Grand Prix 2020 Spanish Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

After its 70th birthday celebrations F1 now moves on for yet another glorious Grand Prix in the newly independent country of Catalonia..........what? It's not? Ok. After its fake 70th birthday celebrations F1 now moves on to the wonderful city of Barcelona in the plague ridden country of Spain. Unfortunately it will put a delay on the season as all the British based personel who attend the race will have to self-isolate for 14 days on their return. I mean there is no way they'll be able to get round that one is there?

Spain is notorious for being a boring race due to all the testing they do on the track and the data they get. Lucky for us and "the show" they weren't able to do the testing their this year due to the high level of people either fighting for their life or falling over and dying with mutated bat disease. Good news for F1 eh? The draw back on that is the Merc cars are roughly around 20,000 light years a lap in front of the rest of the field. However the baking heat might give us some dodgy rubber for Verstappen to jump on and shake that up who knows? If not we can always enjoy the battle for 5th which, as Sky like to tell us, is very exciting.

Local boy (kind of) Carlos Sainz will be hoping to score big in the revived McLaren and to get the better of current wonder kid Lando Norris. The other local hero Fernando Alonso will most likely pop up our of his disinfected sterile bunker to come remind us that he'll be back in F1 next year, Carlos is better than his results suggest and that Renault will be taking on Merc next year.

Spain will probably bring yet more speculation on whether Alex Albon will get to stay in the Red Bull seat. Albon will either qualify well and crash, which will make everyone question his race craft, or qualify crap, come back up through the field and get people saying "if only he could get his qualifying together". The victim of all this last year was Piere Gasly who is currently having a career and media persona turn round and stringing together some great and consistent results. I expect this to continue as well because the guy is happy at the moment and his junior career shows his best stuff comes out when he is comfortable.

Ferrari will most likely continue to face a nightmare with LeClerc maybe pulling out an unlikely result. Sebastian will continue to chug round like me at my old job in that last month when I'd handed my notice in. I mean what was the point? Alfa Romeo will be there too but we'll probably not notice. George Russel will probably do at least three things during the weekend which will make people say "I would love to see what he could do in a competitive car". A Haas will crash after some sort of brake failure and Renault will be either feast or famine.

It will be interesting to see whether F1s only covid victim Sergio Perez will return. If I'm the Spanish authorities I wouldn't let him in. If he doesn't return then the Nico Hulkenberg love in will continue without much substance. It's very similar to the time Nick Heidfeld replaced Kubica last minute at Renault and people were actually putting bets on him to win the title. Everyone seems to love an old dog come back. However I always think of the words of the late great Joe Strummer - "if you've been trying for years we've already heard your song"

So that's my little round up of the race to come. Feel free to expand it with better information than I can give. I hope we all enjoy the multi-millionaires racing round oblivious to a world pandemic in machines that are physically destroying the planet. Enjoy.
 
Bad as this was, I get a lot of pleasure from watching Ferraris struggling to fend off Italy's other team.

Albon out!

Leclerc told drove around without his seatbelt!

The Vettel response to his engineer about managing the tyres was amusing
 
That would be an impressive use of the tools available to him.

In any other season you would predict that Racing Point would fade due to not being able to develop their race package as the season goes on. With this season being significantly shorter, there is less opportunity for development. That should enable RP to stay in the hunt.
 
nearly put this on the poll thread but remembered it better here. so i made a similar point 12 months ago when the 2019 race was the final race of the contract why do we race at Barcelona. it is consistenly the worse GP of the season. i would guess 2012 was the last entertaining race. with duel with Maldonado & Alonso. then im really struggling for another race 2000? when Hakkinen dramatically retired on the final lap

(cant speak about 2016. as never properly seen it. as couldnt watch it live & by time I did only saw highlights. because it was everywhere about Mercedes crashing & Max winning on his debut)

this sport is about entertainment for me anyway the technology is nice but no-one gave yesterday race a 10 because loved how great the Mercedes MGU-K was. Barcelona rarely gives entertainment
 
This is a race where overtaking us very low. They have complained about it each year and yet nothing is ever done. The last corner onto the straight as well as turn 1,2,3 are the problem

I still think 1992 was it's best race. They can't even overtake like that anymore
 
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Came across this article today by accident and couldn't help but laugh. Especially as it was written back in January


Pirelli built new tyre to prevent over heating. Teams reject it because they don't want to change their cars. Tyres overheat and blow up. Teams get angry at Pirelli, fans get angry at Pirelli.

Proof once again that letting the teams call the shots in F1 is moronic to the extreme.

how funny, your right & drivers get angry at pirelli. although im sure hamilton doesnt have the fact that tyre management has cost mercedes the chance at likely. the only clean sweep in F1 history

 
Read the above. Pirelli identified the problem back in Jan, produced tyres that would last and to his were universally rejected by the teams as it would be too much trouble to readjust their cars.
 
Read the above. Pirelli identified the problem back in Jan, produced tyres that would last and to his were universally rejected by the teams as it would be too much trouble to readjust their cars.

Pirelli are easy scapegoats but no one predicted Covid 19 which meant they would not get the testing time they needed to adjust the cars to the tyres
 
Read the article. Pirelli state they developed the rejected 2020 tyres out of fear of the exact problem the teams are having now. The teams rejected them in early Jan after one test and would have had a whole load of pre-season pre-covid testing if they'd have listened to them.
 
It's easy to blame Pirelli when you say you spend $m's on state of the art technology on everything else except the one thing that is suppose to hold the car together on the road and its beyond your control

Worse is when a tyre fails everyone will point to the supplier not something wrong in the design of the car especially when you see it in TV.

I also feel Jean Todt has some responsibility here to act but keeps ducking the issue. Pirelli are only doing what the FIA asks
 
Jean Todt ducking the issue & trying to shirk all responsibility. surely not its not like he has a done it before in for example i dont know 2014

but anyway on pirelli, this is making bridgestone indy farce look good. ive never known F1 have to make so many changes to the cars over such a long period so that tyres dont explode
 
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