Grand Prix 2013 Spanish Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

Four races into the season and we have seen three different winners. Sebastian Vettel won twice, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso once each.
Vettel leads the WDC (77 points), followed by Raikkonen (67), Lewis Hamilton (50) and Alonso (47). So the race for the WDC still looks pretty open. It's great to see drivers from four different teams competing for the top spot.

The Circuit de Catalunya hosts the Spanish Grand Prix for the 23rd time. It's a track, which all the teams know exceptionally well from pre-season testing, so probably they won't experience major set-up issues...It also very often leads to pretty boring races. Last year we had a shocking victory for Williams' Pastor Maldonado, who this season doesn't have the car to compete for wins. Also his own driving looks pretty average at best.

Let's have a closer look at the current form of the four contenders for the WDC this year:

Sebastian Vettel will hope to continue his strong form, that enabled him to win the Bahrain Grand Prix pretty easily. He finished on the podium three times, and never finished worse than 4th. He overcame the controversy of the Malaysian GP and looks to be on course for a strong season again.

Kimi Raikkonen has finished on the podium three times this season and seems to be as consistent as last season. His last race in Bahrain was pretty strong. After starting eigth on the grid, he managed to finish second.

Lewis Hamilton had a pretty good start to the season. He's clearly outscoring his teammate Nico Rosberg (50-14) and seems to have matured a lot as well. His driving is much more composed, leading to him being able to deal with the tyres much better than Rosberg, who struggled throughout the most parts of the last race (From Pole Position to 9th).

Fernando Alonso had two very strong races (Australia and China) and two poor races, which were hampered by strange decisions (Malaysia) and mechanical failures (Bahrain). He'll hope for a trouble-free race in Spain, which should get him closer to Sebastian Vettel in the Championship. Another low finish though could mean that the gap to the German three-time champion could start to get bigger significantly.

Let's see how the race pans out! Have fun and discuss!
 
I think the mickey mouse chicane has ruined this circuit the speed going into the last 2 corners before the straight was awesome and i'm sure the DRS would be more effective in the old circuit layout.

But VIVA ESPANA baby :).
 
Does Michael Schumacher overtaking Mika Hakkinen on the last lap after Mika's car broke down in 2001, count as a overtake for the lead.
 
I don't see it as a good thing. Yes I will enjoy the extra running from the big guns, however I liked that it was going to be a nice incentive for teams to run a rookie. The rookies get some experience and the team get to know their prospects a little more.

This way still has some positives but its not what was planned. It just stinks of the bigger teams moaning (read the next section in your best winy Horner impression) "we won't get as much running as the lower teams, it's not fair."

There is still no major incentive to give the younger guys some running. Isn't that something we all want?
 
I don't think it will be a disincentive Westy. After all the teams that have been running rookies and reserve drivers on Fridays will surely continue to do so since they need to develop them at every opportunity. The biggest incentive surely has to be the fact that they want such drivers to be race ready if/when they need them to step up. In fact, having an extra set of tyres to spare might encourage all of the teams to give more track time to their reservists.

As usual we'll just have to see how it pans out but I'm a tad more optimistic on this one.
 
I believe the problem was that the teams could not decide on who was a rookie and that they could just run the reserve driver who may have plenty of experience Kovi at Caterham for example....
 
Does Michael Schumacher overtaking Mika Hakkinen on the last lap after Mika's car broke down in 2001, count as a overtake for the lead.
I don't think it should. Mika was hardly in a position to defend, after all. But you can count it if you like.
 
Lunch time snack food on standby.:)
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It's nice of Sky to let the BBC have full coverage of thee most crappiest boring no overtaking no action race to the year...LOL Don't you think...?

Apart from Monaco that is...
 
Monaco is different because that's been around since 1929 so we accept it. Barcelona has been around since 1991 and was specifically designed to aid overtaking, not. It works with the bikes but its useless with cars.
 
Ah .... finally .... back to the action .... these three week gaps in between races are just not on ...

Despite the prevalence of Scalextric racing around Barca, this weekend is "updateville" ... or catch-up-ville to RBR ... which always adds a little more interest...

ZakYak prediction ... Maldonado bones a Lotus smoking the Pirelli's into the first corner on Sunday trying to make up some ground ... whilst dealing with the knowledge that he won this race last year... and then thought he was Steve McQueen ... but was really a Telly Tubby ...
 
I don't know why they have 2x 3 week gaps in the first third of the season, then all these back-to-back races at the end. Maybe MotoGP has something to do with it.

Also the traditional first European round being the start of the season is long gone.
 
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