Is Barcelona still F1’s best car performance litmus test track?

Home Formula 1 heroes Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso sparked an intriguing debate at Barcelona last weekend around the context of Red Bull’s near-defeat to McLaren: Does the venue still provide the ultimate test of car performance?

Thanks to its old position as a regular pre-season test venue, its place on the calendar consistently for the last 33 years, and regular hosting of non-F1 race events plus other categories, the teams and drivers know this place extremely well.

It’s why Mercedes‘ Lewis Hamilton warned “You have to take it [the results] with a pinch of salt” after finishing on the podium last Sunday, evoking the Barcelona false dawns Mercedes’ has endured here the last two seasons. The teams just have so much data for this circuit.

Plus, the track features lots of different corner types. This forces the teams to trade efficiencies in car handling around them, as well as severely testing the drivers on tyre management.

But there are significant differences these days. For a start, the much-derided low-speed chicane was removed ahead of the 2023 race here. Then, there’s how there are now eight street – or semi-permanent – tracks on the F1 calendar, which require very different set-ups around the adoption of the new ground effect cars in 2022.

“Barcelona used to be a track where everyone used to say, ‘if you’re quick around Barcelona, then you’re quick around everywhere’,” Sainz said in last weekend’s pre-event press conference.

“I think now Formula 1 has changed a lot because there’s actually a lot more tracks like Monaco and Canada than there are like Barcelona.

“Because of how many street circuits they’ve added with the kerbs, bumpy layouts – the Monacos, the Singapores, the Canadas. Baku, Vegas, Mexico – there are so many tracks that are not like Barcelona anymore, while before, I think there used to be a lot of Barcelonas, a lot of European style of tracks.

“I don’t think it’s anymore the case that Barcelona is dictating the rest of the year.

“I do think if you have a good car around Barcelona, normally it means you have a good car around Silverstone, around maybe Hungary or Spa. But your good car in Barcelona for sure doesn’t mean that you’re going to be quick in Baku.”

Alonso added: “As Carlos said, in Barcelona now is a track that can help to understand or to guess what is going to happen in another four or five tracks in the championship, but there…