Spanish Grand Prix

Welcome home, FernandoWelcome home, Fernando

2025 SEASON

Recent revisions have returned Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya to a layout akin to how it was in the early 2000s, providing a thrilling venue for fans and drivers. Expect a fervent atmosphere and plenty of green in the stands, as fans cheer for home hero Fernando, team-mate Lance, and fellow Aston Martin Aramco driver squad member Jak Crawford, who doubled down on his F2 Sprint race victory at Imola with a brilliant Feature Race triumph in Monaco.

Scroll below for everything you need to know for Fernando's home Grand Prix this weekend and an exclusive interview with the two-time World Champion.

TRACK INSIGHTS

Circuit de Barcelona-CatalunyaCircuit de Barcelona-Catalunya

It's a very demanding track, especially for the tyres. There are many high-speed right-handers.

Pedro de la Rosa – Aston Martin Aramco Team Ambassador

Toggle below to highlight parts of the track.

Sectors
Turns
DRS

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

NEED TO KNOW: SPANISH GP

The essential Barcelona travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

Mastering Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya

The magic of racing in Barcelona

Strategy insights from Barcelona

Ultimate Spanish Grand Prix facts

Last time out

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.

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 circuit has been the home of the Spanish Grand Prix since 1991. The layout used by F1 has been tweaked back and forth a few times since then, 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. Like many others with a similarly grand vista, it is uncovered, and with the Spanish Grand Prix moving back from its traditional date in early May to the beginning of June, it's definitely one to pack plenty of sunscreen.

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. And being the Spanish Grand Prix, it's a race where you'll get to see plenty of pitstops.

Strategy insights from Barcelona

Barcelona is one of the toughest – if not the toughest – tracks for tyres, and Pirelli duly brings its three hardest compounds to Catalonia. But the Hard compound isn't particularly popular as a race tyre because it doesn't offer as much grip as the softer compounds, it slides more and thus – somewhat counter-intuitively – tends to suffer higher degradation than the softer rubber. This has an unusual connotation for Qualifying, with the front runners happy to take the maximum five sets of Soft tyres into the sharp end of the weekend, rather than making-do with four sets, as would usually be the case.

Back when Pirelli first became the control tyre supplier, the Spanish Grand Prix might have been a four-stop event. The teams have learned a lot about preserving these tyres over the intervening decade and now a two-stop race is the standard, with all 10 cars scoring points taking this approach last year. 19 of the 20 drivers started on a Soft tyre (Alex Albon from the pitlane fitted a Medium). The top three all ran a Soft-Medium-Soft race but with a wide pit window, stopping between laps 16 and 23. Their second stops came between laps 43-47. Six of the top 10 ran that strategy, the other four swapped to the Hard tyre for the final stint, stopping earlier, between laps 36-38.

The choice in Barcelona is generally assumed to be between two and three stops, with the three-stop race coming into play more when the track temperature rises. Only Yuki Tsunoda tried it last year, coming home P19. It was slightly more popular in 2023, albeit not among the scoring cars – though back in 2022, the top five finishers all ran a three-stop race.

Ultimate Spanish Grand Prix facts

1 | This is the 55th World Championship Spanish Grand Prix. The race made its debut in 1951 and has been ever-present since 1986. The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya has hosted the race since 1991, when it was first opened. Before this the race led a nomadic existence, being held at the Pedralbes and Montjuïc circuits in Barcelona, The Jarama circuit near Madrid, and the Circuito de Jerez.

2 | Next year the Spanish Grand Prix is scheduled to move to a purpose-built circuit on the outskirts of Madrid. There is, however, also expected to be a race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in 2026.

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 33,639km – 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 7,669km.

4 | This circuit has a strong qualifying bias, with 24 of 34 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 MotoGP, being the home of the Grand Prix of Catalonia. The two events are currently using the same layout. The F1 cars are around 22 seconds quicker around the lap.

7 | Fernando is a double winner at his home Grand Prix. He won in 2006 and 2013. The latter was his 32nd 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

Barcelona hasn't been the happiest of hunting grounds for us, with just two points finishes from eight attempts. In 2021, Lance started 11th and finished 11th, while Sebastian Vettel 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, starting P5 with Fernando in P8, and Lance come home P6 with Fernando right behind. Last year 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.

Free Practice 1

Fri 30 MAY12:30-13:30 BST

12:30-13:30 BST

Free Practice 2

Fri 30 MAY16:00-17:00 BST

16:00-17:00 BST

Free Practice 3

Sat 31 MAY11:30-12:30 BST

11:30-12:30 BST

Qualifying

Sat 31 MAY15:00-16:00 BST

15:00-16:00 BST

Race

Sun 1 JUNE14:00 BST

14:00 BST

Talking Points

Fernando's home race

Fernando looks ahead to his homecoming at the Spanish Grand Prix, as he talks home support, Adrian Newey and becoming an ambassador for the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.