Round 6 of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship commenced with practice on Friday at the Circuit de Barcelona – Catalunya as teams prepared for Sunday’s 66-lap Spanish Grand Prix.
The opening day of the race weekend consisted of two 60-minute sessions – FP1 and FP2 – through the 4,655-kilometer (2,892-mile), 16-turn circuit – a mainstay of junior race categories and Formula 1 pre-season testing.
Kevin Magnussen lost some early run-time in FP1 due to an oil leak discovered on his installation lap. The Dane wasn’t hampered for too long though and completed nine laps on the Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium compound. Mick Schumacher started his run plan on the White hard tires logging 12 laps in total. Both VF-22’s completed the session with some baseline laps on the Red soft rubber – Magnussen subsequently posting a best lap of 1:22.089 (P14) with Schumacher recording a 1:22.146 (P15).
FP2 remained hot as the circuit continued to be bathed in Spanish sunshine – air temperature peaking at 31 degrees Celsius (87.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and track temperature hitting 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit). Magnussen sampled the hard compound to start, with Schumacher kicking off on mediums. Qualifying sims meant a return to the soft compound for both Haas cars. Schumacher led the way with a fastest lap of 1:20.757 (P10) while Magnussen clocked a 1:21.013 (P12). Friday’s track running concluded with high-fuel runs through to the checkered flag.
Haas F1 Team ran a total of 86 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 – 41 by Magnussen and 45 by Schumacher.
Kevin Magnussen: “It was nothing too out of the ordinary, I think the pace seemed to be ok in both low-fuel and high-fuel. We’ll go and see if we can find a bit more lap time as there’s always stuff You can do and certainly, we’ll try hard to find a little bit more to get into Q3 tomorrow. It’s going to be hard, but we’ll try.”
Mick Schumacher: “It was positive. As I said this morning, I think there’s still a lot of potential in our car right now, so the upgrades from other teams have to work in the first place to be able to better and that’s not always the case. I feel it’s pretty positive, I feel good in the car, I still have some ideas so I’m ready to go racing. We’re in a good place for tomorrow.”
Guenther Steiner, Team Principal: “Except for a little glitch at the beginning of FP1 on Kevin’s car, it was a good session. We used FP1 to do some aero tests on Mick’s car and some set-up tests on both, and then we were ready for FP2 and it went pretty well. Hopefully we’ll make another small step tomorrow and we’ll look forward to qualifying.”
Check out our Friday gallery from Barcelona, here.
