Lapping the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya with Carlos Sainz

The Spanish Grand Prix has moved home this year, with the new Madrid venue set to take over the title, but that hasn’t meant a departure from one of the most familiar circuits on the calendar. The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya hosted the pre-season shakedown and has been a regular testing venue over the years, and home hero Carlos Sainz talks us through the challenges of a lap.

The thing with Barcelona, I think it's a great racetrack. It's just a track that we've visited so often through our racing careers, through testing and through junior categories, that there is no novelty involved with going there for the race.

For example, you have Suzuka that we go only once a year, and we love going to Suzuka because it's a great racetrack, but also the fact that we haven't raced there so often makes it more appealing. I think Barcelona, maybe it's not as cool as Suzuka, but it's a track that, if it wasn't visited so often, would be considered a really, really good track to race on.

It's probably one of the most difficult setups of the year from a car perspective because you have a lot of long corners, and normally for F1 cars, long corners are difficult to set up because you have a lot of different balances through the corner. Getting the right setup for the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is probably one of the biggest challenges of the season.

Sainz says "It's probably one of the most difficult setups of the year from a car perspective because you have a lot of long corners, and normally for F1 cars, long corners are difficult to set up because you have a lot of different balances through the corner." Andy Hone/Getty Images

A lot of people talk about the Turn 1, 2 and 3 change of direction, but for me, normally Turn 4 is one of the key areas to focus on – the long right-hander after the opening sequence of corners. It's a very tricky corner to set up.

On top of that, so is Turn 12. You always have a bit of a wind in Turn 12 as you're at the top of the hill, and these long combined corners is where you always struggle to set the car up to stop it from having oversteer or understeer at one point of the corner.

As well as the Circuit itself, the atmosphere at the Catalunya circuit is always a motivator for Sainz. Mark Sutton/Formula 1 via Getty Images

For me, the whole weekend is different, when you really notice the support, not just when you’re at the circuit. It's actually in the hotel, it's when you arrive at the track, when you leave the track, when you look at the grandstands while you drive, during the out-laps, cool-down laps…

You look at my grandstand there, and it's always buzzing. It just gets you in a good mood, gets you going during the weekend, and for sure there's nothing like racing at home.

Schedule (all times Eastern; all sessions air live on Apple TV)

Friday, June 12

Free Practice 1, 7:30am

Free Practice 2, 11:00am

Saturday, June 13

Free Practice 3, 6:30am

Qualifying, 10:00am

Sunday, June 14

Race: 9:00am