We’re set for a fascinating Spanish Grand Prix.
This race has been billed as a litmus test for the competitiveness of the field up front after the last four rounds shook up the form guide.
The preceding four tracks, replete with bumpy surfaces and high kerbs that needed to be attacked, tripped up Red Bull Racing and the stiff suspension it needs to get the most from its aerodynamic package.
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There had been an assumption that the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya — a proper permanent circuit, with a smooth surface, flat kerbs and high-speed corners — would allow it to really stretch its legs again and reassert the dominance it imposed upon the sport in the early rounds of the year.
We’re only one day of practice into the weekend, but so far there’s no sign that Verstappen is set to blow the field away.
Instead Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz led the way for all of Red Bull Racing’s emerging rivals. Even Pierre Gasly slipped into fourth ahead of the fifth-placed Verstappen by the end of FP2.
The signs that Red Bull Racing were concerned it wouldn’t be able to bounce back so easily in Spain were made clear ahead of the race with the revelation that Max Verstappen — who famously decries the heavy workload of the record 24-race season — undertook private testing in his 2022 car in Imola.
The purpose of the test was to reaffirm in his and the team’s minds a performance baseline when trying to analyse what’s gone wrong with the driveability of the current car.
Practice in Spain then became two hours of experimentation to try to rediscover its sweet spot.
“We just tried a few different set-ups out there in FP1 and FP2,” Verstappen said. “It’s trying to finetune a little bit.
“Now it’s about just trying to tidy up a little bit the car.”
The Dutchman ended up 0.24 seconds off the pace, but teammate Sergio Pérez fared worse attempting to tame the car, winding up 13th and 0.817 seconds off the pace.
“In FP2 we did quite a bit of changes and I think we lost track somewhere,” he said. “Plenty of things to analyse. We’ve done a lot of changes, we’ve explored the car quite a bit, so hopefully we are able to pick the right bits going into tomorrow.”
MERCEDES CONFIRMS STEP FORWARD, FERRARI AND MCLAREN MENACE
It wouldn’t be the first time in the last few years that Red Bull Racing has looked understated on Friday and then dominated the rest of the round. But it’s not just that the RB20 is underperforming this weekend; it’s that its chief rivals are all operating at a higher level.
There’s no sign of Red Bull Racing’s usual advantage in downforce or efficiency, and the balance problems that have afflicted the car in previous weeks remains despite the on-paper friendliness of the circuit.
Instead it was Mercedes that led the way on Friday.
It’s an enormously heartening result for the German marque, which took pole and had race-winning pace in Canada last time out thanks to an upgrade cycle started in late May.
Similar to Red Bull Racing, it was unclear whether the result had been track specific, but so far the car appears compliant around Barcelona, even if no-one is expecting its place at the top of the time sheet to hold through to qualifying.
George Russell, who topped qualifying in Montreal, said Barcelona has finally left the team feeling like it’s on the right track.
“I’m feeling good, feeling excited,” he said. “This is what we’ve been chasing for a long time.
“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. Lewis did a really great job and a great lap this afternoon in FP2, but we always know come qualifying the Red Bulls usually turn it up. Max is going to be on it, McLarens were fast, Carlos was fast, so we expect a good fight.”
But it’s Ferrari and McLaren that looked most closely paced to take the fight to Red Bull Racing on Sunday.
Race pace simulation
1. Red Bull Racing: fastest
2. Ferrari: +0.14 seconds
3. McLaren: +0.19 seconds
4. Mercedes: +0.48 seconds
5. Haas: +0.84 seconds
6. Alpine: +0.87 seconds
7. Aston Martin: +0.95 seconds
8. RB: +1.03 seconds
9. Sauber: +1.30 seconds
10. Williams: +1.37 seconds
There were surprises in the bottom half of the field too, with RB’s massive upgrade package appearing to flop, dropping it towards the back of the pack over a single lap and on race pace.
“We struggled a little bit today competitive wise,” Daniel Ricciardo said from 16th and 0.993 seconds off the pace. “We hoped to be better.
“It’s not qualifying, and we’ve got a night now to work on it and figure it out, but from competitiveness, we were missing a bit today.
“I think there’s still some optimism that once we dive into it tonight we’ll find how [the upgrade] is working and better ways to set the car up around it.
“I’m hoping tomorrow we can be a bit more positive about it all. For now we’re still digging and have got a bit of work to do.”
