Nobody thought it will be this early in the season but it is already happing. Indications from the first free practice session Friday saw the likes of McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari matching the speed of Mercedes.
Going into the final minutes it was McLaren’s Jason Button, surprisingly, who was fastest, on 1m 27.891s, from Ricciardo on 1m 27.973s. Mercedes driver Lwewis Hamilton was third on 1m 28.028s, but right at the end the winner of the past three races banged in a 1m 27.109s and followed that with 1m 27.023s to remind everyone who was boss just as the chequered flag fell.
Button remained an encouraging second, but even at this early stage, when everyone was running on Pirelli’s hard tyre, the 0.868s deficit was ominous.
The 4-time world champion, Sebastian Vettel did not run again during Friday practice for the Spanish Grand Prix after stopping on track in the first session.
Having completed just four laps during FP1, Vettel stopped after Turn 5 with an electrical issue and was seen using a fire extinguisher on the rear of the car. While that prevented him from running again in morning practice, the team has now confirmed that the problem is serious enough to stop Vettel making it back out at all for FP2.
“Due to an electrical problem that has damaged the wiring loom of Car No.1, Sebastian will not be able to take part in FP2,” Red Bull wrote on Twitter. “The team will use the time to fix it to be ready for FP3 tomorrow.”
The Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona marks the beginning of the European season after the first four flyaways and Barcelona is also traditionally the venue where you will see the most dramatic shifts in the pecking order from the opening races here.
This year is an exception to this rule, but the teams test here relentlessly (there is an in-season test next week after the race), and it is usually a good indicator of the formbook for the rest of the year (Fernando Alonso’s win in 2013 and Pastor Maldonado’s the year before are, again, exceptions to this rule).
As a result, with the slight break after China, the teams will have focused enormous resources on bringing updates to their cars. In 2012 Ferrari went from being way off the pace to right in the thick of it, for example.
This weekend presents the perfect opportunity for Renault to bring a major upgrade, which could totally transform Red Bull’s fortunes. They have so far been crippled by their lack of grunt (the team seem happy enough with their performance in the corners), and Spain will show if they have the tools to compete with Mercedes. In short, we should have a clearer idea after the race if Red Bull have much chance of making up ground and mounting a challenge for the championship.
The Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso, will be on home soil. Incidentally he has not won a race since this event last year, but will be even harder to beat this weekend, so it will be fascinating to see if team mate Kimi can get anywhere close. It doesn’t seem all that likely.
Nico Rosberg, meanwhile, has had a much more impressive start to 2014. But he still needs to raise his game if he is to challenge Lewis Hamilton. The Briton has been faultless, while the German failed to use better rubber to pass in Bahrain and made a couple of mistakes in qualifying last time out in China which left him on the back foot for Sunday.
Improvement is needed if he is to keep with Hamilton, who has been flawless thus far.
Jenson Button, who has driven everything from woefully uncompetitive cars to the class of the field, seems positive enough, suggesting the team simply need to understand how to extract more speed from what they already have. If they don’t manage to do so quickly, then the chance of a return to the podium, let alone a race win, looks slim.
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