Spanish Forecast

This weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix is set to be one of the most interesting races of the year so far. As the start of the European season it is traditional that after the opening fly-away races the teams bring a whole load of updates to their cars. After the Chinese race the cars returned to the factories for the first time in two months therefore this race presents the first real opportunity to see if anyone will be able to catch the current dominators of the sport, Mercedes.

The circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona is a real test of the cars with its long straight, fast, medium and slow speed corners, it has everything you need to tell whether your car has a flaw or not. It’s often said that if your car goes well here, it’ll do well pretty much everywhere. Then again Fernando Alonso won the race last year and then faded away so who really knows.

This year there are two DRS zones, one on the start finish straight and one between turns nine and ten, the second one seemed a bit short last year but we’ll see how it goes, it would at least help move them in a position to attack down the start finish straight a few corners later. Pirelli are taking the medium and hard compounds. Degradation is traditionally high in Spain because of its long corners and abrasive surface but with these compounds you’d hope it wouldn’t be more than a three stopper.

The weather is meant to be nice and hot all weekend with temperatures reaching around 24C. This could help teams such as McLaren get their tyres up to temperature a lot easier so we could see the Woking team slightly revitalised after a couple of very poor weekends for the team where they haven’t scored any points at all.

But who can really challenge the Mercedes team? Well all the engine manufacturers will have been working feverishly to bring some updates to the power units. The engines have been homologated which basically means they can’t do updates which specifically target performance. However, they can working on the software and work with the fuel companies to provide a boost. Renault are confident they will have made significant progress.

Which is good news for Red Bull as if any team is going to be taking on the Mercedes cars it’s them. Red Bull have once again designed a fantastic car, the main problem right now is the Renault engine holding them back. Undoubtedly the team will be bringing upgrades of their own but if Renault can at least get close to Mercedes then Red Bull will be firmly back in the hunt for victories.

Whether this means Sebastian Vettel can start getting back on terms with Daniel Ricciardo is another matter? The World Champion needs a result against his younger team mate, but first he needs the car underneath him and in his control. I wonder if the upgrades Red Bull are bringing will be targeted at making Vettel more comfortable in the car so he can unleash the speed that is still there. But if Vettel is more comfortable then there’s nothing to say Ricciardo can’t exploit the car just as well.

With a Renault upgrade the team to watch could well be Lotus. They’ve had an exceptionally poor start to the season which could be about to change. I by no means think they’re going to be challenging for podiums but Romain Grosjean was on for a point or two in China before he retired which after qualifying on the back row of the grid at the first round is quite the progression. Despite Pastor Maldonado winning here a few years back, Grosjean is the driver to watch, his form from the end of the last year hasn’t disappeared and I believe when the opportunity comes he’ll be the Lotus driver to take it.

Sauber have taken 20kg off their overweight car so hope to be the team least likely to join the disappointing Marussia and Caterham’s in Q1.  Hopefully the likes of Force India and Williams won’t start getting left behind by the upgrades to the bigger teams. Especially for Williams who have not taken advantage of their early season pace to record anything like the results they should have had. At least for Force India they have managed to grab a podium, although in Nico Hulkenberg’s eyes I’m sure he thinks the wrong driver picked it up as he has been the pace setter at every race but the one Sergio Perez picked up the podium at.

I’m beginning to think if Ferrari don’t offer significant improvement at this race then Fernando Alonso will be looking to get out of his Ferrari contract. Mercedes seem to think Ferrari are their biggest threat which I disagree with but like Renault, the Ferrari power unit will have been worked on to find ways of improvement for fuel consumption and driveability. The improvements that the team are bringing have got to move them closer to the front and offer Kimi Raikkonen a solution to the problems he has driving the F14T. If Kimi isn’t closer to Alonso then I think any upgrades will have failed because if the car is easier to drive then generally the drivers are closer as there is less problems to drive around.

I do expect Ferrari and particularly Red Bull in qualifying to offer more of a challenge, but can Mercedes be beaten yet? I don’t think so, they’ve barely had to open the taps and they won’t have been resting on their laurels at all. Obviously the opposition have more to gain as they are that far behind but Mercedes have a lot of clever people. So who do I tip to win? Well Nico Rosberg was stronger than Lewis Hamilton last year in Spain. I don’t think that will be the case this year, Lewis is just in total harmony with this car and seems to have Rosberg covered at the moment. I'm going with Vettel to get a surprise pole position, Hamilton to win, the Red Bull’s and Alonso to mix it with Rosberg with a Williams, Force India and McLaren lurking in the background. And a Grosjean ready to get a point, probably battling rookie of the year so far Daniil Kvyat.

all photo's taken from autosport.com