Teammate Yuki Tsunoda — 15th and 0.947 seconds off the pace — suggested diagnosis wouldn’t be quick.
“It’s not the pace we wanted,” he said. “We have to investigate what we’re missing.
“I think the package seems to be working as we expected, but we’re missing something massively, because we’re so far away off the pace that we usually have.
“It’s not an easy fix. We’ll have to do something for sure.”
CHRISTIAN MANSELL TAKES FIRST F3 POLE
Christian Mansell’s rise in Formula 3 continues apace, with the Aussie claiming his maiden pole position in a hard-fought qualifying battle.
The 19-year-old from Maitland fended off Prema’s Arvid Lindblad by just 0.036 seconds to seal the deal, with ART teammate Nikola Tsolov only 0.003 seconds further back in third.
“It just feels amazing,” Mansell said. “I was so over the moon to get the radio message and look up at the massive leaderboard on the main straight.
“To finally get a results that shows just how much effort we have put in is a truly awesome feeling.”
The result follows his front-row start in Monaco, where he finished second for this second podium of the season, bringing him to within 32 points of the championship lead.
“I think it was always there, it was just a matter of extraction,” he said of impressive uptick in form following challenging rounds in Melbourne and Imola, though he said he was more confident of his performance in the weekend’s dual races.
“I am more of a race car driver rather than a qualifying driver.
“I love being wheel to wheel with someone else. Quali has never been a strong point. Up until now I had four pole positions in my entire career, but as far as race wins and podiums, I have more than I can count.”
Mansell has won races in every category he’s competed in for a full season but is yet to take mount the top step in Formula 3.
The category’s reverse-grid rules will drop him to 12th for Saturday’s sprint race, but on Sunday — the 100th race for FIA Formula 3 — he’ll head the field around a circuit that makes overtaking difficult.
He’s never had a chance as good as this to tick the box and massively advance his junior career.
ALPINE HIRES ARCHITECT OF F1’S MOST INFAMOUS CHEATING SCANDAL
The beleaguered Alpine team must’ve been pleased to have something positive to talk about on Friday night, with Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon — fourth and ninth at the end of FP2 — praising the car’s unexpectedly competitive disposition.
“It came a little bit as a surprise,” Gasly said. “We didn’t really expect to have such good pace.”
It was a convenient deflection from the team’s announcement earlier in the day that it had bafflingly rehired disgraced former team boss Flavio Briatore.
Briatore ran the Enstone team in its championship-winning Benneton and Renault eras in the 1990s and 2000s but forced to resign in 2009 when he was implicated in the infamous ‘crashgate’ scandal of the previous season, when he directed Nelson Piquet Jr to deliberately crash his car to help teammate Fernando Alonso win the race.
He was handed a lifetime motorsport ban by the FIA in the aftermath, but French courts later overturned the ban.
His involvement in the sport since then has been limited to managing Fernando Alonso’s career and some commercial consultancy work for F1 — until Friday’s eyebrow-raising announcement from the team he effectively killed, his deeds having forced it to withdraw in disgrace following the cheating scandal.
In a brief media statement, Alpine said that Briatore would take up the role of executive adviser for Renault’s F1 program and specifically that he’d “been appointed by Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo”.
His focus will be “on top level areas of the team, including scouting top talents and providing insights on the driver market, challenging the existing project by assessing the current structure and advising on some strategic matters within the sport.
Undoubtedly some of those responsibilities eat into the scope of team principal Bruno Famin’s role. Whether he complements the French boss or supersedes him remains to be seen.
“He’s going to advise the team,” Famin said. “We will work together of course. He’s the adviser to the group CEO, but he will advise the team, and we are going to work and to talk permanently together for sure.
“I don’t really mind about the past. I’m always looking about future and trying what we can get and to get our team better.”
Intriguingly the move comes as rumours intensify that Renault is looking to ditch its power unit factory and turn Alpine into a customer team.
But Briatore’s appointment has ignited more serious speculation that the team could be sold entirely.
Though Alpine denies it’s for sale, Briatore’s return to the fold will inevitably be read as the French company appointing its own broker. For all his toxic history, there’s no doubting the Italian mogul’s connectedness and business acumen.
And if that really isn’t the case? Then this was just another baffling hire by a team that looks increasingly rudderless in motorsport’s deep end.