerc endured a move out of turn 16, the last defined corner, to allow Verstappen to close even further with DRS before a yellow flag and then a virtual security car interrupted the game.
Ferrari’s attack was reduced to a car when Carlos Sainz ran down the corner 4 escape road with a possible power failure, while 5 seconds from Verstappen and 5 seconds from Russell.
Ferrari rolled the dice to get a theoretically cheaper pit stop by calling Leclerc for a set of hard tires on lap 10, but despite no obvious errors, the Scuderia took 5.4 seconds to serve Leclerc.
Red Bull did not cover the strategy, giving Pérez a 2-second lead over Verstappen while Leclerc picked up 11 seconds from the pair, but from lap 13 he started scoring the fastest laps of the race.
Verstappen was able to take advantage of Pérez before the Mexican, who lost 2 seconds in a lap, was told “not to fight” to allow his DRS-assisted teammate to take the lead on lap 15 in the curve 1.
At the end of the next lap, Pérez opted for soft, but like front-row rival Leclerc, he was hampered by a massive 5.7-second stop driven by a problem in his right front wheel.
Red Bull called on Verstappen to make the leap hard just two laps later, and he also endured a 3.5-second serve to climb to the top with a 13-second lead over Leclerc (managing overheating of the rear tires), as Pérez made the fastest lap from the end. Ferrari while running 4 seconds from Verstappen.
But the overheated tires were the least of Leclerc’s problems soon after, as at the end of lap 20, his engine exploded during the final and he entered the pitlane to end the Ferrari disaster.
After the failure of the MGU-H turbo in Spain, it was the second withdrawal based on Leclerc’s engine in three races to add to the loss of Ferrari 1-2 -for strategic mistakes- in Monaco.
That left Verstappen in the lead for 5.2 seconds over Perez, while fifth-placed Russell moved to the podium ahead of Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly and Lewis Hamilton.
Verstappen would negotiate the target lap times with his engineer as they tried to find a balance between preserving the car but not allowing the tires to cool too much.
Then, the virtual security car made its second appearance to feature Kevin Magnussen, 16th starter, who had climbed to 11th to fight Ocon for points.
But then the Ferrari engine also jumped into the back of the Haas, to accompany Ferrari’s Alfa Romeo customer, who had to stop Zhou Guanyu eight laps earlier.
Magnussen parked on the approach to turn 15 and gestured to the stewards to help him retrieve the Haas VF-22, which began rolling down the hill to the top.
Red Bull reacted by facing Verstappen for the second time to grab a set of hard tires to the flag, and finally got a 2.7-second stop, before Pérez stopped to lead on the same lap 34.
But a delay in the left back meant more time was lost in the pitlane thanks to a 4.4-second stop, to give Verstappen a 10-second lead when the four-minute VSC interval was over.
Although it was Pérez who would get away with the fastest lap of the night, the pace of the second half of the Verstappen race extended the distance north of 20 seconds to the flag.
Russell took a solo run, but took advantage of Ferrari’s nightmare to seal a podium despite a difficult weekend for the Mercedes W13 dragging and dragging.
Despite his back pain, Lewis Hamilton climbed to fourth place thanks to a strong push with remarkable advances from the trio of Ricciardo, Yuki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly.
Gasly managed his hard tires for the long distance, sealing fifth, while Sebastian Vettel recovered with force from an initial error to climb to sixth place.
Despite starting with a set of media used, Vettel had been struggling with Hamilton for seventh place before facing difficulties and then chasing Ocon.
Aston Martin overtook Alpine in ninth place on lap 13 before stopping on turn 3 to abort the turn and turn onto the breakaway road, narrowly losing to Tsunoda when he resumed in 12th position. .
Fernando Alonso was another great climber, sealing the seventh of Alpine, as Ricciardo had just managed to stay eighth over Lando Norris by only three tenths, the McLaren pair each had to defend their position on the track in the initial and final phase of the race. it worked with divided strategies.
Ocon’s long initial stage in the hard returned the final point, as Valtteri Bottas, in the 11th, set the best result for a Ferrari-powered car.
Alex Albon climbed to 12th position ahead of Tsunoda, who had to look for some tape in the back wing after his DRS flap split in half. Schumacher crossed the line in 14th.
Latifi’s afternoon was ruined before it really started because the Williams driver was given a 10-second penalty when a team mechanic turned his car around, touching it illegally.
He was then fined 5 seconds for failing to comply with the blue flags.
Stroll joined Magnussen, Zhou and the two Ferraris as retirees.