May 26, 2022
The Spanish Grand Prix was an amazing race! While qualifying was not very interesting, the race was incredible and it was great to see all of the upgrades teams have made to their cars! I apologize for the late upload, but I have been sick all week and was not able to finish the post until today. However, you guys are pretty lucky now because you get me tomorrow too! This coming weekend is the Monaco Grand Prix so the race preview for that should be out by tomorrow! Anyway, let’s take a look at everything that happened over the course of F1’s weekend in Barcelona!
Free-Practice 1: 5/20/2022
Not all of the drivers on the grid did drove during the first Practice session, but all 20 cars went out. No, there are no self-driving F1 cars. Teams are required to use at least two junior or reserve drivers during practice sessions throughout the season. This is to help develop new talent and give up and coming drivers a chance to drive in F1. This weekend saw Juri Vips (a member of Red Bulls’ driving academy) take Sergio Perez’s spot in FP1, Nyck DeVries (a Mercedes reserve driver) drive for Alex Albon, and Robert Kubica (a reserve driver for Alfa Romeo) drive instead of Zhou Guanyu.
The two Ferraris were at the top of the time charts with Charles Leclerc in P1 and Carlos Sainz in P2. Leclerc set the benchmark time of 1 minute and 19.828 seconds. Sainz was 0.079 seconds behind. Ferrari debuted a new rear wing and reshaped front suspension as their upgrades for Barcelona, so having the top times of the session is good news that the changes are effective.
Max Verstappen was next, in P3. Red Bull’s new higher downforce front wing and modifications to the car’s floor seem to be working in Verstappen’s car. Juri Vips’ Red Bull, was not showing the same results. He finished the session in P20, but this might have been due to the fact that it was his first time driving an F1 car. Vips also competes in F2, a junior league that most F1 drivers come up through, and he had a race to focus on. Juri Vips might have just had his hands full and couldn’t make the most out of his practice session in an F1 car. Perez will be back in the car for FP2, so we should see the full extent of what the Red Bull is capable of then.
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| Juri Vips in Sergio Perez's Red Bull during FP1 |
George Russell put his Mercedes up into P4 and Lewis Hamilton followed closely behind in P6! It seems that the big package of upgrades Mercedes introduced is working. Their new engines, floor, and a few added endplates seem to be curing the porpoising problem and giving the W13 speed!
Lando Norris finished FP1 in P7 and Daniel Ricciardo finished in P9! Has McLaren found a way out of its slump? I sure hope so!
The AlphaTaruis seem to be the new team capable of points! (One of my friends will be pleased with this improvement. She calls Yuki Tsunoda a “short king!”, so it is safe to say that we are now fans of AlphaTauri!) Pierre Gasly put down a lap time that got him P8 and Yuki Tsunoda went P10!
Free-Practice 2: 5/20/2022
It was 86 degrees Fahrenheit when the Practice session started at 5:00 PM, but over the course of the session, the temperature cooled. Drivers who put in lap times at the beginning of the session struggled because the track was too hot, but drivers who went out later found it easier to manage tires. This played a key role in FP2’s results.
Charles Leclerc once again went P1 during this Practice session. Unfortunately, Carlos Sainz finished in P4 after the two Mercedes cars split the Ferraris. George Russell finished P2 with Lewis Hamilton in P3! While Russell was one tenth of a second off of Leclerc’s lap time, this is still significant improvement for Mercedes! They might be on their way to becoming championship contenders again.
The Red Bulls were the cars that suffered from the track temperature. After setting a great benchmark lap at the beginning of the session, Verstappen saw himself finish fifth after other cars set faster laps on the cooled track. Sergio Perez ended in P7.
Pierre Gasly struggled with traction problems that resulted in his P11 lap time. Every time he touched the throttle pedal, he felt his car going sideways. This is concerning.
Lando! No! Lando Norris ran wide at Turn 9 and damaged the floor of his car, ending his session and forcing him to finish P20.
Valtteri Bottas suffered from technical issues that made him pull over at the beginning of the session, resulting in a virtual safety car and his P16 finish.
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| Valtteri Bottas hopping out of his car after his engine failed during FP2 |
Williams did not perform very well with Alex Albon in P18 and Nicholas Latifi in P19. Unfortunately, it does not seem like Williams will have the pace to be competitive at this track.
