The Official 2018 Spanish Grand Prix Thread **SPOILERS**

[Dr Z]

Date(s): Friday 11 May 2018 - Sunday 13 May 2018

UK Broadcast Timings (and local time)

All sessions are live on Sky F1. Highlights on Channel 4.

Session	Day	Sky F1	Channel 4	Session Start	Local Time
Practice 1	Fri	0945	-	1000	1100
Practice 2	Fri	1345	-	1400	1500
Practice 3	Sat	1045	-	1100	1200
Qualifying	Sat	1300	1730	1400	1500
Race	Sun	1230	1800	1410	1510

Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya



Live timing for all sessions available here:

https://www.formula1.com/en/f1-live.html

Lap times, PU component use, technical reports and Stewards' decisions for the weekend will appear here:

https://www.fia.com/events/fia-formula-one-world-c...

Weather forecast:

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

The tyre choices:




2017 Qualifying





2017 Race



Fastest Race Lap: 1:23.593 (L64, L. Hamilton; Mercedes)

---

It’s race week, and it’s the start of the European leg of the Championship (let’s ignore the Canadian GP for a moment ). And as is tradition, teams bring big update packages to their cars at this race with the practice sessions being used to test the parts and check correlation, in addition to the usual programme of working towards the race setup.

The circuit has lots of long high speed corners in sector 1 & 2 with a lot of time to be gained there with a better performing chassis. Despite being a shorter lap (than races so far), the downforce requirements of the track also pushes up the power sensitivity. This in turn has an effect on fuel consumption with this being higher than any of the races of 2018 thus far. Sector 3 (aka Monaco sector) is a tight and technical section, with cars having good mechanical grip doing well there.

Last year we had an unusually interesting race at the front here, with a race long fight between Hamilton and Vettel for the race lead and even an overtake for the lead--helped a little bit by an elongated DRS section. Hamilton drove a brilliant race, with the Mercedes strategy team and Bottas doing their bit to provide an opportunity to pass Vettel for the lead and win.

This was also the race Mercedes turned up with a huge update package last year, however Ferrari had the quicker car in qualifying and race..except one place where the Vettel/Ferrari combination was not quick enough--at the final chicane and that proved to be their undoing.

Pirelli have modified the tyres slightly for this race--the tread depth for the tyres have been reduced by 0.4mm. It is alleged that the blistering experienced by Merc in the pre-season test here was to force Pirelli in to this decision. Merc didn’t have the quickest car here last year, and don’t appear to have the quickest car this year so far, so if they suddenly take pole position and disappear into the sunset…

Lots of reliability gremlins were experienced by Ferrari by this time last year on the PU front (Vettel had to take his 3rd engine during that weekend), and things have improved this year. However, the engines still have a couple of races to go before the new engines are scheduled for introduction, so one wonders if we would start to see some issues, with teams running more detuned than usual in the practice sessions to help the situation.

Even with the harder tyres last year, it was a 2-stop race (the track was resurfaced, so it is smoother than last year). The tyre choices are suggesting Merc will most likely have the flexibility with the harder compounds (Soft & Medium) than Ferrari.

Support races include F2 and GP3 Championship opener:

Edited by Dr Z on Friday 11th May 13:59

[Dr Z]

Kccv23highliftcam said:

Man that turn 3 has gotta hurt!

Yep, and who has this ¬



...to take Campsa flat?

Mark-C said:

Angpozzuto said:

paua said:

Vaud said:

I'll take lap 66 with a last minute dive...

1 - Deesee
2 - Jasandjules
3 - NRS
6 - GTO-3R
10 - DeejRC
15 - AW111
22 - suffolk009
66 - Vaud

Pitlane exit/ rejoining the race, lap 12.

I'll take lap 67 on the cool down lap

Lap 5 taking out Alonso and causing a safety car and\or riot

Now he's on the naughty step, he will be a good boy and take a dominant victory with no crashes.

[Dr Z]

Ferrari have mounted the mirrors on the halo and added a little wing above it



All eyes on the McLaren garage...they must be bringing something...first I've heard of it



Merc brake duct assembly and aero bits (snapped yesterday as the car was loaded off the truck)



Quite like the look of the Renault wing...



More here

[Dr Z]

Blimey!







The rear has gotten super tight!

[Dr Z]

NRS said:

That is quite a few (visually) big upgrades!

Boullier saying don't have big expectations for it, as others will also improve etc. Alonso too.

The nose is a mish mash of ideas from different teams...a proper frankenstein.

Hope the stopwatch is kind to it. Can't wait for FP1.

[Dr Z]

paolow said:

Certainly it looks (to my eyes) somwhat inelegant because the aero is so front end heavy - but, as ever, stationary looks be damned - its speed round the track thats the winner...

The front end is/was the problem with the car in the four races so far, IMO. In several occasions you'd see Fernando throw the car into a corner with all his might hoping it'd stick, but it just wouldn't handle it. This looks like it goes in some way towards addressing that. I think there's some pretty significant changes to the diffuser too now.

I would expect the gains from this would snowball nicely. The car that was scrutineered looked like it had the low drag FW fitted. Will be interesting to see what they end up racing with on Saturday and Sunday.

Perhaps they should have called the car that raced at the past four tracks as the MCL32B as that would seem more appropriate.

[Dr Z]

thegreenhell said:

Two main points of interest for FP1 for me: the new McLaren update, and the new Williams test driver. How will they go?

