Formula 1

Formula One is back in Europe after wrapping up the Miami Grand Prix two weeks ago. The 2022 Spanish Grand Prix will take place on Sunday, May 22nd.

The second qualifying round lasts 15 minutes and follows the same format, with again the five slowest drivers eliminated. The five slowest drivers are eliminated and they are done for the day. They can enter pit row and exit when they want to as the drivers usually make tweaks to their cars.

Charles Leclerc edged out championship rival Max Verstappen to lead the way in final practice for the Spanish Grand Prix, as Mercedes continued to show a ...

Fernando Alonso, driving in front of a huge home crowd, was 13th, ahead of Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu and Yuki Tsunoda in the AlphaTauri. Lance Stroll was 0.5s behind team mate Vettel in 16th with Alex Albon the leading Williams in 17th, nearly a second clear of team mate Nicholas Latifi. Lando Norris, who was running the full upgrade after his McLaren team completed repairs to his floor damaged on a kerb on Friday, was seventh, with Kevin Magniussen the leading Haas in eighth. Home favourite Carlos Sainz was fifth, ahead of Sergio Perez, with the top six running two sets of soft tyres and separated by under half a second on what was an unseasonably hot day in Barcelona.

Sergio Perez was down in sixth, followed by Lando Norris, Kevin Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas and Esteban Ocon. With Verstappen only 0.072 seconds behind ...

The sound in the grandstand has diminished a little since the surprise exit of Fernando Alonso from the opening qualifying session. The stewards noted an incident involving Alonso and Lando Norris but the Briton has been cleared of impeding his rival. There was drama further down the grid when Mick Schumacher’s right rear brakes caught on fire.

Ferrari driver Leclerc was quickest, but Max Verstappen and the Mercedes duo of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton showed pace ahead of qualifying too by ...

12) Lance Stroll 10) Yuki Tsunoda 12) Sebastian Vettel 10) Esteban Ocon 3) George Russell 1) Charles Leclerc

Charles Leclerc posted the fastest lap of FP3 for the FIA Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix to make it a clean sweep of practice session top sports, ...

Leclerc jumped to the top of the order with a lap of 1:20.278. Verstappen didn’t emerge until close to the halfway mark and he slotted into P2. Leclerc went for a second run on softs and he set a new benchmark of 1:19.772 that remained until the end of the session. George Russell finished third in the uprated car, posting a lap of 1:19.920 that left him just 0.148 behind Leclerc. Lewis Hamilton meanwhile took fourth place with a lap of 1:20.002 that put him a tenth ahead of Sainz who in turn two tenths ahead of the second Red Bull of Sergio Pérez. AlphaTauri driver Gasly was forces to return to his team’s garage at the end of his installation lap, smoke emanating from the rear of his AT03. Haas driver Schumacher had a fire on hi rear-right brake assembly. Sainz also improved on a second run with a lap of 1:20.129s, but that was only good enough for fifth place as Mercedes’ upgraded W13 continued to impress. Charles Leclerc posted the fastest lap of FP3 for the FIA Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix to make it a clean sweep of practice session top sports, though the championship leader finished just seven hundredths of a second ahead of defending champion Max Verstappen with George Russell third in an improved Mercedes. Leclerc and team-mate Carlos Sainz, who was in a changed chassis owing to fuel system problem, began the final practice where they left off at the end of FP2, with Sainz and then Leclerc claiming top sport when they took to the track after 15 minutes. There was trouble in the session, though, for Mick Schumacher and Pierre Gasly.

Max Verstappen's victory in Miami reduced Charles Leclerc's lead at the top of the drivers' standings to just 19 points but it was the Ferrari driver who was ...

Mercedes has done a step forward, no doubt, but Red Bull is at the max.” “We still have some bouncing but it is way better and we are starting to eke into the potential of the car. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. George Russell finished second in practice, ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton, who was buoyed by the progress after consistently struggling with the car’s porpoising issue. “It is the first time we have driven down the straight without bouncing,” he said. The world champion has been on the team radio to complain that the front of the car is difficult to position on entry to corners in Spain. We just need to fine-tune them.” Follow all the action from practice and qualifying below: FP3 will be drawing to a close in a matter of moments, and half a second is seperating the top six drivers from three different teams. The chequered flag is out and Saturday’s practice session has come to an end, with Charles Leclerc completing a hat-trick for Ferrari as he finishes top of the leaderboard once again, just as he did in both runs on Friday. The championship leader has an advantage of just under a tenth-of-a-second to current champion Max Verstappen, who is then followed by Mercedes drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton in third and fourth. Both Silver Arrows cars have regularly been around a second off the pace in qualifying so far this season, but both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton have been within touching distance of championship leader Leclerc in FP2 and FP3 after Mercedes brought a raft of upgrades to Spain. There were also encouraging signs for Mercedes after it was revealed the team had been testing new upgrades to their car at a filming day earlier this week.

