More passing? Multiple stops? Rain? Only the winner seems not in doubt

After Red Bull’s rivals invested many hundreds of thousands of working hours developing their upgrades packages in pursuit of the RB19, Max Verstappen took little more than 72 seconds to destroy their hopes.

Verstappen’s untouchable pole lap in Barcelona was, by any metric, the most dominant of the six that Red Bull have taken in the 2023 season so far. Almost four-tenths of a second advantage for a car whose greatest strength lies in race pace rather than single lap performance is ominous, but knowing that Verstappen would likely have gone even quicker had he not been told to abandon his run to save his tyres means that margin could easily have been over half a second.

Now, Verstappen once again enters a race day knowing the one car in the field that could offer the greatest challenge to him starts much further back on the grid.

Last Sunday, around the unforgiving streets of Monaco, it was much easier to make a compelling case for Verstappen to face genuine competition for the race win that at the Circuit de Catalunya. The Red Bull remains the class of the field and Verstappen is in imperious form, so the prospects of him being beaten for pure race pace over 66 laps without a major mishap or stroke of misfortune seems smaller than it has since Bahrain.

“Overall, the whole weekend, it has been really enjoyable to drive the car,” Verstappen said after taking his fourth pole of the season. “It was really hooked up.”

Barcelona is the first race at a permanent circuit since the season-opener in Bahrain – a race where Verstappen took pole, held the lead into turn one and dominated the rest of the race, able to control his pace and stay well within his limits until the chequered flag. Assuming he successfully retains the lead over the longest run to turn one on the calendar on Sunday, it could be a simple afternoon for the world champion.

But behind Verstappen, the battle that threatens to erupt over the final podium places should give fans every reason for excitement.

Remarkably, the top seven places on the grid are all occupied by seven different teams. Less than half a second covered Carlos Sainz Jnr in second to Nico Hulkenberg, who will line up seventh for Sunday’s race courtesy of Pierre Gasly’s double penalty promoting him and five others. All six drivers lining up behind Verstappen have every reason to be targeting solid points at a minimum and even a podium at best – with second-placed Sainz expecting the competition to be fierce among that group in the race.

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“Now it looks like the midfield is really starting to close up with us,” Sainz said. “You have the likes of the Alpines, even the Haas, Lando [Norris] with the McLarens are appearing and joining us in that fight for second or third best. Obviously Red Bull are in a league of their own but then everyone else – it looks like it’s really, really tight out there.”

Norris has spent most of the early phase of the 2023 season fairly pessimistic about the performance of his McLaren and not even qualifying in the top three could seem to spark some optimism in him. Asked how confident he was heading into the race, he bluntly replied “not very”.

“You never know, the pace could be mega and I could catch Max and overtake him,” he continued. “We’ll do our best for tomorrow but the aim is just to get some good points for both myself and for Oscar [Piastri].”

With the field so close, the prospect of a DRS train becomes high. And that makes the revised final sector all the more critical as cars head onto the pit straight and its long DRS zone at much higher speeds than previously. Sixth place starter Esteban Ocon believes the increased speed in the final corner should not hamper overtaking too much.

“I don’t think it’s as bad as we thought,” he said. “I overtook Sergio [Perez] in FP2 in turn one – he’s usually very quick on the straights, so we will see.”

However, Lance Stroll – who will start directly ahead of Ocon – is less sure than the Alpine driver, feeling it could be more difficult to follow onto the main straight.

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“I think a little bit,” he said. “Naturally it’s more difficult to follow a car at high-speed corners. I think it’s going to be tricky to overtake, but I think tyre deg and strategy is going to be very important.”

The intense closeness of the cars in the top 10 was undoubtedly influenced by some major players not getting into the positions they would have been expecting towards the session. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was the most striking, eliminated in 19th with an apparent anomaly on his car, while Sergio Perez and George Russell also failed to reach the top ten.

Even Fernando Alonso, who did make the cut, will start only from eighth place after suffering what team principal Mike Krack called “significant floor damage” from a trip across the gravel early in Q1. Alonso suffered a “big loss of downforce” and reaching Q3 was “a remarkable achievement” under the circumstances, Krack stressed.

Perez needs to make progress through the field to limit the damage Verstappen can do further to his championship ambitions. And with the pace of the Red Bull, even Sainz and Norris expect Perez to easily catch them before the chequered flag.

“I think it will be still tough to get [a podium], especially Checo coming from P11 with a Red Bull,” Sainz said in the press conference after qualifying. “As soon as I get back to the engineers, I think they will tell me that the simulation suggests that the Red Bull should still finish ahead of us and then it will be a fight with Lando and Mercedes, the Astons.”

