Leclerc tops Friday running as Mercedes step-up in Spain

Charles Leclerc topped both FP1 and FP2 to kick-off the Spanish Grand Prix.

Practice for the 2022 Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix was kicked off on a sunny Friday afternoon in Barcelona, with plenty of points to be noted down following the two hours of running.

In the first session, Charles Leclerc led a Ferrari 1-2 ahead of teammate Carlos Sainz, who returns home for the eighth time in his F1 career, before taking top spot in FP2.

With the F1-75 suiting the characteristics of the Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya, the team appear the favorites to another win in 2022.

But, an unlikely challenger has emerged to both Ferrari and Red Bull, Mercedes.

Mercedes porposing a thing of the past?

Although the focus of the crowd heading into the sessions was customer team Aston Martin, it was Mercedes who gained all of the attention before FP1 had even ended.

After falling from grace following a championship-winning year in 2021, Mercedes were left behind by Ferrari and Red Bull, with porposing becoming a serious issue for the manufacturer.

However, the team has seemingly fixed its bouncing problems, but the pace was still lacking in FP1. George Russell sat behind session leader Leclerc by seven tenths, with Sir Lewis Hamilton trailing the Ferrari driver by almost a second.

In contrast, Mercedes sat 2-3 behind Leclerc in FP2, separated by just two tenths at the end of the day’s running.

The development war in full swing

Heading into the weekend, the developments that the teams had brought to Spain dominated the headlines with only Haas opting not to update their cars.

With the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya the host of pre-season testing, the track is where teams bring their updates to compare with the data gathered before the start of the season.

The eyes of the paddock were on Aston Martin, who brought an update to their sidepods that looked very similar to those seen on Red Bull Racing’s RB18.

Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner spoke about the possibility of Aston Martin copying their cars.

He said:

“Imitation is the biggest form of flattery at the end of the day, and its no coincidence that we’ve had some individuals that have transferred from Red Bull to Aston Martin over the winter.

“It was brought to our attention by the FIA earlier in the week, where they said ‘we’ve got a car that looks remarkably like yours, can we have a list of your leavers to see where they went?

“That immediately raises alarm bells. What they take in their head, that’s fair game, that’s their knowledge. What isn’t fair and what is totally unacceptable, which we wouldn’t accept, is if there has been any transfer of IP at all.”

In FP1, like most other things in first practice, no conclusions could be drawn from the updates on the AMR22. However, the second hour saw Vettel run between the two Red Bulls after 20 minutes.

At the end of FP2, the four-time world champion sat eighth, placing himself as a possible challenger for best of the rest in Saturday qualifying and the race on Sunday.

New faces in the field for FP1

At the beginning of 2022, a new rule was introduced to the Formula 1 season, stating that teams must run young drivers at least twice throughout the 22 races this year.

Williams Racing and Red Bull Racing Oracle completed half of this at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya by running Nyck de Vries and Juri Vips in their cars.

Although their lap times suggest otherwise, it was a strong session for both. De Vries was able to outperform temporary teammate Nicholas Latifi by one tenth of a second before his return to Formula E.

Meanwhile, Vips finished last in the session, but completed some key running for the Milton Keynes-based squad ahead of their weekend in Spain.

As well as this, Robert Kubica stepped into the Alfa Romeo garage for Zhou Guanyu, giving the team feedback on their 2022 challenger alongside Valtteri Bottas.

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