Oscar Piastri takes fourth position from the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.

I must say Oscar looks good this weekend but is he too far behind to make a real impact on the race? He's around 25 seconds behind race leader Max Verstappen at the minute, who complains that his tyres are done and dusted.

23 laps to go.

Sam Bird
Formula E driver on BBC Radio 5 Live

That early pit stop George Russell did has put him under pressure towards the end of the grand prix. We do expect Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen to keep on extending in this stint.

Engineer: "Box to retire the car"

Russell: "As long as Kimi keeps extending, Verstappen keep going to keep on extending and put us into risk"

So, Fernando Alonso's been given a five-second penalty and Lance Stroll's now been told to retire the car.

Not a stellar afternoon for Aston Martin. Or season, for that matter.

Engineer: "Best you can at this stage of the race, we're just trying to build a tyre offset."Verstappen: "I think it was the wrong call"

Max Verstappen currently leads this race after 46 laps with a 4.3 second gap on Kimi Antonelli.

George Russell, who's recently pitted, is in third and 12 seconds behind his team-mate.

Finely poised, this.

Andrew Benson
BBC F1 correspondent

Verstappen has got the problem now that you often get when you're chasing someone. You often get the dirty air and the progress you are making is evaporated, basically because your tyres start to overheat, especially at a track like this, with hot temperatures, 51.6C track temperature. The tyres get too hot and it is difficult to get closer than this. What are Red Bull going to do about this?

Mercedes bring George Russell into the pits and Max Verstappen takes the lead of this race for the first time.

Russell comes out in third, just ahead of Lando Norris.

Lewis Hamilton's coming into the pits. Again. And Oscar Piastri boxes too and comes out slightly ahead of him.

And it's closing in at the front, too. We could have a three-way battle soon.

Stay tuned, folks. This is gonna be a cracking finale.

Andrew Benson
BBC F1 correspondent

Antonelli is coming for both of them. He is now 5.9 seconds behind Verstappen and lapping a second a lap quicker than George Russell, his team-mate in the lead.

Fernando Alonso, who's currently in 19th place, is given a five-second time penalty.

That's for speeding in the pit lane.

Not sure that's going to affect him too much given he's at the back.

Forty laps gone and things have progressed with Max Verstappen's pursuit of race leader George Russell.

He's 1.3 seconds behind and within touching distance of being able to mount a proper challenge and overtake for the lead of this race.

Andrew Benson
BBC F1 correspondent

Russell is really struggling at the moment, he has just lost eight tenths to Max Verstappen on that last lap. It is down to 2.4 seconds that gap.

Antonelli is also closing, he is going even quicker than Max Verstappen, but he is quite a bit back still, 7.6 seconds behind Verstappen.

Engineer: "We need to get Piastri, I know you're trying."

It's funny isn't it? Ferrari got everything right in Barcelona, particularly strategy-wise.

Yet I'm not sure what the craic is today with their strategy. Mind you, I'm certainly interested to see it play out.

Lewis Hamilton's softs are beginning to degrade now and he has a snap of oversteer but manages to keep his Ferrari on the straight and narrow.

Image source, Getty Images

Andrew Benson
BBC F1 correspondent

Max Verstappen at the front is closing in on Russell by about 0.2 of a second of a lap. This is getting really tasty at the front of the race.

Oscar Piastri makes a move on Charles Leclerc and takes P4!

But who's that gaining on Leclerc? It's Lewis Hamilton! And he bags fifth place off his Ferrari team-mate.

Leclerc boxes shortly after. What a mad race this is.