Charles Leclerc fastest, Mercedes back in the fight at the Spanish Grand Prix

Charles Leclerc showed the Ferrari upgrades were working a treat by making it a Friday free practice double for the Spanish Grand Prix.

But it will have been Mercedes ending the day happiest as they surged back into contention for a potential pole position and even a Barcelona victory with P2 and P3 for George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.

The Circuit de Catalunya, for round six of this year’s championship, is the venue where most teams have rolled out their first big upgrades on the 2022 cars – and already a controversy has emerged regarding how similar the revised Aston Martin looks to the Red Bull.

And if any team looks to have made significant headway it is Mercedes, as their ‘porpoising’ looked to have been eradicated to a major extent following a filming day run they had done with Russell at the Paul Ricard circuit this week.

Red Bull, meanwhile, may be a touch concerned with Max Verstappen, winner of the last two races, slower in FP2 than both Ferraris and both Mercedes.

‘it’s only practice it’s only practice it’s only practice it’s only practice it’s only practice it’s only practice’ 😆😆😆

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) May 20, 2022

For a trio of drivers FP2 was the first on-track action of the day as Sergio Perez, Alex Albon and Zhou Guanyu had all sat out FP1 to give others a chance, not needing to learn this circuit quite so much having gained plenty of knowhow during unofficial testing in February.

Perez and Albon had allowed Red Bull and Williams respectively to start fulfilling the FP1 rookie criteria brought in this year by running Juri Vips and Nyck de Vries, while Robert Kubica was given one of his occasional turns in the Alfa Romeo.

Immediately as the FP2 flying laps began, on medium tyres, the story of the season continued with Verstappen and the Ferrari duo assuming their regular places at the top of the leaderboard as Lando Norris took a trip through the gravel in the heavily updated…