So many teams have upgrades for this race this weekend including several who claim they will make big leaps forward time wise. Lotus have been one of these saying their Aero upgrades will give them a second a lap and catapult them up-to the midfield.

Mclaren tried some new updates in Turkey which didn't work so well and they are trying them again with a few tweaks at this race. No word yet if they were successful in Practice. Hamilton was only 4 hundredths of a second behind Webber and in-front of Vettel so I hope this is a good sign or the season will very quickly become quite dull in terms of the championship.

The FIA banned the engine outputting any airflow over a diffuser when a driver is off throttle and than promptly reverted the ban. This is believed to affect Red Bull most of all and it is a shame if the FIA are making changes mid season to artificially make the season closer. The other side of the coin is if its technically allowed but not really in the spirit of the rules then it should be tightened up to ban it. There does seem to be a number of things that Red Bull seems to be getting away with, Flexing front wings most obviously yet they always seem to pass scrutineering.

A colleague of mine, Haydn, suggested making all teams have a steel bar that has to run the full width of all front wings which stops all flexing. Seems a good idea to me and would also make the wings more sturdy and less likely to break off under small contact.

Anyway Barcelona is one of those races that never seems to live long in the memory and it always seems to end up who ever has the fastest car drives away into the distance. It will be interesting to see if DRS makes any difference this year.

Here is last years pole lap of the Barcelona circuit.

Circuit map by http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Will_Pittenger