Stuart Codling on why testing isn’t the problem
Among the least insightful ‘hot takes’ barked out by the opinionati in the wake of a Spanish Grand Prix which was, on the face of it, less than thrilling, was the claim that Barcelona’s status as F1’s default testing venue militates against good racing there. Some voices went so far as to suggest that F1 should abandon world championship venues for its pre-season routine, testing only at circuits that don’t feature on the calendar.
All of this is predicated on several assumptions, chief of which is the trope that nobody can find an edge at the Circuit de Catalunya because the teams know it so well, and have vaults full of data covering every possible scenario. It also assumes all races there are processional – something which is occasionally the case but not uniformly. If you look beyond the business of who actually won, there were plenty of intriguing battles and daring on-track racing going on down the field – provided you were paying attention (and the TV director hadn’t snoozed into automatic pilot).
While the order below the podium positions ultimately coalesced into a form not greatly removed from the grid, this doesn’t mean the 2020 Spanish GP was entirely uneventful.
Sergio Pérez made an unlikely one-stop strategy work to finish fourth on the road, fifth with his blue-flag penalty; team-mate Lance Stroll, running on a more vanilla two-stop plan, inherited fourth as a result but had to cope with the challenge of Mclaren’s Carlos Sainz, who was on an unorthodox soft-soft-medium run plan. Sainz made great use of the tyre offset to make his way back through the pack, overtaking (among others) the one-stopping Ferrari of Sebastian
MIKA HÄKKINEN, NO LESS, STILL RANKS BARCELONA AMONG HIS FAVOURITE CIRCUITS
Vettel. Alexander Albon also had to fight, having been lumbered with the unfancied hard rubber in an early stop which left him in traffic. Lando Norris had to get his elbows out after losing two places at the start, which put him at loggerheads with Charles
Leclerc – a duel that would have delivered more entertainment had the Ferrari not broken.
The nuances of tyre management may not be the most fascinating aspect of motor racing but they contributed to intrigue at a circuit which offers pretty much every kind of corner except those that promote overtaking opportunities. Drivers enjoy the challenge of stringing together fast laps on what is mostly a fast and flowing layout – Mika Häkkinen, no less, still ranks Barcelona among his favourite circuits. But the fact remains that passing is very difficult unless one car is substantially faster than the other. Ending the practice of testing at Barcelona would not change this.
Renault’s Esteban Ocon performed one of the boldest overtaking moves of the race, straying onto the grass at close to maximum speed while putting Kimi Räikkönen to the sword, though perhaps the nature of the dispute – for finishing positions outside the top 10 – reduced the stakes in the mind of the viewer. Afterwards I asked him what effect, if any, a move to testing at nonchampionship venues would have.
“Obviously we know the track very well,” he said, “and that made it tight in qualifying and the race. But the conditions were so different, everything we got from winter testing about tyre management and car set-up didn’t really matter. The time of year we’re racing made it like a different place.”
The huge disparity in ambient and track temperatures between the usual test days (late February), Barcelona’s traditional calendar slot (early May) and where it was this year (mid-august) created many uncertainties and fed into that wider picture of hugely differing tyre strategies. That it didn’t provide the kind of topsy-turvy race which endures long in the memory suggests that testing really isn’t the problem here. It’s the circuit itself.
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