Ahead of this weekend’s race, much is expected to return to what we have become accustomed to over recent times, as Red Bull come into Spain hot favorites, largely due to the traditional nature of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya which is expected to suit the RB20.
Despite this, championship leader Max Verstappen has played down the advantage his team is expected to have this weekend. Instead, he is among the thought he could be in for a tricky race, as the Constructors’ Championship battle seems to be heating up with Ferrari only 49 points behind.
“I think it’s always very tricky, in a way of course exciting.
“But every weekend you get to now is a bit more unknown [in] how you’re going to stack up against the field, but that’s good for Formula 1 I guess.”
Red Bull will certainly be hoping to gain back some of the advantage they seem to have lost over recent races, if anything to bring their second car back into play, as Sergio Perez has appeared out of his depth with his current machinery.
The Mexican has failed to make Q3 in the past three qualifying sessions, in two of which not even advancing to Q2.
Despite this, Perez is confident he can bounce back, claiming issues have plagued his performance over recent races.
“I’m very confident about [fighting back this weekend].
“I think we’ve had more than one issue in the last few races with the car, with the preparation and so on.”
Whilst confident, he is also still aware of the three place grid penalty that is looming over his head following an infringement in Montreal, describing the situation it as less than ideal and something that will alter his approach to the weekend “a lot”.
“It’s not ideal in a place like this to have that penalty, so we will try our best to try and minimise that.”
Outside of Red Bull, Verstappen’s closest competitor in the title race, Charles Leclerc, is expecting a much better weekend than last time out in Montreal, where the Monegasque was hounded by an engine issue, that eventually forced him to retire from the race.
“The thing that we have been focusing [on] most in the last few days since we understood the engine issue was mostly the lack of performance on the Saturday, which again here I think we didn’t manage things the way we should have and there was probably more performance in the car.
“I’m confident that we’ll be back to our level here in Barcelona.”
Leclerc will be hoping his ‘level’ will be a return to the top step having achieved victory in his home race in Monaco that for all hope in the world, appeared to draw him right into a fight for the drivers title.
Unfortunately for Leclerc, a disastrous round in Canada leaves him a sizable 56 points off championship leader Verstappen.
With there still being 15 rounds left this season, this is by no means a drawn conclusion, and if a title battle does come to fruition, expect McLaren’s Lando Norris to be right in the mix, the Briton sits only seven points behind Leclerc in the standings.
Norris is currently on a hot streak, as he has appeared on the podium in all but one race so far since McLaren introduced their big upgrade in Miami which by no coincidence was the race he achieved his first Formula One victory.
Ever since those upgrades were introduced, McLaren have been consistently on the pace at each race, fighting for victory in each race since they were applied.
Whilst confident, Norris is hoping changes made to the car over the past few weeks wont hurt his performance in the high speed nature of the Spanish circuit.
“Maybe [we are] a little less confident, but we don’t know yet. We’ve changed quite a few things on the car over the last few weeks and we’ve not been to necessarily high-speed circuits for a while.
“We’ll kind of wait and see what we do over the next day of practice and see if we can get the car performing like it has done in the past on high-speed circuits, and then I’ll be confident that we can… We should be able to fight.”
Norris also mentioned during media day on Thursday that he expects Mercedes will be able to carry their strong pace they had in Montreal over to this weekend’s race.
“I think others have improved quite a bit in these high-speed circuits, so just Ferrari, Red Bull have always been good. Now we see Mercedes looking closer to the fight.”
Of the Mercedes cars, it was George Russell who picked up the teams’ first Pole Position and Podium of 2024 last time out, showing superior speed to teammate Lewis Hamilton when it came to crunch time.
As expected, Russell has said to be excited about the opportunity to be back up with the top three teams and fighting for top honours this weekend in Spain.
“It’s very exciting ahead of this weekend because, ahead of Canada, we were driving on the simulator, trying these new upgrades and it seemed to be a big step forward.
“I think this is going to be a real test and if we can be fast this weekend, that bodes really well for the season.”
All will be revealed come qualifying tomorrow as the key questions that we have been left with over the past two weeks will have a chance to clear up any speculation.
