Spanish GP 2013 - Preview

Ladies and Gentlemen,

After a long 3-week waiting period the fifth round of the Championship in Spain is coming up this weekend.

The track in Barcelona has a well-earned reputation for boring races, much to blame to the extensive testing done by all teams in pre-season, but according to Pirelli the weather was too cold back in February and March to apply the acquired data for the 18deg C awaiting the teams in Catalunya later this week.

To encourage all teams to put their cars to work on track right from the start of Friday’s practice sessions Pirelli will provide extra tyres. It is a prototype compound designed to last much longer and different to the orange-marked hards available for the rest of the weekend. Spectators watching the first practice session on Friday have had to endure long periods with no track action as drivers opt to save their quick wearing rubber. Each driver currently has 11 sets of dry weather tyres for a weekend: six of the harder ‘prime’  and five of the softer ‘option’. They must return one set of primes before second practice (to make sure they use them and not save them for later) and one set of each before the third session and before qualifying.

It will be exciting to see how all the new development parts introduced by all the teams will perform. This will be the test of how the next stage of the season will unfold, to see how close Lotus, Mercedes and particularly Ferrari and McLaren can get to the powerful Red Bulls. And most importantly, this could be the last effort for many teams for if they can't improve their 2013 model they'll switch their focus instead to next's years turbo car.

Last year's Spanish GP was won by Joe with 10 points; after last race Erik's victory with miser 6 points that sounds like a fabulous haul! Let’s see how we fare this time.

Stay tuned, we have work to do tomorrow

Cheers

Cato

 

Back to Comments          Back to InfoNews