Spain saw some more of the same old, same old: no one could touch the F2002, no one but Rubens Barrichello's continuous bad luck. Nevertheless, the race weekend did offer several interesting talking points from a technical perspective. Craig Scarborough examines the components that made up the weekend of the Spanish Grand Prix

The Spanish Grand Prix weekend belonged to the Ferrari F2002, with the car remaining unbeaten and unthreatened so far this year. But the result hid some of the facts behind the race. Rubens Barrichello had yet another retirement and Michael Schumacher had a scare in the warm up session, with a total hydraulic failure.

Williams, who finished second with Juan Pablo Montoya, has a race by two unforced errors or driver and team, and their final result masked the fact that they had their first race engine failure.

Likewise, McLaren had a worrying rear wing failure and David Coulthard's third place was hard fought, after being stuck behind the Renaults and only passing as Jenson Button's power steering failed.

Renault again showed well in qualifying but were finally matched off the line by their rivals and failed to clear the following cars until late race retirements robbed the drivers of yet more finishes.

Sauber and Arrows finally delivered some of the form expected of them - no doubt provided by the Bridgestone superiority. Jordan, BAR and Jaguar continue to disappoint, while Toyota reversed their fortunes from Imola with two cars finishing, albeit off the pace. And lastly, Minardi had a disturbing run of unrelated wing failures and failed to start the race.

Technically, there was only one novelty at the race and few aerodynamic upgrades. This season is the second under the revised aerodynamic regulations, and it seems most teams have found their best base set-up, unlike last year where many teams were bring visibly different aero set-ups to each race.

This year, the teams do not seem to able to find large gains in aerodynamics and instead are finding improvements in the lap times from the tyres and electronics. In fact, a recent testing session had the drivers completing repeated short runs making infinitely small set-up changes or repeated standing starts out of the pitlane to prove new launch control software.

Nevertheless, the teams that are openly unhappy with their cars performance have major aerodynamic upgrades in the pipeline. Jaguar expect theirs for Silverstone; BAR for Canada; and Jordan at Monaco.

The Barcelona track provided the expected challenge in car set-up, due to the changeable wind and track temperature throughout the weekend, and in particular in qualifying. This left some teams with a performance far from their expected form. "This is a strange circuit in that small temperature increases have a big impact on tyre performance," Niki Lauda explained after qualifying. "We took full advantage of the extra grip this generated and benefited accordingly in terms of grid positions for tomorrow's race. Why this happens, we don't quite know." Qualifying times were very close, with a little over 1.5 seconds covering the grid behind the Ferrari front row.

Tyres

For the first time this year the tables were turned on Michelin's customer teams, as most of the Bridgestone runners turned in much better performances on the warm Spanish track. Although times in the Friday sessions never provide a true reflection of the weekends form, all the Bridgestone runners were immediately on the pace, and maintained it throughout the weekend. The two primary Michelin teams struggled as expected, with Williams and McLaren being much closer to each other as the tyres limited their ultimate pace.

Bridgestone

This was by far the Japanese supplier's most competitive race for its teams all the way down the grid. Arrows and Sauber made leaps up the grid, while the expected Ferrari dominance was delivered by both their drivers.

Bridgestone's Hisao Suganuma described the qualifying session as "an encouraging result which gives us confidence for the race." He was wary of Michelin's durability in the race, but this proved unfounded as Arrows and Sauber brought cars home in the points and BAR had their one remaining car closely following them in 7th.

"We are very happy. The tyre performance has been very good all weekend which helped us push and achieve this result," Sauber's Willy Rampf aptly said, and Arrows's Mike Coughlan thanked Bridgestone for the "exceptional tyres."

Finally, Ross Brawn summed up the performance and gave a warning for the next race: "Bridgestone did a fantastic job here which anyone can see from the finishing order. I believe they can do an equally good job for Austria."

Michelin

Just as Ross Brawn summed up Bridgestones form, Adrian Newey did for Michelin: "our feeling, coming to this race, was that this will be one of the disadvantaged races. We knew it would be a little bit difficult here."

Michelin's Pierre Dupasquier explains the two problems encountered at the Circuit de Catalunya: "Firstly, most of the corners are quite long so the tyres are under extreme loads for a high percentage of the lap. Secondly, the track surface is very abrasive. It is a tricky combination."

The Michelin teams differed in their choice of the A and B tyres, but there was little to choose between them, as both compounds were quite hard to cope with on this track. "we adopted too conservative an approach to this race," Dupasquier admitted after the race. "The two compounds we brought with us this weekend were both used in the race - and they showed very little wear at the end of a stint. We knew this race would be tough but we overcompensated by bringing tyres that were a little bit too hard."

