The Official 2017 Spanish Grand Prix Thread **Spoilers**

[HustleRussell]

Date(s): Friday 12th - Sunday 14th May 2017

UK Broadcast Timings (and local time)

All sessions are live on Sky F1, with the Channel 4 highlights indicated below.

Session	Day	Sky F1	Channel 4	Session Start	Local Time
Practice 1	Fri	0845	-	0900	1000
Practice 2	Fri	1245	-	1300	1400
Practice 3	Sat	0945	-	1000	1100
Qualifying	Sat	1200	1730	1300	1400
Race	Sun	1200	1845	1300	1400

FORMULA 1 GRAN PREMIO DE ESPAÑA



The tyre choices are Softs, Medium and Hard. All drivers get 7 sets of Softs, 4 of Mediums and 2 of Hards for the weekend.



Live Timing here:

http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-website/en/f1-...

Event timings, steward decisions, technical reports and laptimes for the weekend will appear here:

http://www.fia.com/championship/events/fia-formula...

Weather forecast:

http://www.myweather2.com/Motor-Racing/Spain/Catal...

---

Perhaps interest has understandably waned since the rather boring Russian Grand Prix. This weekend's Spanish grand prix promises to deliver. The beginning of the European season and traditionally the beginning of the technical development arms race, which this season could heavily influence the fortunes of the leading teams. The top three are all bringing major upgrade packages- whose will be the most effective?

Edited by HustleRussell on Tuesday 9th May 15:08

[London424]

Thought this was a good read. I didn't realise Merc were overweight for this season.

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/10859409/ca...

[sandman77]

Thanks for getting the ball rolling on this on OP.

ps. the session start time for qualifying needs updated.

[sandman77]

Seems a strange choice of tyres? no super or ultra soft. Will this be another 1 stopper?

[deadslow]

London424 said:

Thought this was a good read. I didn't realise Merc were overweight for this season.

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/10859409/ca...

thanks, interesting

[HustleRussell]

sandman77 said:

Thanks for getting the ball rolling on this on OP.

ps. the session start time for qualifying needs updated.

Cheers. Done.

I ran out of time to do the 2016 results as per previous races, if anybody knows how to quickly format the table I'll C&P it Into the OP.

sandman77 said:

Seems a strange choice of tyres? no super or ultra soft. Will this be another 1 stopper?

The tyre selection for this weekend's race is not a popular one, Pirelli's tyres are at least one step too durable across the board. I'd imagine a one stop will the plan 'A'.

Will the overly hard tyres once again swing this Ferrari's way?

[51mes]

being pedantic OP thanks muchly for doing this ... - but the Dates "Date(s): Friday 07 April - Sunday 09 April 2017"

are surely Friday 12th May - Sunday 14th? you've re-used the Chinese Dates....

Hoping the results will be different ;-)

S.

[suffolk009]

HAM
RAI
VET

fwiw.

[HustleRussell]

51mes said:

being pedantic OP thanks muchly for doing this ... - but the Dates "Date(s): Friday 07 April - Sunday 09 April 2017"

are surely Friday 12th May - Sunday 14th? you've re-used the Chinese Dates....

Hoping the results will be different ;-)

S.

[Greeny]

deadslow said:

London424 said:

Thought this was a good read. I didn't realise Merc were overweight for this season.

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/10859409/ca...

thanks, interesting

They are looking to save one tenth of a second per kilo of weight saved

[ZX10R NIN]

Lewis
Seb
Kimi

[Derek Smith]

Greeny said:

deadslow said:

London424 said:

Thought this was a good read. I didn't realise Merc were overweight for this season.

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/10859409/ca...

thanks, interesting

They are looking to save one tenth of a second per kilo of weight saved

6 kg seems a lot. 6/10th seems a lot more. Are they being rushed into these changes or was Spain always their intention.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting season. Lack of overtakes aside, we came away from Sochi with a lot of unresolved matters.

[Likes Fast Cars]

Kimi
DR
Seb

Would be nice for a change.

[Greeny]

Derek Smith said:

Greeny said:

deadslow said:

London424 said:

Thought this was a good read. I didn't realise Merc were overweight for this season.

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/10859409/ca...

thanks, interesting

They are looking to save one tenth of a second per kilo of weight saved

6 kg seems a lot. 6/10th seems a lot more. Are they being rushed into these changes or was Spain always their intention.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting season. Lack of overtakes aside, we came away from Sochi with a lot of unresolved matters.

