F1 Tech | McLaren the quickest, but can Verstappen spoil the party on Sunday?

After a lot of talking on the revised technical directive for the Spanish Grand Prix, the first day of practice offered a standing not much different to the one we are used to, with McLaren in front. However, the grid seemed much more packed than before, with Ferrari, Mercedes and Verstappen not far behind in FP2.

Starting from McLaren, both Norris and Piastri were very quick on Friday, but not without problems: during FP1 Piastri run a higher downforce rear wing, specifically designed for this layout, while Norris used the medium downforce spec already adopted in Bahrain and Suzuka.

However, maybe due to the new rules related to the front wing flexing, the Australian struggled from understeer in mid-corner, proof that his MCL39 was a bit unbalanced, due to the set-up choices made.

The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, in fact, is predominately made of high-speed corners where a good front-end is needed. Moreover, due to the very abbrasive asphalt and the high temperature faced during this weekend, it switches to be a rear-limited circuit as soon as fuel is loaded on the car. This means that teams must shift the balance to the rear to preserve the rear tyres during the race, as they’re the most stressed ones.

For all these reasons, McLaren switched to the lower downforce rear wing on both cars in FP2, strong of the high level of downforce generated by the Venturi Chanels. This drastically improved the overall balance of the MCL39, making it quicker in all kind of corners and in all three sectors. 

As a consequence, Piastri was able to set the quickest time of the day on the soft tyre, while Lando Norris was the the second fastest in the long run simulations with the same tyre with an average of 1.20.2 seconds compared to Verstappen's 1.19.9 seconds on the medium tyre.

Moving now on to Red Bull, they had one the best Fridays since the beginning of the season on a circuit that should clearly favour the RB21. The high-speed nature of the track, in fact, perfectly suits the stiff and close to the ground working point of the Milton Keynes car.

Thanks to these aspects, Verstappen was very close to McLaren during FP2, especially in the long run simulations: as soon as the soft tyre was fitted on his car, he was able to set competitive lap times without overheating issues, proving the step forward done by Red Bull in the last few weeks with the Miami and Imola upgrades.

To be able to be closer and challenge McLaren, they probably need to find a little bit more lap time in qualifying simulation, as they’re still missing a couple of tenths on the softer C3.

We’ve been however used during the first races of the season that Red Bull Racing engineers are able to turn the car around between Friday and Saturday, but they’ll need to work on details to make their RB21 quicker this time, to allow Verstappen to get his 3rd win of 2025.

For what concerns Ferrari and Mercedes, they had quite a double-faced Friday.

Starting from Ferrari, they had a very good practice session in the morning, where thy struggled a little bit on the single lap simulation on the C3 but had a very good pace in the long runs on the same tyre.

At the same time, the second practice in the afternoon didn’t go as well: Leclerc felt better with the car in the qualifying simulation, despite a couple of errors in turns 7-8 and 9, but the race pace sims weren’t as good as those seen on Friday morning, with both Hamilton and Leclerc setting slower lap times with high fuel than Verstappen and the two McLarens.

Another negative aspect of the day was clearly Lewis Hamilton’s performance in FP2: the Britain complained of car very difficult to drive, with poor results especially in the qualifying simulation. This negative performance may be due the new technical directive on the front wing: as he already underlined on Thursday, in fact, the flexing front wing allowed teams to run high downforce and make cars more competitive in the slow speed and funnier to drive.

Having a stiffer front wing probably reduces the grip and driver’s confidence on such a demanding layout in terms of front-end stress. This may be the reason of Hamilton’s struggles on Friday and it’ll be quite interesting to see if the team manages to find a solution before qualifying to help the 7-time World Champion improve his feeling on a track where he’s won 6 times.

Last but not least, Mercedes had a troubled day as well: the updated W16 sported a new floor which aimed at increasing the overall downforce generated, but Kimi Antonelli experienced an old enemy of this generation of cars: porpoising. This problem may be only related to the set-up choices made by the team during practice session, since Russell didn’t face this issue in FP2.

Despite that, the Briton didn’t have a smooth day either: after a more difficult performance in FP2, he seemed to have found the perfect set-up to exploit the grip offered by the soft tyre, setting a very interesting time in the qualifying simulation.

However, this choice probably didn’t pay dividends during the race pace simulations, as both drivers struggled with overheating just a few laps after the beginning of their stints, with very slow lap times in the medium phase of the simulation.

The lap times seemed to recover during the final phase, proving that the additional downforce from the new floor gave an additional load that helped bring tyres back into their operating window.

In conclusion, McLaren remains the favourite coming into Saturday, but all competitors could be much closer, making the whole weekend much more exciting and hard-fought.