Free-Practice 3: 5/21/2022
Similar to the other two Practice sessions, FP3 was not very eventful. In the end, however, it gave us some insight as to how the upgrades are working!
Charles Leclerc continued his trend of finishing first! This is really good news for me because if Leclerc keeps this pace up, he’ll be winning the Grand Prix by a landslide! Carlos Sainz did not perform as well again, finishing in P5.
Max Verstappen was more competitive during this session and finished less than a tenth of a second behind Leclerc, in P2. His teammate Sergio Perez finished P6.
Mercedes split the Ferrari cars again, and this time they split the Red Bulls too! It seems that Mercedes has really solved their issues and can become threats to Red Bull and Ferrari soon.
McLaren recovered after a poor FP2 result! Lando Norris went P7 and Ricciardo went P11. Hopefully, this holds up during qualifying and the race!
Mick Schumacher was hurt by the weather when his brakes overheated and caught on fire 4 laps into the session. This resulted in a precautionary gearbox change by the Haas team, and an end to his session. He still managed to put a lap time in before his incident though, so he finished in P19.
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| Engineers putting out the fire cause by Schumacher's overheated brakes. |
Pierre Gasly’s bad luck just keeps coming. Gasly finished Saturday’s Practice session in P20 after he failed to set a lap time. During an installation lap, a lap to test out the car and make sure it is working properly, Gasly’s heat shield failed and the AlphaTauri mechanics were not able to fix it before the end of the session. I’m afraid the luck we had during FP1 is gone now.
Free-Practice showed us how the new upgrades teams have installed are going to impact the order of the grid. We see that Mercedes has become significantly more competitive, and McLaren might have fixed its pace issues as well. We saw how the weather of a Spanish heat wave is impacting the cars: track temperatures can get too high and engines and brakes can overheat. We’ll probably be in for a very interesting race!
Qualifying: 5/21/2022
Q1:
Red Bull started out with their hot laps first, but Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz went out later and set faster lap times. Q1 ended with Leclerc in P1 (again!), followed by Sainz, Max Verstappen, George Russell, and Lewis Hamilton. Sergio Perez finished in P8 after running through the gravel at Turn 7 during his final flying lap.
Lando Norris and Lance Stoll almost made contact in the pit lane after Stroll was released from his garage unsafely. However, race control investigated it and decided not to penalize Stroll, so it was just a close call.
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| Stroll's perspective on the incident |
Mick Schumacher made it to Q2!
Eliminated: Sebastian Vettel (P16), Fernando Alonso (P17), Lance Stroll (P18), Alex Albon (P19), Nicholas Latifi (P20)
All of the cars eliminated in Q1 were not able to match the pace of the cars ahead of them.
Alpine changed Fernando Alonso’s engine ahead of Sunday’s race, giving him a grid penalty that puts him at the back of the grid. Fernando Alonso will end up starting P20 for the race. This bumps Lance Stroll up into P17, Albon into P18, and Latifi into P19.
Q2:
Mercedes started out strong in Q2, similar to the way Red Bull started Q1, but Verstappen and Sainz were able to go faster by the end of the session. Q2 resulted in a lineup of Verstappen (P1), Sainz (P2), Russell (P3), Hamilton (P4), and Magnussen (P5)! Leclerc and Perez were both on used tires during Q2 to save their new soft tires for Q3, so both of them were not able to set lap times that got them into the top 5.
Mick Schumacher has made it to Q3 for the first time in his Formula One career! Now, onto getting those points! I am so happy for him!
Eliminated: Lando Norris (P11), Esteban Ocon (P12), Yuki Tsunoda (P13), Pierre Gasly (P14), Zhou Guyanu (P15)
Norris made it out of the elimination zone with his final lap but his lap time was deleted for track limits and he ended up P11.
Both AlphaTauris struggled during Q2, with Gasly’s race engineer even apologizing for the car’s performance.
Q3:
The opening laps of Q3 saw Verstappen going fastest with Sainz and Perez trailing behind.
Leclerc spun out of Turn 14 during his first flying lap, causing him to abandon the lap and go back to the pit lane. As the clock counted down the minutes until qualifying ended, Leclerc still hadn’t put down a good time. He finally set the benchmark lap time of 1 minute, 18.750 seconds and got provisional pole. When Verstappen was in his final lap of the session, trying to beat Leclerc’s time, he started complaining of power loss in his car and had to go back to the pits. This gave Leclerc pole position, leaving Verstappen P2. It was later found that a DRS issue is what caused Verstappen to back out of his lap, not a loss of power.
