Spanish GP: Encouraging Friday for the Team in Barcelona

The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is an ideal track for testing an F1 car - a wide range of corner types and speeds, plus some long straights leads to exciting racing.

The team has no visible aero updates this weekend, but there are a few parts on the car to continue the progress we've made in recent weeks.

On Friday, our aim was, as usual, to gather as much data as possible. After a lot of running on the Medium and Hard tyre in FP1, the focus in the second practice session was on our long running as well as doing some single laps on the Soft tyre. The conditions in Spain were sunny and hot, ideal for some track action.

At the start of FP2, George and Lewis put on new Mediums. Both drivers were quite happy with the balance of the W15 and found themselves at the top of the timesheets. However, both felt that there was even more potential to unlock in the car.

For the first time this weekend, our drivers then worked on the Soft tyre, putting in some single-lap work. After their first attempts, Lewis was again the fastest, while George's push lap was compromised by traffic. Because of the demands of the circuit, more than one lap on the Soft tyre would not bring any improvements - an important learning for the Team.

In the final part of the session, our team focussed on long runs again. George and Lewis first stayed on the Soft tyres and then switched to Mediums. As with our pace on the single lap, the long runs were looking solid.

Lewis topped the second practice session just 0.022 seconds ahead of Ferrari's Carlos Sainz. George finished P8, with more time to come. As each driver managed to do 28 laps, together with FP1, a lot of valuable information was gathered.

Lewis Hamilton

FP1 wasn’t the best session for us but we still learned quite a lot. FP2 was a lot better though and the car was feeling great. The track was very hot, so it was tough on the tyres, especially on the long run. Overall, though, it didn’t feel like we were too far off being right in the mix at the front.

We have taken a step forward with the car in recent races. Everyone has worked so hard to get us to this point and make those incremental gains. We’ve got a clear direction of where we want to go moving forward too. We’re starting to see that feed through to our performance on track. Hopefully we can continue the momentum from today into Saturday and get closer to our competitors ahead.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We've had a solid first day on track here in Barcelona. We made a step forward with the updates we brought to Monaco and Montreal, but it's been encouraging to see that the car is working well around a track with plenty of high-speed corners.

Our single lap pace looks competitive and quite close with several other teams. It's always hard to know where you stand on Friday given the range of power modes and fuel loads, but we've also had many a good first day followed by a tough qualifying session. We will therefore focus on improving on the feedback that the drivers are reporting and see where we end up tomorrow afternoon in Qualifying.