Williams have a substantial update here. Also RB & Force India.

[Dr Z]

FP1



These new tyres working well on the Merc then.

Phew, the McLaren nose works.

That RB is looking great. Max did his quickest lap on old mediums.

rev-erend said:

Nice job Dr Z always look forward to seeing your F! race post prior to the F1 weekend.

Too kind, glad it's useful!

[Dr Z]

I do wonder if these cars will take Campsa flat...this corner has not been taken flat since the double diffuser cars.

Wasn't flat last year in qualifying.

[Dr Z]

FP2



Basically, the super soft wasn't yielding much (if at all) lap time benefit over the soft for a lot of cars.

The top teams will almost certainly try to go through Q2 on the softs tomorrow.

[Dr Z]

Looking at the long runs, Merc don't look very quick on the super softs compared to RB/Ferrari.

Just as well they didn't bring many of those tyres here. I think they will stick to the soft/medium for the race.

ETA: Lap record from 2008 will be broken on Sunday.

Edited by Dr Z on Friday 11th May 16:32

[Dr Z]

Dr Z said:

Looking at the long runs, Merc don't look very quick on the super softs compared to RB/Ferrari.

Scratch that, I was looking at Hamilton's times...Bottas' long run on the super soft look better and in line with the other top teams. In fact, the most consistent one on the super softs among the top 3 teams.

Difficult to say what will happen on Sunday as the engines are running conservatively today, but still it is looking like a 3-team fight at the top.

[Dr Z]

FP3



Super soft working in the cooler temps, then. Forecast tomorrow is for rain/cloudy, so it will be interesting to see what the top teams will do in Q2.

RB did some sims on the medium tyre...interesting.

Did Hartley try to take Campsa flat?! no es posible señor para su carro!

j/k glad he's doing OK.

[Dr Z]

Such a strange qualifying session, with RB & Ferrari not sure what tyres will work. Merc have got the front row locked out, and looking at the tyre sets left for the race (below), they seem to have enough soft & medium tyres left to react to different strategy options more than RB or Ferrari, as I expected in the OP.

Hamilton didn't seem to have the greatest balance on the soft tyres when he was doing the Q2 lap, so wonder if he'd struggle in the 1st stint tomorrow?

If the Mercs get off on formation through the 1st corner, I reckon the race will be pretty boring. The Ferraris and/or RBs will have to try to create something in the 1st corner to take the fight to Merc.

Too bad that Alonso is starting on the super softs tomorrow. I don't think the McLaren liked this tyre very much even compared to other teams on Friday. He's going to go backwards quickly I fear.

Shall be doing the rain dance!

[Dr Z]

kambites said:

So how did Ferrari fail to get second? Could Vettel really not have made it to the end given that Bottas seemed to have no issues despite only pitting one (or was it two?) laps later?

Tyres were not in great shape on the Ferrari...Mercedes were the only ones who were able to work it well. I'd expect the same result in Silverstone and Paul Ricard where the same spec tyres will be brought. Merc also had way more performance when Bottas was following Vettel. IMO, this race has highlighted that Merc are significantly better on fuel too, although the race was marginal for all engines due to the very fast pace.

[Dr Z]

ELUSIVEJIM said:

REALIST123 said:

I’d give it to whoever persuaded the FIA to change the tyres.

Hopefully the next races will be closer but looks like Silverstone and PR are done.

Just do not understand how this has even been passed.

If the tyres were going to be blistering then team would just have to deal with it and make more pit stops.

It would have made today's race much more enjoyable but it is clear that the change has made a massive difference to one team.

To be fair, Merc have also looked on another planet in fuel critical races in the 1st stint last year. It just looked like one of those races today.

RB were also doing OK with the tyres, being able to 1-stop, but you'd say Merc worked the tyres best.

[Dr Z]

Mr Pointy said:

Changing the rubber thickness by 0.4mm seems an incredibly small amount. I'm surprised they can mould something rubbery to that level of accuracy.

It is a small amount, but then the tyre tread is apparently 3.3mm deep, so that's shaving off 12% of the total tread depth. Amounting to 1kg of tyre per corner (I think) weight reduction, which was balanced out with ballast at this race.

Pretty substantial change.

ETA: The teams have requested Pirelli for both tyre specs in the test days this week here. Will be interesting to see what they find.

Edited by Dr Z on Monday 14th May 15:32

[Dr Z]

521EK9 said:

Is there other options available regarding tyre supplier at these test days or is it simply Pirelli trying out new compounds?

I think Pirelli have really brought drama to the races in comparison to the days when they barely changed tyres, however as has been mentioned previously the sport has ended up revolving around tyre deg and fuel saving.

It seems they're sucking the life out of the sport which in my eyes should showcase the ultimate in performance without so many drawbacks.

No, it's just Pirelli.

Ironically, we did see the ultimate in performance at this race, from Merc & Hamilton.

Did you enjoy it? The tyres were even harder than usual (due to the reduced tread) and allowed them to 1-stop. Hamilton was pulling 6 tenths a lap in the first stint on Vettel, who for all practical purposes was barely hanging on with the pressure from Bottas behind. Did you like the kind of racing you saw yesterday?

[Dr Z]

https://www.f1today.net/en/live/f1/238594/follow-l...

^Testing live updates.

[Dr Z]

BTW, this is the line up for the tests, FI and McLaren are doing some test work for Pirelli. Kubica is in the car tomorrow.