While Perez has work to do from 11th, Leclerc has far more as he qualified from the back row and will surely end up starting from the pits once Ferrari identify and fix whatever caused his SF-23 to become mysteriously incompatible with left-handers.

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As Hamilton showed last season, it is possible to fight through the field in Barcelona if you have the race pace to do it, but Leclerc knows he has a grind ahead of him. “It’s going to be an uphill weekend, to be honest,” Leclerc mused. “But on the other hand, it’s a track where I think we will see quite a few stops. Degradation is going to be a big thing tomorrow, so if we do a good job on that, we’ve got our chances.”

Leclerc is not alone in expecting tyre management to play a key role in the outcome of the race. Despite bringing their second-hardest combination of tyres to Spain for this weekend, Pirelli expect teams to opt for at least two stops over the course of the race as wear becomes more prominent than in recent races.

“I think the strategy will be towards the two stops, on the paper it’s the fastest one,” said Pirelli’s chief engineer. “Probably using the C3 at the start because it gives you an important extra grip. You’ve seen today quite a big gap, big delta with the C2, we are around one, 1.2 seconds per lap, and turn one is quite far from the start finish line so you can gain some position with extra grip. Then probably they will manage the first stint and they will try to do two stints with the hard compounds.”

But for the second weekend in a row, strategy could become entirely moot if rain comes into play. Once again, teams will be keeping one eye firmly on the clouds forming in the horizon as teams head back to the Catalunya circuit on Sunday with a 60% chance of stormy weather hitting the circuit in the lead up to the lights going out, with current forecasts showing the risk only subsides once the race is nearing its scheduled end. That said, forecasts can change – as they did for qualifying on Saturday.

If it does rain, then it will be the first time since the famed 1996 Spanish Grand Prix that a race at Barcelona has been wet. And with the field so tight at the front, many big names fighting to make their way up the order and teams lower down eager to take advantage of any opportunity that comes their way to score points, a little water could be the perfect ingredient to make this a particularly spicy Sunday in Spain.

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Qualifying times in full

Position	Number	Driver	Team	Q1 time	Q2 time (vs Q1)	Q3 time (vs Q2)
1	1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-Honda RBPT	1’13.615	1’12.760 (-0.855s)	1’12.272 (-0.488s)
2	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Ferrari	1’13.411	1’12.790 (-0.621s)	1’12.734 (-0.056s)
3	4	Lando Norris	McLaren-Mercedes	1’13.295	1’12.776 (-0.519s)	1’12.792 (+0.016s)
4	10	Pierre Gasly	Alpine-Renault	1’13.471	1’13.186 (-0.285s)	1’12.816 (-0.370s)
5	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’12.937	1’12.999 (+0.062s)	1’12.818 (-0.181s)
6	18	Lance Stroll	Aston Martin-Mercedes	1’13.766	1’13.082 (-0.684s)	1’12.994 (-0.088s)
7	31	Esteban Ocon	Alpine-Renault	1’13.433	1’13.001 (-0.432s)	1’13.083 (+0.082s)
8	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Haas-Ferrari	1’13.420	1’13.283 (-0.137s)	1’13.229 (-0.054s)
9	14	Fernando Alonso	Aston Martin-Mercedes	1’13.747	1’13.098 (-0.649s)	1’13.507 (+0.409s)
10	81	Oscar Piastri	McLaren-Mercedes	1’13.691	1’13.059 (-0.632s)	1’13.682 (+0.623s)
11	11	Sergio Perez	Red Bull-Honda RBPT	1’13.874	1’13.334 (-0.540s)	Missed by 0.051s
12	63	George Russell	Mercedes	1’13.326	1’13.447 (+0.121s)	Missed by 0.164s
13	24	Zhou Guanyu	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’13.677	1’13.521 (-0.156s)	Missed by 0.238s
14	21	Nyck de Vries	AlphaTauri-Honda RBPT	1’13.581	1’14.083 (+0.502s)	Missed by 0.800s
15	22	Yuki Tsunoda	AlphaTauri-Honda RBPT	1’13.862	1’14.477 (+0.615s)	Missed by 1.194s
16	77	Valtteri Bottas	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’13.977	Missed by 0.103s
17	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari	1’14.042	Missed by 0.168s
18	23	Alexander Albon	Williams-Mercedes	1’14.063	Missed by 0.189s
19	16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	1’14.079	Missed by 0.205s
20	2	Logan Sargeant	Williams-Mercedes	1’14.699	Missed by 0.825s