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| Charles Leclerc's spin in Q3 |
Carlos Sainz ended up in P3, with Russell, Perez, and Hamilton following behind. The results of Q1, Q2, and Q3 all show us that it looks like Ferrari, Red Bull, and Mercedes will be battling each other for the rest of the season. It’ll be just like the early 2010s again!
Kevin Magnussen struggled with a DRS issue throughout Q3, but he still managed to finish P8. His teammate Mick Schumacher finished P10 in his first ever Q3 appearance!
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| Qualifying results before Alonso's grid penalty |
As the lights went out, pole-sitter Charles Leclerc got a brilliant start. He started making his way to a comfortable lead against the Red Bull of Max Verstappen. Sergio Perez quickly made his way into third after Carlos Sainz had a bad start. George Russell then tried to overtake Sainz and Perez into Turn 1, and ended up making contact with Perez. Luckly, Russell and Perez were both fine and Russell managed to overtake Perez. This made the order Leclerc, Verstappen, Russell, Perez, and Sainz.
Turn 4 of Lap 1 had Kevin Magnussen and Lewis Hamilton making contact, sending Magnussen into the gravel and giving Hamilton a puncture. Both drivers ended up last in the race after Magnussen got out of the gravel and Hamilton made a pit stop to change his tires.
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| Magnussen running off into the gravel after making contact with Hamilton |
Throughout the weekend, temperatures were high because of a heat wave in Spain. However, Sunday gave us the worst conditions of extreme heat and huge gusts of wind. along with huge gusts of wind. On Lap 7, Carlos Sainz spun into the gravel at Turn 4. While he was able to quickly recover, Sainz dropped down to P11. Then on Lap 9, Verstappen had a spin into Turn 4 as well! This put Verstappen in P4 with Leclerc in P1, Russell in P2, and Perez in P3. Verstappen’s race engineer told him that his spin was due to the winds blowing through that part of the track, and since both spins were so similar, Sainz’s mistake must have been for the same reason.
| Verstappen and Sainz both had very similar spins into the gravel at Turn 4 |
Eventually, Red Bull made Perez let Verstappen through to give him the chance to overtake Russell for P2. This resulted in the epic battle between the two drivers. Verstappen and Russell went wheel-to-wheel multiple times and Russell managed to defend (like a lion) the entire time. This all happened while Verstappen struggled with his DRS, which wasn’t working properly in qualifying either. This race was a testament to the great drivers that Verstappen and Russell both are! They have different driving styles, Verstappen more aggressive and Russell more methodical, but they are incredible when racing against each other. I want to see more battles between these two!
On lap 27, the whole race changed. Leclerc had an incredible lead on Russell; it was so good that he was able to pit and still come out 5 seconds ahead of everyone else. Unfortunately on Lap 27, Leclerc started slowing down and screaming on his radio that his car had lost power. By Lap 29, he had gone to the pit lane and Ferrari had retired his car. Unfortunately, Leclerc’s streak of finishing every race this season had ended and what was going to be an easy win for him, was now a DNF. This was shaping up to be such a good weekend for him, with him topping the time charts and going first in every session! Hopefully this was just like an early Monaco curse and he’ll have better luck at his home race because he did badly in Spain.
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| Ferrari retiring Leclerc's car after engine failure causes power loss |
On this same lap, Red Bull pitted Verstappen for soft tires in an attempt to pressure Russell to pit. This gave Perez a chance to overtake Russell, and on lap 31, he took the lead. By Lap 37, Verstappen came from P4 to catch up with Russell and made his way to fight Perez for the lead. Ultimately, on Lap 45, Red Bull made Perez give Verstappen the lead of the race because Perez’s tires weren’t projected to last as long as Vestappen’s. This resulted in the Red Bull 1-2 we saw at the Spanish Grand Prix! Verstappen in first and Perez in second!
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| From left to right: Perez, Verstappen, Joanna Fleet (Red Bull's Head of HR), and George Russell |
Hamilton’s early scuffle with Magnussen made him weary of finishing the race. He even got on his team radio and suggested retiring from the race to preserve his engine for later in the season. However, he managed to pull off an amazing recovery, made his way to P5, and was voted Driver of the Day!
