At the Circuit de Catalunya circuit in Barcelona, one of the most significant weekends of the 2024 Formula 1 season begins, making it also one of the most intense from a team workload perspective. The track is known as an open-air wind tunnel, especially with the removal of the last chicane, making the Spanish event the primary reference for evaluating the aerodynamics of the cars. In the first free practice session for the Spanish Grand Prix, the car that relies heavily on aerodynamics, the McLaren, immediately appeared very comfortable. Lando Norris not only set the fastest session time but also showed solid performance with minimal setup changes between short and long runs. The Woking team seemed to have nailed the baseline setup from the start, as evident from the data of the best lap compared to the three cars just behind Norris: Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari, and George Russell’s Mercedes.
Right from the start, we see a completely different power delivery strategy on the main straight for McLaren, with Lando Norris gaining about a tenth of a second on the competition at the beginning of the lap. Max Verstappen regains ground on Lando Norris by Turn 3, indicating high grip levels, and Norris maintains higher minimum speed through the long Turn 4, especially on exit. Carlos Sainz struggles in this phase with lower grip levels, primarily due to the disadvantage of running medium tyres compared to the competition’s soft tyres.
McLaren’s strong point, where they extend their lead over all rivals, is the section from the exit of Turn 5 to Turn 9, where aerodynamic stability and grip are crucial. In the fast Turn 9, Norris is very conservative compared to Verstappen, who is aggressive in that section. However, in the tricky Turns 10 and 11, Lando Norris extends his lead again thanks to excellent braking efficiency and high cornering speed. In the final sector, only Max Verstappen keeps up, closing the gap to just a few thousandths at the finish line, while Ferrari and Mercedes are over three-tenths behind.
For a first session, the teams also conducted significant race pace simulations, with Norris’s McLaren again standing out with an excellent degradation curve and an unrivaled pace. Given the similar behavior of the rest of the field, including Oscar Piastri, it seems that Norris’s run was done with very little fuel, but the Woking car still showed a good level. Carlos Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari also performed well in the long run, stabilizing on a good performance-degradation curve after minimal initial degradation, similar to the other McLaren driven by Oscar Piastri, who recorded an impressive 1:19.4 on his last lap before the pit stop, surprising the competition.
The Red Bull cars were slower, engaged in a complicated simulation with soft tyres, as were the Mercedes cars. Despite using different compounds, the degradation curve was similar for everyone, with the height of the graph being the differentiating factor, derived from the sum of performance, compound, and fuel level. This shows that once the starting point is established through these elements, tire management becomes the predominant theme for everyone. Overall, the McLaren team appeared the most prepared, with Red Bull needing to improve and Ferrari with Sainz (the only one of the two Ferrari drivers with all the updates on the car) still looking competitive.
Everything described so far remains extremely preliminary as the work on setups has just begun, and everyone still has significant room for improvement.
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