Spanish GP No Reason To Write Off Rest Of F1 Season

While Mercedes took a one­two at Catalunya, Ferrari was right up there in the previous three races in Bahrain, Shanghai and Baku, so maybe the Silver Arrows’ level of dominance is a one­off occurence.

- Karun Chandhok

Let’s be honest, after the excitement of the opening three corners, the Spanish Grand Prix was a bit of a snoozefest. But you know what, most of the time, the Spanish GP is. So don’t write off the rest of the season! Since the first race at the Circuit de Catalunya in 1991, 25 out of the 28 races have been won from the front row. The drivers and teams know the track too well, and the layout of the track with those longradius medium­ and high­speed corners means that it’s hard to follow another car. Plus, if we don’t have the occasional dull race, we won’t appreciate the good ones!

I do a bit of consultancy work for race track designers and I do wonder whether we ought to be doing something about the circuit to make it more interesting for racing. One of the big challenges, of course, is that nowadays the circuit’s bigger earner is the MotoGP weekend and, therefore, whatever is done to the layout has to work for the bikes as well. However, I do think that by changing the width of the track on the entry to some of the corners, and tweaking the layout a bit, we could create some decent passing places by creating some new lines. The trouble we have now is that with the modern cars carrying so much downforce, Turn 1 isn’t a long braking zone and the only decent braking zone into Turn 10 comes after two corners where it’s very hard to follow the car in front.