Last Leg of the Triple Header: Spanish GP
Barcelona is back, but for how long? And the feared wing flex TD comes into effect!
We all know the new “track” at Madrid will happen at some point because Liberty Media wants to try the Formula E playbook and have “events” in city centres.
Because money.
Maybe we can get Barcelona to hold the Catalunya GP—although I would guess that would be politically complicated—and let Madrid have the Spanish GP, so the Catalunya track remains on the calendar.
Replacing the Barcelona-Catalunya track with the abominable street stupidity in Madrid is the perfect illustration of the direction Formula One seems to be taking with the calendar. As I read it, it stands as: if you have dozens of millions of euros and are willing to give it to us, you can hold a GP anywhere, we don’t give a damn.
The teams all know the track, have heaps of data of multiple generations of cars around it, and the drivers start getting used to it in Formula 3. So it would be an obvious option to remain in the calendar. But alas, as we said before, MONEY!!!!
Whatever the future holds, Formula One will finish yet another triple header with the 2025 Spanish GP.
McLaren is the form team, Williams and MinardiRossoTauri will probably still be getting dirty looks, especially from the Mercedes crew, and the grid will finish the weekend and then go have a very well-earned lie down before travelling to Canada.
Lewis Hamilton has the best record at the track, but it is tough to believe he will add another win to his collection this weekend. Ferrari is still trailing McLaren in terms of pace and Hamilton is trailing Leclerc, so Sunday would need to be chaotic. Which would not be bad, obviously. Hamilton has been unable to produce the necessary Qualifying miracles to steal results away from them, outside the Chinese GP Sprint.
Verstappen, on the other hand, can still wrangle his car into one or two outstanding laps on Saturdays. At this track, Norris and Piastri cannot afford to let that happen because even without the chicane at the end and all the changes to the layout, Barcelona is an extremely tough track when it comes to overtakes.
If Verstappen manages to pull another lap out of a hat on Saturday and snatches pole position, it could be a frustrating Sunday for those behind him. Especially if your car has inherently more pace than the Red Bull.
Let us not forget that Verstappen’s first win, coming in his first race for the main team, happened in Spain after Nico Rosberg and Hamilton crashed, and the young Dutch driver held Kimi Räikkönen’s Ferrari behind him.
In terms of past results, Hamilton and Verstappen lead Fernando Alonso at Barcelona, with Carlos Sainz trailing the top 3. Hamilton’s lead is incredibly large here, as he dominated the track until Red Bull made a car with which Verstappen could take the torch away.
When it comes to teams, the fight at the top is fierce, with Ferrari leading Red Bull and Mercedes. Considering Mclaren’s pace, the Top 3 could be shuffled even if the Woking team scores a 1-2 finish with Norris and Piastri or Piastri and Norris.
This track is well-known to all drivers, and we can hope Yuki Tsunoda will finally have a good weekend for Red Bull. Even if he has managed one single point so far in his career.
And Mercedes will obviously come to this weekend trying to erase the memories from Monaco, and their car should be well-suited to the Barcelona track.
Plus, Spain is usually the race where teams bring big updates to their cars, so who knows who will bring an update that is an upgrade and who will change their car and hurt the performance.
The bottom 4 have all had terrible results at Catalunya, so if the Top 4 teams hold their form, the fight for a couple of points will be a good one to watch.
Hamilton’s incredible record at Barcelona sees him leading all drivers in total points, even if Verstappen’s average is remarkably over 15 points across 10 races, which is also particularly impressive.
Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher are in the Top 5 at Spain, as in many other tracks, with Hamilton, Verstappen, and Alonso the only drivers liable to add to their totals this weekend in the Top 15 of all-time.
And, for Alonso, scoring would be great, since he is stuck with nothing so far in 2025.
And, to finish up, here are the 20 best race sequences in F1 history.
Max Verstappen obviously still leads, and will probably stay there for a while, with Hamilton and The Michael behind him.
Hard to believe they are so far away from even Alonso and Vettel, but here we are.
I am particularly impressed by the old-timers in the list, as their cars were made of paper and spit, but still some of them still feature. Obviously, extra kudos for Juan Manuel Fangio and Jim Clark, my favourites.
The New TD
It is finally here, the day of reckoning when all cheaters will be purged and the order shuffled beyond recognition.
Or not.
My bet is on “or not”.
The new Technical Directive dealing with new tests for front wing flex, which is supposed to curb teams who skirt the rules by having their wings flex only beyond the scope of the old test, is coming into effect. This week, the articles and SoMe posts are all about what doom this will bring.
But there has also been a lot of exaggerating the effect it will have and by how much it will curb which teams. If you believe everything published about it, all teams are about to go slower than an F2 car.
Yeah, maybe McLaren’s advantage will be smaller. Perhaps one of the other Top 4 teams will close them down. Possibly one of the midfield teams will creep away from the others a bit.
One thing we can trust, however, is that no one really knows, and everything we have read so far is guesswork and misinformation campaigns by various parties.
We will have to wait and see who was getting away with skirting the rules the hardest or who prepared the worst, probably a combination thereof.
Once Qualifying rolls around on Saturday and everyone has to push 100%, then we will have the clearest possible picture.
Until then, doubt everything.