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The Formula One season continues after the flyaway events at the Spanish Grand Prix. Join The Roar from 9:30pm (AEST) for all the action.
Despite a mere three-week interval between events, it feels like an age since the conclusion of the Bahrain Grand Prix, which saw reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton win his third race of the season.
Now Formula One dawns onto Europe for the first time in 2015, with the Spanish Grand Prix at the classic Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
66 laps will be contested across the 4.6 kilometre circuit where the defending world champion Hamilton claimed victory (his fourth in fact) last year.
The high track temperatures along with the equally high loads on the tyres means that Pirelli will be supplying the hard and medium option compounds for this weekend. With that in mind, an opportunity presents itself for Ferrari to repeat their triumph at the Malaysian Grand Prix which was held under similar conditions.
Mercedes AMG of course remain the outright favourites to lead the proceedings, however the break an opportunity for the teams to develop new upgrades, and the possibility of a red car being closer to the silver ones is on.
Reliability showed its hand in Bahrain for Hamilton and Nico Rosberg as towards the dying stages of the race, their brake-by-wire system failed, meaning that Ferrari could have more than just the heat and hard tyres come to their favour in Barcelona.
The very capable Sebastian Vettel has won once at the circuit, while his teammate Kimi Räikkönen boasts two wins.
As stated earlier, Barcelona is a key circuit for the teams to introduce their first phase of updates on their cars. While it is expected that all squads bring the relevant upgrades, it is thought that some will make more gains than others.
Red Bull (especially on the Renault side) will expect an improvement in their reliability and drivability, while McLaren will seek further strides in their engine programme with Honda.
The rest of the runners should remain largely where they have been so far this season. It will be intriguing to see what advancements Williams have made during the time off, as they were stunned by the rapid improvement of Ferrari during the off-season.
Considering Mercedes-Benz is the Grove team’s power-unit supplier, they’d probably want their cars as buffers in between the AMG duo and the Prancing Horses.
It should be a weekend then where the possibility of a Ferrari win in terms of pace and strategy will be on the cards, however the Silver Arrows remain yet as favourites. In particular Hamilton.
Join me on The Roar at 9:30pm (AEST) to find out.
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