Spanish Grand Prix paddock diaries: Fernando Alonso’s jibe, love for Daniel Ricciardo and Ferrari's halo

Thousands of fans flocked the Circuit de Catalunya on the Saturday of the 2018 Spanish Grand Prix. After all, it was the day that the all-important qualifying session would be conducted. But before qualifying, it was time for the third free practice session, the last for teams and drivers before the ‘business end’ of the weekend would commence. Free Practice 3: When Lance went for a ‘Stroll’ [caption id=“attachment_4467465” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Williams’ Lance Stroll crashes during the qualifying session at the Circuit de Catalunya. AFP[/caption] The key objective of this session is to evaluate car set-up and tyre compounds that would be most suitable for qualifying — this means working on a combination that would allow the driver to extract maximum ‘one lap pace’ and qualify as far ahead on the grid as possible. In the third free practice session, Williams’ Lance Stroll added to his numerous off-track sessions of the weekend. The young Canadian driver, who is trying hard to shrug off the ‘pay driver’ tag, didn’t seem settled in the car and the circuit — a reminder of the troubles he faced and couldn’t get on top of in the 2017 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Toro Rosso’s Brendon Hartley, the reigning World Endurance Champion, has found the switch from racing sports cars to single-seater cars difficult. Unfortunately for him, Red Bull Racing’s limited patience with their drivers is well reported. Will they be patient enough with Hartley and let him see through the current season? Well, that story is for another day. In this session, Hartley drove on a small patch of grass — a mistake that threw his car off balance and shunted rearwards into the barriers. The damage was such that Hartley’s car needed extensive repairs and saw him miss the all-important qualifying session later in the day. Tyre strategies at play in qualifying The aerodynamic requirements of the Circuit de Catalunya make it difficult for the current generation of Formula 1 cars to overtake each other. This makes the qualifying session and securing a good grid slot even more important. The statistics back this theory; the pole-sitter has won 73% of races between 2007-2017 and a top 4 starting position has a 91% chance of winning the race. In Q1, Nico Hulkenberg was the big exit from the session. His Renault suffered from a fuel pressure issue that hampered his progress through qualifying. He will start the race from 16th. Stroll went off the circuit yet again and this time, he spun out of the session and even managed to crack a television camera lens while doing so! Embarrassingly enough, Stroll went off at Turn 12 — a turn that doesn’t normally see drivers go off. Thanks to Stroll’s crash, the start to Q2 was delayed — it took the marshalls time to repair and realign the barriers. For the second time in succession, Sauber’s Charles Leclerc made it to Q2. Also, this was the third time this season that he out-qualified his Swedish teammate, Marcus Ericsson. It was good to see the Ferrari junior driver continue his momentum from Baku, where he scored his first Formula 1 points. In the top-10 shoot (Q3), we saw Lewis Hamilton clinch his second pole position of the season and 74th overall. Valtteri Bottas followed only four hundredths of a second behind (also Mercedes’ first front row lockout of 2018), followed by Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel. All in all, the top three were separated by just about a tenth — an indication that Sunday’s race should be closely fought. Normally, we see tyre strategy play out in the race, but in the qualifying session, we saw the Ferrari drivers use the soft tyres to set their fastest lap time, while the Mercedes and Red Bull Racing drivers chose the super-softs. After the session, the Pirelli tyres received much criticism. Ferrari’s halo mounted mirrors After reporting in yesterday’s paddock dairies that Ferrari’s halo-mounted mirrors might be disallowed for the Spanish Grand Prix, the FIA in fact allowed the Italian team to continue using their mirrors while deeming them illegal. From the 2018 Monaco Grand Prix, Ferrari will have to revert to the car-mounted mirrors — one that every team in the paddock has been using for years. The manner of this ruling did raise a few eyebrows. Ferrari claimed that they were within the ruling of using the halo for mounting mirrors that was discussed post-China. However, rival teams believed that by freeing up their mirrors on the car, there was a positive impact on the aerodynamics of Ferrari’s SF-71H. Also, the FIA couldn’t enforce Ferrari to switch to the earlier spec-mirrors because the Italian team had an updated car for Spain and they would go back to using their older car (one that they used in the first four races) in Monaco. Fernando Alonso’s jibe on Formula 1 Fernando Alonso was asked an interesting question — a year ago, he had vehemently opposed Liberty Media’s proposal of having 25 races a year. Yet, now he’s driving many more. What changed his mind? Alonso replied, “The reason is that the other races I drive (outside of F1) are fun races! Formula 1 is predictable, demanding and more about Constructors’ Championship. Different teams line up on the different rows of the grid — there is not much that a driver can do.” We love you too, Dan Do you remember Sebastian Vettel’s legendary radio message from the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix? During a battle with former Red Bull teammate Daniel Ricciardo he had fumed, ‘Honestly, what are we doing? Racing or ping pong?’ Ricciardo told reporters that a particular radio message still made him giggle — and thanked Vettel for all the great entertainment over the years. Speaking of entertainment, Ricciardo packs in a neat amount himself. For us journalists going from one press meeting to the next, his are the most fun, candid and unexpected. After Saturday’s qualifying session, Ricciardo greeted the press with his characteristic grin — followed by an unexpected expletive (all in good jest of course). “We love you too, Dan!” quipped back a senior journalist, and the room burst into laughter.