It is
time to speak about Montmelo, my dear friends. Many people think that race in
Barcelona is usually one of the most boring ones as it is hard to overtake
here. Many drivers on the contrary think that it is one of the best circuits to
check if the car's good enough as it has all the types of turns and straights.
Anyways, Formula 1 is never boring, am I right?
1. One-two for
Mercedes from the first line: predictable or not?
Valtteri
loses the start - this is the first thing I wrote down in the race notes. Well,
he lost the start but the car was so unbelievably good, softs and mediums
worked just great and Seb possibly made a tactical mistake, so both Lewis and
Valtteri could finish where they started. Moreover, not only Valtteri overcame
Seb during his first pit-stop but Seb made the podium impossible for himself
after changing from medium to the medium.
2. Crash-boy
Roman
The start
of the race is usually the trickiest thing in all the races but this time it
was unusually tricky as Roman lost the car after Kevin's move and hit Pierre
and Nico, so both became the victims of this misfortune. All three drivers were
immediately out whilst others were to follow the safety car. Both Brandon and
Sergey pitted under the SC but without any specific changes to their strategy
as they had to pit secondly later anyways.
3. DNF time
The race
wasn't specifically epic in terms of crashes and fights but it was epic in
terms of how many cars were out for some reason. Unfortunately one of leaders
Kimi became a victim of an engine fail twice this weekend, so he couldn't end
the race. Another one who had great moments against Fernando in the beginning
of the race, Esteban became a victim of right rear problem which cost him a few
places on the grid firstly but also an engine problem later which made him to
retire. Stoffel penalized with five seconds after the wrong move in the
beginning also couldn't see the chequered flag. The last one to suffer DNF was
Brendon as he stopped one lap before the finish without an obvious reason. It
was added to his misfortune whilst FP3 where he crashed the car completely and
couldn't even take part in quali.
4. Podium with
killed wing
The one
who had a tiny crash but managed not only to finish the race but to finish it
on the podium was Max who pushed so much that hit his front wing and lost a
part of it. He commented on the podium later that it didn't look nice but it
was drivable anyways.
Max
wasn't the only youngster impressed public in this race. Charles not only
managed to bring points to the team, to show amazing performance in quali
entering Q2 but also push and compete against Fernando and others on track.
That was really amazing.
5. Spain is
orangy-yellow
Fernando
as the real homie not only brought the Spanish flag to take it out on the
cooling lap but also showed his respect towards another Spaniard Carlos who did
the same. Talking about surprises, another great one was both Haases in Q3 and
for me, of course, the starting line of the grid for Mercedes.
Unfortunately
there were negative moments as Lance ended up in a wall in all pre-race
sessions including quali. Dani, Roman and Checo also ended up crashed each once
during FP1 and FP2 whilst Kubica made his come back to F1 and managed to safely
finish his FP.
Talking
about tactics, it was all pretty obvious: supersofts didn't show any speed
difference comparing to softs so almost the whole grid except few drivers
decided to start the race on yellow tyres to later change onto the white ones.
By the way, Pirelli made the tyres thinner as Mercedes asked to do it as
asphalt in Barcelona was changed recently to the new one. The time records were
beaten faster than you can imagine as the new track coverage in May made it
possible. Rain didn't come to Montmelo, so the race was pretty calm. Probably
that is all that I should have mention in the racing blog.
Thanks
for reading and until Monaco!