Team by Team

Ferrari

As the F2002 continues to dominate, more technical information is coming out on this highly developed car.

There doesn't appear to be a single element of the car that produces its speed, but more a higher level of integration between the parts fitted to the car. Ross Brawn explains: "a Formula One car is all about packaging, finding the right combination of engine, gearbox, suspension, aerodynamics, putting everything together with as little compromise as possible and optimising all the areas."

One of the area much rumoured to be behind the improvements is the transmission. "The main advantage of a new transmission was that it is a very integrated package with the engine and the rear suspension. I think it has set a good standard in terms of how well integrated it is and how efficient it is," Brawn said.

As the car is subject to more examination in the pitlane, more evidence of this integration is becoming apparent. The wheels are now specially cast to fit in with the braking system and help draw heated air from the brake discs. The complex layout of the cooling radiators is matched to the smallest possible sidepods for aerodynamic efficiency, and even at a relatively cool Grand Prix Ferrari opened the cooling ducts seen in Brazil for the race, whereas Williams's larger sidepods have never needed openings.

Brawn believes higher drag for the occasions when the openings are used is worth the trade off elsewhere. Equally, the innovative dual purpose exhaust outlet and cooling chimney provided a visual quirk, as the exhausts could be seen to be glowing red hot from behind, as they exit through the cooling chimneys, while the usual format of periscope exhausts do not allow the camera angle down into the pipe work.

New on the car this weekend was a new barge-board, the new design had a jagged shape added to the horizontal lip along the bottom of the board. Initially this looked as though they were shadow plates for extra turning vanes that would be added later, but the closer inspection suggested the two triangular extensions could not be for this purpose. So far, no comment has come from Ferrari about their benefit. However, barge-boards are designed to direct airflow more efficiently around the car and towards the underbody, and with the low location of the devices and their similarity to the small fins added to the floor behind most teams' barge-boards, I suspect they are intended to improve the flow under the car.

Qualifying found Barrichello once again the quicker to find a good set-up and take provisional pole, This lead Michael Schumacher, after two poor runs blighted by small errors, to step out of the car and go into the back of the garage to compare his and Barrichello's telemetry. He was able to pick out some points on the track were Rubens was faster and also made some changes to the front and rear of the car before his third and pole-winning run.

In the press conference, Michael was honest in the reason for this approach. "Sometimes you think you are going flat out and your teammate shows you that you are not." Importantly for the race, both drivers made only three runs in qualifying, which gave them an extra set of fresh tyres for the race.

It was only in the warm up session that the team began to have problems. although Barrichello was quickest, Michael had to a halt out on the circuit with a hydraulic failure, followed by the rare sight of a Ferrari coming back to the pits on the end of tow rope. Subsequently, Schumacher again chose to start the race in the spare car.

The second problem the team encountered was more terminal, when Barrichello was stranded on the grid at the start of the formation lap, as the car failed to engage a gear. He later said he tried every button on the complex steering wheel but to no avail. The car was pushed into the pitlane and then into the garage, were Rubens had to admit defeat and step out from the car.

There had been concerns that a similar electronics problems could affect Schumacher in his pitstops, so the team adopted some changes in the pitstop procedure to ensure this didn't happen, and Michael won an otherwise unproblematic race.

Williams

Williams were freely admitting this would not be a good race for them; they carefully spent Friday evaluating the Michelin tyre choice for the race and ran mainly on full fuel tanks. The drivers were struggling a little with the handling but changes were made overnight which left them more comfortable for the qualifying session.

Juan Pablo Montoya had a difficult session, losing time with a misfire on his race-car's engine and having to switch to the spare car. He couldn't find the same pace in the spare until the end of the session and a big effort on his last run brought him up the grid, leaving some of the pit crew suggesting it was down to two rather larger than normal parts of his anatomy that brought his lap time down.

The race fell apart for Williams even with the benefit of only one Ferrari to race. Ralf was pushing in second when he made an error going into a corner, running wide over the high kerbs and ripping off the barge-board's nestle within the front Williams suspension. These are particularly vulnerable on the Williams, as they are placed in a lower and more exposed position than on other cars.

Bits were flying off the car as he continued down the straight and some parts came into the cockpit and had to be thrown out by the driver. Ralf pitted for new tyres and a new nose cone, and returned to the pits a few laps later, complaining that he felt a problem with the front wing. This was replaced but later put down to the damaged barge-boards. Ralf continued the race, but well off the pace and finally suffered BMW's first race engine failure of the year on the last lap, leaving him to comment: "It definitely wasn't my day today."

