F1 Paddock Notebook - Spanish GP Friday

- Ferrari became the first team to hit the track with its rear-view mirrors affixed to the Halo of its car on Friday in practice, with Sebastian Vettel reporting it improved his vision: “It was quite difficult for us to see cars behind. Now they are in a bit of a different position, and I can see a little bit better below the rear wing. I think it also looks better. The Halo is still not pretty, but it makes it look a little bit better.”

- The FIA confirmed that Stoffel Vandoorne has moved onto his second of two Control Electronics for the 2018 season ahead of this weekend’s race in Barcelona.

- Valtteri Bottas, Daniel Ricciardo, Max Verstappen, Esteban Ocon, Nico Hulkenberg and Romain Grosjean all have new gearboxes for this weekend’s race. All of the changes were made in accordance with the regulations, meaning no penalties will be applied.

- Ferrari confirmed on Friday night that it had changed the ICE, turbocharger and MGU-H on Raikkonen’s car as a precaution following his issue in FP2. It should not trigger any penalties as the team remains within its allocation for the season.

- Bottas was the only driver out of the top six to improve his lap time during his qualifying simulation in FP2, despite finishing only third after making an error.

- The overall fastest time of the day was in fact set by Bottas in FP1 on the Soft compound tyre (1m18.148) was one-tenth of a second faster than that of teammate Lewis Hamilton in FP2.

- A number of drivers struggled to get to grips with the tyres and make much of a gain from the Soft to Supersoft tyre. Spain is the first race where Pirelli’s reduced tread tyres will debut in a bid to prevent overheating on the resurfaced track.

- After receiving a reprimand for nearly clashing with Charles Leclerc at the end of FP1, Kevin Magnussen brushed off the incident: “I’m not looking to cause incidents. I’m not focusing on that, it’s a long weekend ahead. There’s a lot of positive things to take from today. So I’m focused on having a good weekend and scoring some good points here.”

- Robert Kubica made his first F1 race weekend appearance for more than seven years when he took part in FP1 for Williams, but was surprised that he did not feel more emotional. “I was more emotional last year when I was jumping for the first time in the car,” Kubica said. “Although I’m not driving often, it’s already six, seven, eight times I’ve driven an F1 car. It’s becoming more natural, which is good. I was expecting to be more emotional.”

- McLaren made positive noises about its new updates on the car on Friday after good initial feedback from drivers Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne. “Thee drivers are happy and feel like we’ve progress, the engineers are happy and feel like we’ve progressed,” Zak Brown said. “So what we expected to see as far as improvement we are seeing. The track conditions were tricky, and the track evolving, so I think we’ll know more tomorrow after qualifying and then ultimately the race but the early indications are we’ve taken a step forward.”