Live coverage of Saturday's Formula 1 qualifying session for the 2022 Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona.

Championship leader Charles Leclerc has taken pole position for this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix, and will start ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen on ...

In qualifying Hamilton has been the better (winning 3-2 so far), but trails him by 23 points in the standings. Mercedes' encouraging progress continued in final practice, with Russell and Hamilton third and fourth, as opposed to their customary fifth and sixth (at best). Lando Norris, Kevin Magnussen, Valterri Bottas and Esteban Ocon made up the rest of the top 10. In any case, that's all for tomorrow – qualifying is the main focus of today and going by the times in FP3, we can be at least a little hopeful that there is a three-way battle for pole position. Bottas has had a more difficult weekend here than most of his races so far, though he was in the top 10 in FP3 so should expect him to be there in qualifying too. Perez goes fastest of anyone in the first sector, as you would expect. and loses only a few hundredths in the second sector. Russell has a tenth on Hamilton in the first sector... He's half a second up on Magnussen in sector one and a couple of tenths quicker than Sainz... but Russell has the edge again! "The lap was good, the lap was good!" I did a mistake in the first run of Q3 and then I obviously had one lap. A Mercedes on the second row is some form of progress, isn't it?

PART ONE - TEAM REPRESENTATIVES Andrew GREEN (Aston Martin), Dave ROBSON (Williams), Laurent MEKIES (Ferrari) PART TWO - TEAM REPRESENTATIVES Jody EGGINTON ...

I think we just have to be honest with ourselves as a team and say I don't think that's the reason we've struggled, I think we've struggled with the bouncing and that has sort of held us back. I think more to the point is we've just got to get on top of our issues and get the car moving in the right direction, and hopefully we’ve made a good step this weekend. I mean, it's impossible to know, I think, if you look at the way the regulations are policed aerodynamically, we have to take a photo of the model every run that happens so the FIA can go back and look at all the photos of every run that's been done in the tunnel, they can go and look at all the CFD models that have run, so they can see exactly what that development path looks like. I think relative to Red Bull, it's not very much, it's sort of a run a week, something of that order so it's fairly small, but then we don't have very many runs a week in the tunnel to start with. We have on our side now to check if we didn't have any IP leak, that is a is a main asset of the team. So sort of to pick up what you said, I am more confident that's less of a flash in the pan than it was in Miami. And to compare to a dataset you gathered here in pre-season testing. But I think we also look quite quick on Friday in Miami. So I think we wait to see where we are in qualifying and the race and then we will know. And that as a group of engineers, as a brand in general, you would like to design something of your own and to evolve something of your own. In the first early years, we need to be very careful to make sure we reach, as early as possible, the right level of enforcement and the right level of definition. And this is why, in that early phase, we all need to be very careful to have the necessary flexibility, to make sure we still have a fair regulations, we still have a fair playing field for everybody. Now, like I said at the top of the interview, we planned for this from a very early stage, to be able to do this this type of dual approach, and it does lead to a lot of management. But partly what we've been doing during the season is trying to understand how much of that is down to choices we've made, and we could genuinely have made different choices – and therefore there is scope to improve it reasonably easily, and how much of that is a feature of the regulation set.

The drivers and teams report back on all the action from final practice and qualifying at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, for the Formula 1 Pirelli Gran ...

Degradation will definitely be a factor tomorrow, with temperatures predicted to be perhaps even hotter than today, so this is likely to be the most challenging race of the year for tyres so far, where management and strategy will be key to success. The conditions are likely to be very hot and the tyres need to be managed, so maybe we can make up ground with a good strategy. The engineers will continue to look for improvements we can make for the race so this, together with the pre-race strategy work, will be the focus tonight. “I think we extracted the maximum from the car today, so I have to be happy with that. In FP3 this afternoon we made the progress we hoped for and were able to start exploiting the performance gain we were expecting, so far everything has correlated well, but there is still a little work to do to get the most from our new parts. It’s been interesting because a lot of teams brought upgrades this weekend and it doesn’t seem like they’ve found a huge amount and we seemed to have also found a little bit, even without upgrades and just in the set-up. I want to say a big thank you to all the mechanics that put the car back together in time for Quali today, as there was a lot of work involved. We wanted to avoid the situation we had in Miami, where we got stuck in traffic at the end of Q1, so we chose to go for three runs on soft tyres in the first part of qualifying. Considering the gaps that we were looking at in the last few races, we never expected to close up in a single step so while we can't be satisfied with fourth and sixth, it is at least encouraging that we have a car that is behaving in a more predictable way and that we are making steps in the right direction." We had a solid FP3, which allowed us to make up some of the ground we lost yesterday, and we were quite consistent in each run throughout the day. Best of the rest and barely a tenth of a second behind his former team mate was a very good day out for the Finn, who will be chasing his fifth points finish of the season tomorrow. In these temperatures it’s all going to be about tyre degradation and management, so I think it will be a very close and fascinating race tomorrow.”