Montoya, on the other hand, was "very pleased with my second place." He had no problems in the race, but at his second pit stop the chief mechanic acting as the "lollipop man" started to raise the board too early, as the fuel filler was still in. Montoya started to move the car off but immediately realised the problem and stopped, but is was too late, as the car had run over the lollipop man's foot and the fuel men were pulled off their feet. The car was reversed off the foot of the chief mechanic and the pitstop completed, allowing Montoya continue to the finish.

The worrying element of this episode, aside from the injury to the mechanics, was again the possibility of a fuel stop going wrong. The fuel delivery pipe is designed with a dry coupling to detach from the fuel rig if the car exits with it still attached, but the fuel man is usually harnessed to the pipe. A car accelerating out of the pit at full speed, with either a fuel delivery pipe and/or mechanic still attached, doesn't bear thinking about. Subsequently, the suggestion that the car cannot be dropped from the jacks until the fuel hose is removed, as in other forms of motorsport, has again been raised.

McLaren

With a new spec Mercedes engine but no other visible changes, the team performed better this weekend, operating much nearer Williams's pace, but still not at the level we have come to expect from the team in recent years. Friday left Coulthard commenting, "I just can't get a consistent balance out of the car. The engineers and myself have to work hard to understand where our problems lie." Kimi Raikkonen was struggling too, but improved in the later session. And, going into Saturday's qualifying, the Finn felt that "the car was handling well today," and David also commented that "the grip has improved."

In the race, both drivers were caught up amongst the Renaults, but Raikkonen's race ended on lap four when his rear wing collapsed. There were initially suggestions that he had made contact with Jenson Button, but this was not the case. Raikkonen later spoke in the pits, saying he had "no idea" why it failed.

The team looked at the damage and double-checked the parts fitted to both cars on their computers, determining that Raikkonen's rear wing had more mileage than Coulthard's and it was considered safe to allow the Scot to complete the race. Adrian Newey later clarified the failure was to the lower wing element, which acts as a mount for the wing. This had failed, he said, due to "fatigue failure," and the upper wing subsequently collapsed.

Renault

Much was expected of Renault this weekend, and to a large extent they disappointed, after the form they have shown so far this year.

Both drivers suffered on Friday with the balance of the car and Jarno Trulli had an engine problem, while Jenson Button described the handling as "difficult to drive - twitchy at the rear and understeering in the long corners."

For qualifying, Trulli used the spare car and found its handling more to his liking. "I finally found the pace we had been looking for all weekend," he later said. Button completed only two runs, conserving tyres for the race, and was happier with the car and qualifying in front of a McLaren.

The team expected more good fortune in the race. However, the usual flying starts by the team - which have been partly attributed to the electronics and partly to their preference for scrubbed front and new rears - were matched by the other cars on the grid around them, and thus one of their trump cards has been played out.

Problems occurred immediately, with Trulli reporting an engine problem. "I could handle it until mid-race. After that, it got worse and worse until there was nothing I could do," he later recalled. Button was keeping ahead of Coulthard until the first pitstop, but then suffered a problem with the power steering, allowing David to overtake him. "The car wasn't fantastic at the beginning of the race and then I had the hydraulic problem. The steering got very heavy and it was as if somebody had switched the electric off towards the end!"

David Coulthard picked up on the problem: "on the lap before, I had noticed that Jenson suffered from understeer in the last corner." He lined the Renault up and passed quite easily under braking. Jenson continued until lap 62, when had had to retire the car.

Sauber

After a successful test, the Sauber team made a big improvement in the pace, running closely with front teams all weekend. Nick Heidfeld worked throughout Friday and Saturday on set-up. "I'm reasonably happy with the changes, which made the car better still in the high-speed corners but not quite so good in the slower ones." Teammate Felipe Massa matched Heidfeld well throughout the weekend, stating: "the car was great and well balanced. I just need a little more experience in qualifying to get the absolute best from the machine in such circumstances."

Sauber were one of only two teams to bring both its cars home and the only team to bring them home in the points. The race passed mainly without incident, except Massa's front wing was seen to be flapping slightly over bumps. It's unlikely that this was flex designed for performance advantage but more likely as a result of some contact.

Jordan

With a new Honda engine, allowing higher revs and more power, Jordan were hoping for a good weekend after the cull of staff at the factory - one victim was Takuma Sato's race engineer, and Sato needed to learn how to work with his new engineer Dominic Harlow.

The drivers couldn't get the car to work on the gripless surface on Friday, resulting in nervous handling. This was made worse by Sato losing the first session with a car stranded on the track with a electronic problem. Qualifying was equally tough as the team played with the set-up and Sato and Dominic learnt how to work with each other.

