Round 07 | Barcelona-Catalunya

Where passion runs deepWhere passion runs deep

2026 SEASON

Welcome to Barcelona

Usually, at this time of year, we're coming to Montmeló for the Spanish Grand Prix. The race is the same in 2026 but the name has changed – and to the undoubted irritation of future statisticians, this year we have the inaugural Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.

The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is F1's home track. Nowhere has seen as many F1 laps as this circuit nestled in the Vallès Oriental above the Mediterranean coast – including the debut of the 2026 cars, back in January. We keep coming back here for a variety of reasons. It’s the right location, with the right weather (less so in January), good facilities and a track that tests everything. It's also Fernando-land: his supporters have been packing this place to capacity for over two decades. He's the race ambassador, and will get a rousing reception coming off the back of scoring our first point of the season with a typically gritty drive in Monaco.

It's also a home race for Aston Martin Aramco Drive Academy member Mari Boya, with F2 on the bill this weekend, at a circuit that's got form for producing captivating Formula 2 races.

Session Times

FP1

FP2

FP3

Quali

Race

Toggle below to highlight parts of the track.

Sectors
Turns
Straight-Line Mode
Overtake Mode

It's a hard track to overtake at and T1 is the best opportunity we have. Degradation is big in Barcelona, so tyre management is important.

Mari Boya – Driver Academy member

Circuit length
4.657km
Number of corners
14
Race distance
307.263km

NEED TO KNOW: BARCELONA-CATALUNYA GP

Mastering Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya

The magic of racing in Barcelona

The essential Barcelona travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

Strategy insights from Barcelona

Ultimate Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix facts

Last time out

Mastering Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya

This is a track that challenges absolutely everything. There's a good mix of fast, medium-speed and slow corners, which encourages the teams to run something close to maximum downforce. It has a long straight, fast changes of direction and is brutal on tyres. An F1 car that goes well here, will go well pretty much everywhere.

The layout used by F1 has been tweaked back and forth during its tenure, with the latest changes producing a faster, more flowing circuit, intended to promote more following through the final third of the lap, and thus a better overtaking opportunity on the main straight.

Campsa corner (T9) is one of the fastest turns in F1. It's flat on a qualifying lap – but may require feathering the throttle with full tanks. The signature turn, however, is the long, sweeping Turn Three. It's a flat-out corner, occasionally made treacherous with a tailwind. It pushes the tyres hard – so much so that on a qualifying lap, it's often the case drivers will have to save a little bit here to make sure they haven't overheated the tyres before the final sector.

The magic of racing in Barcelona

Despite being a relatively modern track, the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya sticks to the traditional design template of taking a hillside and carving away anything that doesn't look like a racing circuit. This makes it a good track for the general admission ticket, as the views from the grass banks use the topography well.

The grandstands, however, are great, with most offering views over several sections of track. Grandstand L, as one example, looks down on Turns One and Two, where much of the action will happen, but the way the track is shaped means it's also good for the cars coming back down the hill from Turn Four and through T5-T6.

The enormous grandstand on the main straight has the advantage of being undercover – more for protection from the sun than from inclement weather. It doesn't have quite the range of views, but it does back onto an enormous Fan Zone, complete with stage and merchandise village.

The essential Barcelona travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

Located 30km north of Barcelona, up in the industrial heartland of Catalonia's Vallès Oriental, you will find the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. The hillside above Montmeló is a fine place to watch a race (especially if the onshore breeze is keeping things cool) but post-race – or even post-Qualifying or post-Practice, the city is the place to be.

Catalonia, like the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, works well with the modern F1 schedule. The track action may not finish until after 19:00 but given the restaurants and bars don’t really begin to fill up until after 22:00, that leaves plenty of time to get back, get changed and head out. If you're interested in the lively – and sometimes raucous – then the tourist trap of La Rambla is a good starting place, but if you've had enough of that at the track, head north from the tree-lined avenue into the gothic quarter: the pace is slower, the streets narrower and the architecture really quite stunning.

You don't necessarily have to go to Barcelona for a good meal and a fun night out. The towns further up the coast, adjacent to the circuit, offer promenades and dinner without the huff and the puff – and many of the teams choose to stay up here. When the Spanish Grand Prix was held in early May, they tended to be a little ghostly, but with calendar pressure moving the race back into June, everywhere is open.