It's our best qualifying position as a team this season, ahead of one Red Bull, and a positive session for us as we've finally got a good baseline. The pace gap ...

It's been interesting because a lot of teams brought upgrades this weekend and it doesn't seem like they've found a huge amount and we seemed to have also found a little bit, even without upgrades and just in the set-up. The conditions are likely to be very hot and the tyres need to be managed, so maybe we can make up ground with a good strategy. We wanted to avoid the situation we had in Miami, where we got stuck in traffic at the end of Q1, so we chose to go for three runs on soft tyres in the first part of qualifying. The conditions are likely to be very hot and the tyres need to be managed, so maybe we can make up ground with a good strategy. We had a solid FP3, which allowed us to make up some of the ground we lost yesterday, and we were quite consistent in each run throughout the day. Today the car was not as fast as yesterday and we need to understand why that was the case." The engineers will continue to look for improvements we can make for the race so this, together with the pre-race strategy work, will be the focus tonight. Considering the gaps that we were looking at in the last few races, we never expected to close up in a single step so while we can't be satisfied with fourth and sixth, it is at least encouraging that we have a car that is behaving in a more predictable way and that we are making steps in the right direction." It's possible our rivals could be more competitive tomorrow than they were today and I think that any aspect, from the start to tyre degradation, which will probably be the highest we have seen so far this season, could make the difference." I think it was a pretty tricky weekend so far, just trying to understand the new parts on the car – but I'm relatively happy to get into Q3 and just get on top of it enough to do that. In these temperatures it's all going to be about tyre degradation and management, so I think it will be a very close and fascinating race tomorrow." A big thank you to the mechanics for their hard work overnight to change the chassis and also to every fan out there in the grandstands for their incredible support.

Mercedes' Formula 1 technical director Mike Elliott believes it is “too early” to rule whether it is best to develop its current car concept despite taking ...

We’ve brought bits which have definitely settled the car down. “We’ve changed the car so much for this weekend that we need to work out how we get the best out of it. “The package we’ve brought here, we were definitely able to run the car in a position much more close to where we’d like to ideally run it.

Results from the final practice session at the F1 Spanish Grand Prix, Round 6 of the 2022 Formula 1 world championship.

2022 F1 Spanish Grand Prix - FREE PRACTICE RESULTS (3) F1 2022 Spanish Grand Prix - Free Practice Results (3) Results from the final practice session at the F1 Spanish Grand Prix, Round 6 of the 2022 Formula 1 world championship.

After a sold out race in the Miami Grand Prix on May 8, Formula 1 is back racing on international racetracks. The race will be held Circuit de Barcelona- ...

Seven-time F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton has fallen behind teammate George Russel by 23 points. While Leclerc is in the lead, Verstappen will not let go of his 2021 F1 World Champion title easily. The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya has been used for pre-season testing and junior categories.

Ferrari takes pole once again, with championship contenders riddled through the first three rows.

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SportsLine analyzed the starting grid and made its best bets for the F1 Pirelli Spanish GP 2022 race at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Mercedes has been working diligently to improve its cars after a highly disappointing start to the 2022 F1 season, and with Red Bull leader Christian Horner recently went on record predicting a return to contention for the reigning Formula 1 Constructor champions. You can head to SportsLine now to see the complete projected 2022 Spanish GP leaderboard. The latest stop on the Formula 1 schedule is Montmeló, Catalonia, Spain for the 2022 Spanish GP at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. The race is scheduled for Sunday, May 22, with F1 legend Lewis Hamilton entering the event as the five-time defending champion.

Toto Wolff believes his Mercedes Formula 1 team can finally start catching up to Red Bull and Ferrari after solving its car's crippling porpoising issues.

"It's an aerodynamic effect that's created from the floor swinging and it was difficult to come to that conclusion in a scientific way. And that's great." Mercedes endured a nightmare start to the ground-effect era with a car that suffered from wild porpoising, which forced the team to run its car higher than it wanted.