Max Verstappen and Red Bull did as they have for the rest of Formula 1 2023 so far and dominated the opening day of practice at Barcelona, quickest by a big margin over long runs and topping the times overall.
The field appears very close behind, however, and there is hope – quite a bit from Red Bull’s rivals and surely for neutral observers too – that forecast wet weather could shake-up the action over the rest of the weekend.
There was also the return of a major talking point from 2022, plus analysis on major upgrade packages at several squads.
Here’s everything we learned from Friday practice at the 2023 Spanish Grand Prix.
Friday’s F1 running got underway in glowing warmth and blue skies in the early afternoon, with Verstappen, rather familiarly, crushing his opposition on his way to topping FP1 – by a massive 0.768s over team-mate Sergio Perez. Esteban Ocon and Nyck de Vries finished third and fourth in the opening session, which was treated as a glorified test run by many squads.
Alonso, sixth in FP1, initially took to the track with two front-end-mounted aero rakes on his Aston Martin, which were being used to measure the airflow coming off the front wheels. Lance Stroll had small cameras pointed at his front tyres and sitting on his front floor edge, as Aston gathered in the data on its front wing, nose and rear wing upgrades.
Ferrari had attracted the most attention ahead of FP1 with its surprise sidepod updates here, but when it came to the early track action these were only fitted to home hero Carlos Sainz’s SF-23. The Italian team was splitting its car arrangement to get back-to-back measurements of the impact of the changes.
Source: Autosport