Finally, in the warm up, Sato was much happier with the balance of his car, stating: "we've definitely found a new level. We were much more competitive this morning. I am really happy as Gary Anderson, Dominic Harlow and I worked really hard last night to discuss what changes to make on the car's set-up and we've clearly found a good solution."

Another race for Jordan ended with retirements, Fisichella with a hydraulic failure, and Sato going off in a big way after understeering off the road and having a long spin along the kerb and into the gravel. "I turned the wheel but the car was pushing straight on and although I tried to keep running along the grass I had to keep turning into the next corner and spun off."

BAR

Positive words again from the drivers at BAR, but little in the way of chassis development or improved times. Olivier Panis was "very pleased with how practice went for me today... Honda have been working very hard to improve the engine race by race and we can see that beginning to show here." Teammate Jacques Villeneuve was less enthusiastic, stating that "generally, I'm happy to see some improvement, however small."

The team were divided on set-up and Panis found more time on new tyres and Villeneuve on older tyres but were still struggling with grip. The race also brought split fortunes - Panis pulled off immediately after his second pitstop with an exhaust failure, while Villeneuve, although not happy with the feel of the car until some changes at the pitstop, was able to run strongly to follow the Saubers and Arrows into 7th place.

Jaguar

Jaguar do not look forward to any race right now, the press releases are full of the aerodynamic problems the car suffers and nothing will improve until the new aero staff and wind tunnel produce a new package in 10 weeks time.

Aerodynamically, the team returned to the complex three vane bargeboards and largely ran the three element front wing all weekend. The handling problems were worst on Friday until the warmer Saturday sessions improved grip from the Michelins and upped their pace, much to the team's surprise.

The surprise qualifying was followed by a slightly less happy surprise: there was fuel irregularity with Eddie Irvine's car and he was demoted to back of the grid. This didn't mean the team were cheating with their fuel, but that it merely differed in detail from the fingerprint provided to the FIA at the start of the season.

Pedro de la Rosa's race ended on lap two when he went off. "As I braked into turn six, the back-end of the car snapped and before I could do anything about it, the car was stuck in the gravel." Irvine also retired but due to a technical problem with the hydraulics.

Arrows

Recent testing with a new front wing and revised turning vanes around the front suspension allied to more knowledge of the car and improved the team's form tremendously. Mike Coughlan commented: "the new front wing we ran last week is a definite step forward. At Silverstone last week we found our direction and we are continuing to follow that direction. We're also delighted to have a significant upgrade from Cosworth for this weekend." The new engine was only for use in the qualifying sessions and will not be raced until Austria.

Their intent was clear on Friday when Heinz-Harald Frentzen posted the second fastest time and was followed by Bernoldi in sixth. Qualifying also went smoothly, and Frentzen placed the car tenth on the grid for the race.

In the race, Enrique Bernoldi suffered 2002's most common retirement - a hydraulics problem, albeit different to the one he also had in the warm up. Frentzen ran a strong race to pull in the team first point of the year. "I could push hard every lap, I think we are on an upward curve now," he said.

Toyota

Toyota were another team not expecting great things in Spain. Team Manager Ange Pasquali said: "the car needs lots of downforce, which we do not have," while Mika Salo added: "we need to make some aerodynamic improvements to the car soon or we will find it quite difficult to continually improve throughout the season." Clearly the aim for the team was to operate as well as possible and to avoid the double retirement from the last race.

Although the Friday and Saturday sessions passed without major problems, the drivers never found the pace in the chassis, and in the warm up Allan McNish felt that "the car was much better balanced in qualifying trim." With Salo's puncture early in the race, the cars never figured and the team's favoured result of two cars making it to the finish was realised.

Minardi

It is hard to talk about the team's weekend after it had been dominated by a series of apparently unrelated wing failures.

The problems began when Mark Webber suffered a front wing failure, where the drop plates that mount the wing to the nose cone sheared at their upper ends. The team used two types of front wing and the type that had failed for Webber was withdrawn. Then, in qualifying, Alex Yoong had a run along the kerbs, breaking the front wing off. The team immediately ended their qualifying session with both cars qualified for the race. Overnight, the team returned the front wings to the factory for analysis and modification.

Then, during the warm up the rear wing on Webber's car failed, the team again looked at the parts and found the wing design had been used all season without problem and a manufacturing fault was to blame. However, as there was no time or facilities to check the rest of the team's wings for similar faults, the decision to withdraw both cars from the race on safety grounds was rightly taken.