Carlos Sainz also managed to recover his race after his spin on Lap 7. He made his way from P11 to P4 after overtaking Bottas on Lap 57 and Hamilton on lap 65.
After having a poor qualifying on Saturday and struggling with what was later found to be tonsillitis, Lando Norris managed to drive really well and made his way past many other cars. Starting P11, he made his way up to P8! The race seemed to take a severe toll on his health though, and he had to withdraw from doing any post-race press because he was visiting the doctor.
For a while, it seemed like Mick Schumacher would get his first points finish! However, he was on a two-pit-stop strategy and it didn’t end up working out at the end of the race. By Lap 57, many other drivers were able to overtake him on fresher tires because his tires didn’t hold up. He quickly went from P10 to P14, where he finished the race. In Martin Brundle’s words, Schumacher’s tires were “losing interest!”
Yuki Tsunoda made his way up to P10, getting AlphaTauri some points!
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| Yuki Tsunoda during the Spanish Grand Prix |
Lance Stroll and Pierre Gasly had a good fight early on in the race. However, it resulted in damage to Stroll’s Aston Martin and caused him to finish the race in P15. Gasly was given a 5 second time penalty for causing this collision.
Both Williams cars, unfortunately, did not have a good race. Latifi was nowhere close to points in P16 and Alex Albon did even worse, finishing in P18!
Zhou Guanyu had to retire for the second race in a row after his car suffered a technical issue. Zhou’s and Leclerc’s cars are both powered by Ferrari engines and they both struggled with technical issues. Hopefully, this was just a coincidence and not the result of a problem with the engines.
Honorable mentions:
Fernando Alonso also had an amazing recovery during the race. From starting last on the grid in P20, he made it up to the points in P9! That’s 11 places that he had to gain! Kudos to Alonso.
Alex Albon visited Thailand in April, and while he was there, he visited an orphanage. At the orphanage, he met some boys who knew how to dye people’s hair and who wanted to dye Albon’s hair red in honor of their favorite soccer teams. Albon agreed and his bright red hair became the talk of the paddock in F1. During the Spanish Grand Prix weekend, Williams set up a tent in the paddock where F1 and team personnel could have Alex Albon hairspray their hair red for a price and the proceeds would be donated to a charity that supports the orphanage Albon visited. They called the salon Albonos. I just thought it was a very wholesome story people should know about!
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| Alex Albon "dyeing" Crofty's hair |
The Spanish Grand Prix was fun and full of good racing! It was a welcome cleanse of traditional racing after the Miami Grand Prix. While Leclerc had a DNF, I am happy that George Russell got another podium, Mick Schumacher made his Q3 debut, and that we got to see overtakes and racing between drivers throughout the entire pack of cars. Max Verstappen’s win has now given him the lead in the Drivers’ Championship, with Charles Lecerc in second. I was disappointed to see Red Bull making Perez concede to Verstappen, similar to the way Mercedes used to do to Bottas, but I guess we expected it. Perez is their number two, Verstappen is their number one and world champion. Hopefully, they’ll let Perez go for the win from time to time though, because he is also an incredible driver who deserves to win. McLaren seems to be doing a little bit better, AlphaTauri has made some improvements, and Mercedes is back in the title fight. Monaco should be interesting with all of these new changes to the grid.
I will be back tomorrow to prepare you all for one of my favorite races on the calendar: the Monaco Grand Prix!
Adios!
~ Divya
Where I got these
from:
https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1111/spain/practice-1.html
https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1111/spain/practice-2.html
https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1111/spain/practice-3.html
https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1111/spain/qualifying.html
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-grand-prix-qualifying-results-spain-pole/10308239/
https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1111/spain/race-result.html
Pictures:
https://www.formula1.com/content/dam/fom-website/manual/Teams%20-%20Spain.jpg
https://cdn-1.motorsport.com/images/amp/Yv8VDyE0/s1000/valtteri-bottas-alfa-romeo-c42.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FTSjuE-X0AEpzvk?format=jpg&name=small
https://www.grandprix247.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/max-verstappen-spins.jpg
https://f1i.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/XPB_1137876_1200px-1.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FTImMpLUYAQ6zzS?format=jpg&name=medium
https://www.grandprix247.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Barcelona-FP1-Official-Results-2022.jpg
