Welcome to The Briefing, where you can get a jumpstart on the Spanish Grand Prix with our guide to the key topics. 

Every race weekend, we’ll speak to one of our engineers to discuss the key talking points ahead of the upcoming Grand Prix, and simplify them so that you can dive straight into the action with a better idea of what to expect, and what you should be looking out for.  

This week, powered by Google Cloud, we spoke to Andrew Jarvis. Andrew looks at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya's layout changes, car setup considerations, tyre strategies, and the impact of wind and elevation changes on performance. 

Here’s what you need to know…

1. Navigating the new circuit layout 

The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is probably the most familiar circuit that we go to for all the drivers on the grid. The layout has changed in recent years, however. With the final chicane removed and the low-speed hairpin at Turn 10 becoming a wider, higher-speed corner, it's now a track with one of the highest minimum speeds of the season. This has implications for setup.  

This weekend's biggest item of significance is a new rear wing. It sits between the maximum downforce wing we used in Monaco and the wing introduced back in Bahrain, which we’ve used for most of the season. For FP1, we'll be starting with rakes fitted to both cars. 

These cars work best when they're stiff and as low as possible. How low depends on the track. At some circuits, skid wear is critical, but here it looks like the bump coming into the final corner is likely to be the limiting factor for ride-height. It's something we need to investigate. 

2. Mastering the elements 

In general, it's a very smooth track with few bumps. There are important kerbs, but they're not like the ones in Canada, where we needed to fire the car over big sausage kerbs. It's therefore less of a concern than it was there. What the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya has that Montréal lacked, however, is plenty of elevation change.  

With that elevation change comes a lot of track warp, which definitely influences how we run the car in terms of stiffness. Turn 10 has some warp, but the more critical areas are Turns 5 and 7. Turn 5 is the more difficult because the track falls away from the critical inside wheel, with a genuine risk of front-locking. We have to understand this.  

It's also quite an exposed circuit, which means the wind can be a significant factor. Particularly in the long Turn 3 and then Turn 4, which are the most exposed. This has quite a big impact on setup and is different for Qualifying and the race because Turn 3 is flat in Qualifying but taken with a lift in the race. Turn 9 and 13 are similar, and we'll need to understand how the MCL38 handles both of those conditions – though this race has a very pronounced Qualifying bias, and more so this year as the length of the DRS zone on the main straight has been reduced by 100m.  

3. Weekend tactics 

Another aspect of the track is the very, very long run to Turn 1. It isn't that the straight itself is unusually long but that the grid is a long way back towards the final corner, making this second-only to the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez regarding how far away the first braking zone is. This places a premium on launch performance, so we'll prioritise having a decent amount of launch practice for the drivers in our practice programme.  

Qualifying is very important, and a bit of understanding is needed to figure out how best to approach a lap in terms of how close you want to be to another car. You certainly would like a tow on the main straight, but with the final sector being so grip-limited, you don't want to be too close. Finding that sweet spot requires some work. 

4. Optimising tyre strategies 

With regard to tyres, Barcelona is… weird. We have Pirelli's three hardest compounds and, based on recent years, it looks like a two-stop race – but tyre degradation doesn't necessarily follow the usual pattern.  

Regardless of whether this happens again, the performance gap between the Hard and Soft tyres will be much smaller than what we've seen at other circuits. This will drive us toward keeping more Soft tyres in the allocation. We'll want them for Qualifying, but they're also likely to be a decent race tyre – unless we see evidence that the Hard and Medium compounds are much better than we expect. Something to find out today. 

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