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Sector times

Position	Number	Driver	Sector one	Sector two	Sector three	Ultimate lap	Deficit to ultimate lap
1	1	Max Verstappen	21.536 (1)	28.903 (1)	21.672 (2)	1’12.111	0.161
2	44	Lewis Hamilton	21.694 (3)	29.154 (2)	21.728 (4)	1’12.576	0.242
3	4	Lando Norris	21.72 (5)	29.253 (5)	21.644 (1)	1’12.617	0.159
4	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	21.696 (4)	29.257 (6)	21.73 (5)	1’12.683	0.051
5	10	Pierre Gasly	21.748 (7)	29.211 (3)	21.857 (8)	1’12.816	–
6	81	Oscar Piastri	21.754 (8)	29.269 (8)	21.804 (6)	1’12.827	0.232
7	14	Fernando Alonso	21.889 (14)	29.244 (4)	21.695 (3)	1’12.828	0.270
8	31	Esteban Ocon	21.737 (6)	29.285 (9)	21.909 (12)	1’12.931	0.070
9	18	Lance Stroll	21.806 (11)	29.262 (7)	21.887 (10)	1’12.955	0.039
10	63	George Russell	21.647 (2)	29.574 (13)	21.876 (9)	1’13.097	0.229
11	27	Nico Hulkenberg	21.79 (10)	29.484 (10)	21.895 (11)	1’13.169	0.060
12	11	Sergio Perez	21.788 (9)	29.578 (14)	21.919 (13)	1’13.285	0.049
13	22	Yuki Tsunoda	21.83 (12)	29.486 (11)	22 (14)	1’13.316	0.546
14	24	Zhou Guanyu	21.945 (15)	29.643 (15)	21.84 (7)	1’13.428	0.093
15	21	Nyck de Vries	21.886 (13)	29.501 (12)	22.103 (15)	1’13.490	0.091
16	77	Valtteri Bottas	22.06 (19)	29.679 (16)	22.238 (17)	1’13.977	–
17	20	Kevin Magnussen	21.968 (17)	29.732 (17)	22.342 (19)	1’14.042	–
18	23	Alexander Albon	22.045 (18)	29.815 (19)	22.201 (16)	1’14.061	0.002
19	16	Charles Leclerc	21.962 (16)	29.746 (18)	22.371 (20)	1’14.079	–
20	2	Logan Sargeant	22.193 (20)	30.209 (20)	22.297 (18)	1’14.699	–

Speed trap

Position	Number	Driver	Car	Engine	Model	Max kph (mph)
1	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Haas	Ferrari	VF-23	333.7 (207.4)
2	1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	Honda RBPT	RB19	333.1 (207.0)
3	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Ferrari	Ferrari	SF-23	332.3 (206.5)
4	63	George Russell	Mercedes	Mercedes	W14	332.0 (206.3)
5	16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	Ferrari	SF-23	331.8 (206.2)
6	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	Ferrari	VF-23	331.5 (206.0)
7	23	Alexander Albon	Williams	Mercedes	FW45	331.2 (205.8)
8	10	Pierre Gasly	Alpine	Renault	A523	331.2 (205.8)
9	11	Sergio Perez	Red Bull	Honda RBPT	RB19	330.4 (205.3)
10	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	Mercedes	W14	328.3 (204.0)
11	31	Esteban Ocon	Alpine	Renault	A523	328.2 (203.9)
12	24	Zhou Guanyu	Alfa Romeo	Ferrari	C43	327.6 (203.6)
13	77	Valtteri Bottas	Alfa Romeo	Ferrari	C43	327.0 (203.2)
14	4	Lando Norris	McLaren	Mercedes	MCL60	326.9 (203.1)
15	22	Yuki Tsunoda	AlphaTauri	Honda RBPT	AT04	326.3 (202.8)
16	2	Logan Sargeant	Williams	Mercedes	FW45	326.0 (202.6)
17	81	Oscar Piastri	McLaren	Mercedes	MCL60	325.8 (202.4)
18	18	Lance Stroll	Aston Martin	Mercedes	AMR23	324.9 (201.9)
19	21	Nyck de Vries	AlphaTauri	Honda RBPT	AT04	324.1 (201.4)
20	14	Fernando Alonso	Aston Martin	Mercedes	AMR23	324.0 (201.3)

Over to you

Is this one going to be all about the fight for second place? Share your views on the Spanish Grand Prix in the comments.

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