Spanish Grand Prix: Qualifying Recap

With Q1 underway at 16:00 local around the sweeping 4.657-kilometer (2.893-mile), 14-turn Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya – qualifying’s opening sector proved a mixed bag for Bearman and Ocon. Both utilized three sets of new Pirelli P Zero Red soft tires, with their third and final laps producing their fastest times. Bearman progressed through to Q2 courtesy of a 1:13.074 (P12) while Ocon exited Saturday’s qualifying on a 1:13.201 (P17).

Bearman ran the second phase of knockout qualifying on used softs – the British rookie banking a 1:13.650 on his first run. Although able to improve on his second timed lap – a 1:13.315 – Bearman finished qualifying classifying P15.

Pole position went to McLaren’s Oscar Piastri (1:11.546) ahead of team-mate Lando Norris (1:11.755).

Ollie Bearman:

“We used all our new tires to get into Q2, and we managed that which is positive. We were probably faster than we expected, so I think if I had a new set in Q2 we would’ve been challenging to get into Q3 potentially. That’s a shame, but prior to the session I think we were quite clearly lacking performance to be where we just qualified, so I think we can be positive about that. It’s so hot here, I think it’s definitely going to change the way that we do things and I don’t know how the strategy will go, but we’ll try and have a good one tomorrow.”

Esteban Ocon:

“It was close out there, just a tenth would’ve got me into Q2. It’s far from over this weekend though, it’s a long race, you need to look after your tires, and there’s going to be a lot of pit stop strategies. There’s a long way to go and hopefully, we can optimize things and move forward.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“The good thing was that we improved the car quite a lot from FP3. The team has worked really hard from FP1 – of course, we need to figure out why it took so long to improve the car – but the car was performing reasonably well. The sad thing was that because we got there late, we used three sets of soft tires to get out of Q1. Ollie did a very good job to get out of Q1 in P12, so that was definitely better than expected, but then we had no new tires for Q2. Everything has a knock-on impact but the car and its ultimate potential, I think it’s close to Q3 today and if Ollie had a new tire, he would’ve been fighting for Q3. The other positive for tomorrow is that we have decent race tires, all compounds available to us, so we have pretty good options to choose from, so that’s our focus for tonight now that we’ve improved the car."