Spanish Grand Prix Track Check: Circuit de Catalunya

Four flyaway races completed and we are back racing in Europe with the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend in Barcelona. With no race in Valencia this year and most probably with the alternation plan going ahead, the circuit in Montmelo would not provide a test for the teams with their new V6 engines next year. Anyway, let’s concentrate on this year and like last season, the Spanish circuit will host the fifth race of the season. Very few would disagree with the statement that this is the circuit the teams and drivers are the most familiar with. Generally each year, at least one pre-season test is held here so the engineers have sufficient knowledge regarding how to deal with the circuit. Let’s have a look at the track in detail:

Sector 1

With the longest run down to Turn 1 out of all the circuits on this year’s calendar, the first corner provides a good overtaking, albeit risky, opportunity because of the fast change in direction from Turn 1 to Turn 2. We have seen in the past how cars have run into the gravel on the outside of Turn 1 – one of them in the not-so-distant memory being Fernando Alonso‘s off at the start of the 2007 Spanish Grand Prix. But again, the same driver demonstrated how to use the long pit straight to full advantage by taking the lead into Turn 1 after starting fifth on the grid in the 2011 race. After Turn 2 comes the very long right hander Turn 3, which will put a lot of load on the left front tyre and the presence of such long fast corners is one of the reasons behind Pirelli not opting for the soft tyre.

Sector 2

Sector 2 starts with a long hairpin bend followed by a mixture of slow and fast corners. One has to be extremely brave to try an overtake into any corner in this sector. In fact, too much aggression might end in disaster because this is one of those few remaining tracks which still contains gravel very near to the track edge. The risk is very high on the outside of Turns 7 and 8 but that shouldn’t deter the drivers from pushing because these are the areas where time can be made up if the car has good downforce. The middle sector ends with a straight, which will also be the second DRS zone for this year’s grand prix. So, we can expect some overtaking into the slow but difficult Turn 10.

Sector 3

The final sector consists mainly of slow to medium-speed corners, except the final one and hence, Red Bull can be expected to be strong in this sector provided some other team hasn’t found something to beat Red Bull on rear tyre-limited sections of a track. The track underwent a major change in 2007 when the chicane before the final right-hand corner was introduced so as to bring cars closer to each other and provide an opportunity for the car behind to go for an overtake down the straight. This track has been notoriously difficult to overtake in the past and it is expected to stay more or less similar this year. Remember last year, when Fernando Alonso couldn’t find a way past Pastor Maldonado for so many laps even being quite close to the Williams man and this was mainly due to the FW34′s excellent pace in the final sector. Maldonado was always be able to maintain a gap greater than 1 second before the DRS detection zone.

Another thing we saw last year was that even dominant initial pole-sitter (later disqualified) Lewis Hamilton could move up to only 8th at the fall of the chequered flag. So, it would be safe to say that barring extraordinary conditions, the winner should be from within the front two rows. But which drivers will be on those front two rows will be difficult to tell at this moment because Catalunya has always sprung up surprises in terms of the pecking order, because all teams brings major upgrades to this track – the most famous in recent times being Ferrari‘s dramatic turnaround from Bahrain to Spain last year.

Que va a ganar? No puede esperar!