Luke’s Weekend Take – Spanish GP 2023

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Spanish Grand Prix: New Upgrades, Track Changes, and Thrilling Qualifying Battles

Spanish GP 4

And we’re back at the Spanish GP in Barcelona and we see a lot of teams bringing new upgrades to their cares after they would have postponed them from the Imola GP due to the cancelation of the race. We also have seen the last chicane of this track being removed to make the track quicker and we already seen the fruits of this in Qualifying.

Talking about the upgrades we have seen multiple teams with new parts on their F1 cars in the hope to get closer to the front team Red Bull. Having said that Red Bull themselves have brought a new floor upgrade for their car, potentially after we seen Sergio Perez’s car in the air in Monaco, Adrian Newey couldn’t stand the fact that everyone has seen his masterpiece, so he changed it a race later. This upgrade seems to be working well for Red bull as all weekend we have seen Max Verstappen at the top of the charts across all Free Practice sessions and also qualifying. In FP2 Max Verstappen must have been so bored that at one point when his engineer was passing some information on tactics Max picked up that a phone was going off in the pit lane and he responded, “Someone’s phone is going, is that Helmut’s?” his engineer responded later “Erm, Yes”. This was the highlight of FP2 for me.

The main talks on upgrades however were all on Ferrari’s new package as we see them abandon a bit their sidepod design which was very iconic and is in my opinion what made the car so beautiful and go more to a Red Bull and Aston Martin approach. Both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have commented to media how much better the car feels to drive, and it also seems that Ferrari have managed to unlock more high speeds on the straights with this new upgrade. We have seen this mainly on Friday in FP1 where we saw Carlos Sainz running the new car and Charles Leclerc run the old car as a benchmark. Even though Leclerc’s fastest time in FP1 was a few hundreds of a second quicker than Sainz, the top speed that Sainz managed to hit on the speed trap was around 16km/h more than Leclerc which gives the team hope that they might be able to unlock more potential on the SF23.

Aston Martin also have brought some new parts to Fernando Alonso’s home GP. Aston Martin introduced a new rear wing to their car in the hope to take Alonso from 2nd and 3rd steps to Race wins. What a sight it would be if we see Fernando Alonso on the top step of the podium at his home race in Spain. In FP1 Alonso only managed 6th fastest however it seems that Alonso might have been up to his old tricks as in FP2 there was only a tenth separating Alonso from Verstappen. This unfortunately didn’t translate to Qualifying where we see Alonso not managing to get his tyres working and only manage to get P9 where Lance Stroll managed to get his car in P6.

The change to the Barcelona track meant that lap times have gone down significantly from last year, this however has uncovered some issues to thee track where a lot of cars were complaining about how bumpy it is around turn 16 and how proposing was making an appearance again. This is due the speed they are going round that turn now, as in the previous layout they were taking that corner much slower given that the chicane on the Spanish GP was classed as one of the slowest chicanes on the F1 calendar. To put it in perspective on how much quicker this track is now, last year’s pole position by Leclerc was that of 1:18.750, while Verstappen’s pole this year was that of 1:12:272 making the new layout about 6.5 seconds quicker.

Rain Disrupts FP3 and Surprises in Qualifying: Spanish Grand Prix Build-Up

On Saturday, the rain slowed the team’s progress in FP3 where we saw a lot of drivers coming off the track due to the lack of grip with Logan Sargeant also bringing out the Red Flag in FP3. Sargeant wasn’t the only one in the gravel though as we see Lance Stroll and Pierre Gasly also take some trips into the grave, however they managed to keep the car going and get back on track.

Mercedes was also amongst other teams testing their new upgrades they introduced in Monaco. It seems that the W14 seem to be getting quicker however Lewis Hamilton is still complaining about the drivability of the car. This however didn’t stop him from putting in some impressive times over the weekend so far. I am excited to see what will unfold tomorrow in the race. I am still hopeful to the day we have 3-4 teams all fighting for the win with some action up at the front of the race which will go very nicely with the great action we’ve been seeing so far in the midfield.

Alpine seem to be carrying on their impressive performance from Monaco as we have seen both Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly at the top of the charts at some points during Friday and Saturday sessions, this means only one thing for Ferrari, Mercedes, and Aston Martin. That there are 2 more cars they need to be worried about fighting for podiums.

Following the rain we saw in FP3 when it was time to get going again for Qualifying the rain seem to have washed off most of the rubber that was laid during the previous sessions around the track in Barcelona, this cased some issues for quite a few drivers as we saw at least 6 different drivers losing control in Q1 mainly around Turn 11. The Red Flag was momentarily brought out due to Valtteri Bottas going into the gravel and even though he managed to get back onto the track the FIA brought out the Red Flag. We see both Alpha Tauri drivers lose control in the same corner with Nyck De Vries being the multiple offender to a point where he even asked his engineer what he was doing wrong there, De Vries however seems to have found the groove and managed to get a respectable 8th in Q1.

Despite the Ferrari car upgrades being successful in making the car more drivable, Leclerc shockingly was eliminated in Q1 for the first time since Monaco 2019. Leclerc said later that he believes that there was something wrong with the car as in FP3 the car was all good. This could potentially mean a pitlane start for the Monegasque if Ferrari must do some changes out of Parc Ferme. This wouldn’t be much of a change however as Leclerc is already starting in 18th.

Leclerc being eliminated in Q1 wasn’t the only upset we seen in Qualifying though as in Q2 we see another 2 outliers eliminated, Sergio Perez and George Russell couldn’t make the tyres work and couldn’t find the time to get out of the bottom 5 in Q2. As if this wasn’t bad enough for Russell, on the way back to the pits at the end of Q2 we see both Mercedes touch on the main straight with Hamilton having to take avoiding manoeuvres on the grass but it wasn’t enough to avoid contact and also losing a part of his front wing.

In Q3 this meant that with 3 big names out of Qualifying we had some unusual drivers in Q3 which could potentially mean that we will have an interesting race especially with the starting grid we have tomorrow for the race. We saw Max Verstappen top the charts and take pole for the 1st time in his F1 career followed by Carlos Sainz, Lando Norris, Pierre Gasly, Lewis Hamilton, Lance Stroll, Esteban Ocon, Nico Hulkenberg, Fernando Alonso and Oscar Piastri forming the top 10. Since Qualifying Pierre Gasly has been handed a 3-place grid penalty which means he will be starting in 7th place pushing Lewis Hamilton up to the 2nd row along side his fellow Brit, Lando Norris.

It was an impressive performance by Norris to make it to the 2nd row tomorrow which I’m hoping that Lando can convert that 3rd place start into a podium. With Alonso in 9th place and his mega starts we are also guaranteed to see some overtakes into turn 1 from the cunning old fox.

All in all, we are in for a good race tomorrow and I can’t wait to see all the action unfold. Who do you think will come out on top tomorrow and who do you think will lose out to strategy or potentially some rain as well. I hope you enjoy the race, and I will see you all in my Race Review.

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