They have been working on the weight saving since the first race

[F1GTRUeno]

Hoping against hope that Red Bull's b-spec car is something special but i just can't see them getting on par with the front two.

Barcelona is usually a snoozefest but if we get a three team fight at the front then it'll be a lot better.

[S0 What]

Derek Smith said:

Greeny said:

deadslow said:

London424 said:

Thought this was a good read. I didn't realise Merc were overweight for this season.

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/10859409/ca...

thanks, interesting

They are looking to save one tenth of a second per kilo of weight saved

6 kg seems a lot. 6/10th seems a lot more. Are they being rushed into these changes or was Spain always their intention.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting season. Lack of overtakes aside, we came away from Sochi with a lot of unresolved matters.

Cheers OP much appreciated
I could be wronge but the way i read it merc are/were 6 kilos over so had to use less ballest to bring the car up to the minimum weight, loosing the weight meens they can add more ballest where they want it ? so loosing the weight wont make any time on a lap but the extra ballest where they want it instead of where the overweight item puts it will make the car handle more as they want it to ?

[Greeny]

S0 What said:

Derek Smith said:

Greeny said:

deadslow said:

London424 said:

Thought this was a good read. I didn't realise Merc were overweight for this season.

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/10859409/ca...

thanks, interesting

They are looking to save one tenth of a second per kilo of weight saved

6 kg seems a lot. 6/10th seems a lot more. Are they being rushed into these changes or was Spain always their intention.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting season. Lack of overtakes aside, we came away from Sochi with a lot of unresolved matters.

Cheers OP much appreciated
I could be wronge but the way i read it merc are/were 6 kilos over so had to use less ballest to bring the car up to the minimum weight, loosing the weight meens they can add more ballest where they want it ? so loosing the weight wont make any time on a lap but the extra ballest where they want it instead of where the overweight item puts it will make the car handle more as they want it to ?

Mercedes realised that they needed/ could / identified where they could make some weight savings after the first race and have been in the process of doing so since.
This is not covered in the quoted article

[London424]

S0 What said:

Derek Smith said:

Greeny said:

deadslow said:

London424 said:

Thought this was a good read. I didn't realise Merc were overweight for this season.

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/10859409/ca...

thanks, interesting

They are looking to save one tenth of a second per kilo of weight saved

6 kg seems a lot. 6/10th seems a lot more. Are they being rushed into these changes or was Spain always their intention.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting season. Lack of overtakes aside, we came away from Sochi with a lot of unresolved matters.

Cheers OP much appreciated
I could be wronge but the way i read it merc are/were 6 kilos over so had to use less ballest to bring the car up to the minimum weight, loosing the weight meens they can add more ballest where they want it ? so loosing the weight wont make any time on a lap but the extra ballest where they want it instead of where the overweight item puts it will make the car handle more as they want it to ?

The way I read it is that they are 6kg over what they can be/need to be which obviously means they aren't running ballast at all, and are stuck with weight where it naturally appears on the car.

What they are working on is making the car lighter wherever possible to then enable them to be able to run ballast and therefore position that where they want.

For example if they can save 10kg they will have 4kg of ballast to play around with.

[S0 What]

On one of the other sky shows (i think the russia race report ?) they said Merc were 6Kg over but had fixed that with a new gearbox they were suposed to introduce at the first race but dropped it pre season and with the change they could now place the ballest were they wanted it, if they were 6 Kgs over the min race weight they would not replace that 6KG with ballest they would just save that weight and reap the benifits of a few tenths per lap ?

[Dr Z]

Thanks, OP.

No worries about the 2016 results. I used to just copy wiki results into an excel sheet and concatenate them together using =Concatenate("||",cell1,"||",cell2,"||",cell3,"||")

London424 said:

The way I read it is that they are 6kg over what they can be/need to be which obviously means they aren't running ballast at all, and are stuck with weight where it naturally appears on the car.

What they are working on is making the car lighter wherever possible to then enable them to be able to run ballast and therefore position that where they want.

For example if they can save 10kg they will have 4kg of ballast to play around with.

My understanding is, overweight in F1 terms = car meets minimum weight but no option for ballast. Could explain some of their tyre woes. Force India were/are overweight too, but asked Perez to lose some weight so the car can meet the min weight, IIRC. It's unlikely that Merc ran over the min weight in the early races.