If you have a little longer to stay in this corner of the Mediterranean, then a day or two in Barcelona is a day or two well spent. Any checklist of European greats will include the Sagrada Família and the Picasso Museum, but if it's the racing that's bought you to Barcelona, then a trip back into F1 history might be more your thing. There's not much left of the Pedralbes Circuit that held the Spanish Grand Prix in 1951 and 1954, but head up to Montjuïc Park and you can take a walk around the bones of the Montjuïc circuit that held the race in the late 1960s and early 1970s. You get a great view of the city as well. Montjuïc is also home to the Olympic and Sports Museum, which features plenty of motorsports content to indulge in.

Strategy insights from Barcelona

Traditionally a track for the hardest tyres in the range, the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is different this year, moving a step softer to feature C2, C3 and C4. This really is a gamechanger. An oddity of the track in recent years has been a reluctance to use the C1 tyre. It's lower level of grip led to more sliding and thus higher degradation. Teams therefore preferred to two-stop on the softer compounds. Lance didn't start last year, but Fernando's race to P9 would have been Soft-Medium-Soft, had not a late Safety Car had him add another, short, Soft stint at the end.

What can we expect this year? So far this year, Safety Cars and red flags notwithstanding, most races have been a nominal one-stop. Barcelona may just break that pattern and bring the two-stop into play. Last year's Soft-Medium-Soft would compare closely with a Medium-Hard-Medium this year – though it's the sort of race where no-one will be making any plans until they see some long runs in practice.

Ultimate Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix facts

1 | This is the first Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.

2 | The Circuit de Catalunya (the 'Barcelona' was added later) hosted the Spanish Grand Prix every year between 1991-2025.

3 | Jenson Button holds the record for the most testing kilometres at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with a mighty 38,523km. Fernando is second on the list with a mere 33,923km – which equates to 7,228 laps. Pedro has managed a trifling 21,545km, while Lance, whose career started after in-season testing became proscribed, has 7,687km.

4 | This circuit has a strong qualifying bias, with 25 of 35 grands prix being won from pole position. Four more drivers starting from pole have failed to finish the race. Of the six that have finished but failed to win, only Michael Schumacher (1994), Valtteri Bottas (2019) and Lando Norris (2024) have finished on the podium, all coming second. Schumacher completed much of the 1994 race stuck in fifth gear, while Bottas was beaten into Turn One by team-mate Hamilton, and Norris by both George Russell and Max Verstappen.

5 | The Circuit was a venue for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, hosting cycling events.

6 | It's one of the rare venues that hosts both F1 and Moto GP, being the home of the Catalan Grand Prix for the bikes. The two events are currently using the same layout. The F1 cars are around 24s quicker around the lap.

7 | Fernando is a double-winner at this circuit. He won the Spanish Grand Prix in 2006 with Renault, and again in 2013 for Ferrari. The latter was his 32nd victory and most recent victory.

8 | While Fernando has won the Spanish Grand Prix twice, he has won three times in Spain, taking victory in the 2012 European Grand Prix on the Valencia Street Circuit.

Last time out

In 2021, Lance started 11th and finished 11th, while Seb started 13th and finished 13th. In 2022 Seb used an offset strategy, opening with two Soft stints, to claw his way from P16 on the grid to narrowly miss out on points with P11, while Lance had an afternoon where nothing worked, and came home P15.

2023 was more of a high point. Fernando had the crowd roaring him on – but it was Lance who had the better weekend, out-qualifying Fernando to start P5 versus P8, and coming home P6 with Fernando right behind. 2024 was less satisfying: neither driver made it out of Q2, and in a race with little overtaking, neither was able to make an impression, Fernando coming home P12 and Lance P14.

Last year it was a mixed Spanish Grand Prix for the team. Lance was forced to withdraw from the race, suffering pain in his hand and wrist as a long-term consequence of his 2023 operation. Fernando, however, carried the flag for the team, thriving in the chaos of a Safety Car-affected three-stop strategy to put together a late-race burst of overtaking to finish P9, his first points of the season.