A selection of images from across the weekend, as Circuit de Catalunya hosted round five of the 2015 Formula 1 championship.

“A vexatious afternoon”

Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Sunday May 10

This was a difficult afternoon for the whole team.

Fernando Alonso retired with a rear brake problem on lap 26. His race ended during a precautionary pit-stop – to examine the rear end and change tyres – which resulted in the car losing stopping power and ploughing on through the box. Fortunately, the quick wits of our front-jack man saw him leap to safety, and no-one was injured. Fernando’s steady progress into the top 10 came to an end, however.

While the team will thoroughly trace the cause, the mechanics discovered a tear-off visor covering the right-rear brake duct when they investigated the car’s rear corner in the garage.

While Jenson made it to the finish, he too endured a disappointing race. He made a slow getaway, and quickly reported that his car was handling poorly, oversteering and wheel-spinning under power. Despite working with the team over the radio to find a solution, he failed to make headway, and ultimately finished 16^th on a three-stop strategy.

JENSON BUTTON, MP4-30-01

“My car was pretty scary to drive today: as soon as I touched the throttle, the car just snapped away from me. It was unpredictable: in low-speed corners, the car was just slow, because I got wheelspin immediately; in the high-speed stuff, it was just scary, because the rear end would snap away immediately under power.

“I was talking to my engineers for most of the race to try to find out what the root of the problem was, and we switched on quite a lot of handling balance changes to try to cure it. It got a little bit better towards the end of the afternoon, but it was a pretty tough afternoon.

“Now, we’ll thoroughly look at the data and see what the matter was – it’s something we’ve got to look into.”

FERNANDO ALONSO, MP4-30-03

“My pitstop was a scary moment – I didn’t have much rear braking for my whole in-lap, then even less at the stop. It was scary for the mechanics, but luckily it didn’t hurt anyone.

“My brake issue was separate from Jenson’s problem yesterday; in qualifying, he had a single disc that wasn’t reaching temperature, but I had no brakes. I think the rear disc stopped working, so I only had front brakes.

“Things are coming together. We’re still a long way off the front and need to take bigger steps, but this is a very challenging project and I’m happy that we’re recovering well.

“This has been a disappointing day, but the team will investigate what happened, and we’ll come back stronger in Monaco.”

ERIC BOULLIER – Racing director, McLaren-Honda

“For all at McLaren, a team that has won the Spanish Grand Prix no fewer than eight times in our illustrious history, it’s superfluous to state that this afternoon has been a more than somewhat disappointing one.

“Fernando was running reasonably well until his race was abruptly terminated by an as-yet-unspecified rear brake problem that caused him to overshoot our pit-box. That was irksome for all of us, Fernando in particular, but more important is that no-one was hurt.

“As for Jenson, he too had a vexatious afternoon, losing ground right from the start and complaining of poor rear traction thereafter. He eventually finished 16^th.

“We arrived in Spain with robust but measured ambitions: to manage both our cars through to Q2 in qualifying and to score world championship points for the first time this year. The former objective we achieved; the latter we did not.

“Disappointing it was, but disheartening it isn’t. Yes, we’d all be more sanguine if progress could be made more expeditiously; equally, and importantly, our underlying pace is improving with every race.

“In two weeks’ time we’ll be in Monaco, on whose famously serpentine Tarmac we’ll be hoping to fare appreciably better than we did here in Barcelona today. McLaren has won at the Principality more often than has any other marque – 15 times to be precise – and, although we aren’t anticipating notching up victory number 16 there this year, I won’t shy away from proclaiming here and now that we’ll be aiming to score world championship points on May 24^th.”

YASUHISA ARAI – Honda R&D senior managing officer – chief officer of motorsport

“It has been a very disappointing weekend, but, sometimes, that’s the reality of racing.

“On a more positive note, Fernando’s race pace was very good. We’ll now analyse all the data and continue to improve driveability for the next race at Monaco. That will be key to progress around the slow street circuit.”

“Unlocking more of the car’s potential”

Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Saturday May 9

Another positive step for the team today: both cars got into Q2 for the first time this year, and we’ll start tomorrow’s race 13^th (Fernando Alonso) and 14^th (Jenson Button).

Both drivers used the Option tyre for Q1, with Fernando aborting his second run to rely on his first lap of 1m27.941s to squeeze into the second session. They then ran used Options for their Q2 sighting laps in Q2 before running fresher rubber at the very end of the session. On his final lap, Fernando suffered a brief wobble through Turn Eight, and once again fell back on his earlier laptime. Jenson suffered a braking issue in the session – the car pulled to the left under braking for Turn One – but he improved to a 1m27.854s on his final Q2 run.

With long-run potential looking good, the team is optimistic of moving forwards in the race tomorrow.

FERNANDO ALONSO, MP4-30-03

“This is the first time both McLaren-Hondas have got into Q2 this season, so we’re definitely unlocking more of the car’s potential, and there’ll be more to come in the next couple of races.

“Still, this is another step forward, and I hope we can fight for points tomorrow. We’re starting 13^th, and our tyre management looks quite good, so I think it’s realistic to look at getting into the top 10, but we’ll need to attack throughout the race.

”To be honest, however, scoring one or two points tomorrow isn’t what we as a team are looking for, but it’s good for everyone’s motivation if we keep achieving tangible results – so scoring points will be a good step.”

JENSON BUTTON, MP4-30-01

“I’m a bit frustrated because we fitted new brakes for qualifying, and, every time I braked for Turn One, the car pulled to the left. On my last run in Q2, the team told me to warm the brakes in a different way, which meant they weren’t fully warmed up by the time I started my fast lap, so I had front locking for the first three corners. It felt a bit weird, so we need to look at the reasons why.

“I hope that we can be relatively competitive and have a reasonable race tomorrow. We’re making solid progress – we got both cars into Q2 on merit, without any cars ahead of us suffering any issues. That’s a positive step for the whole team.

“Yesterday, our long-run practice pace looked okay – a lot of teams turn their engines up for qualifying, and then turn them down again for the race; but we don’t have to do that, so we perhaps go into the race with a bit more potential than some of the cars ahead of us.

“I’m looking forward to the race.”

ERIC BOULLIER – Racing director, McLaren-Honda

“Compared with where we were at the beginning of the season, this afternoon’s qualifying performance clearly indicates the continuing steady improvement we’ve been working so hard to achieve.

“No, we aren’t remotely satisfied with P13 and P14, and we never will be. But our target for today was to get both cars through to Q2, and we achieved that.

“We have a busy evening ahead of us, with plenty of data to study. Tomorrow, our ambition is to score our first world championship points of the season. That isn’t a promise, but, yes, it’s our objective.”

YASUHISA ARAI – Honda R&D senior managing officer – chief officer of motorsport

“We’ve been working hard to improve the low- to mid-speed output on the power unit, but unfortunately we couldn’t bring everything together for qualifying. It’s disappointing, but we know that our race-pace simulation during FP2 went well yesterday, so we hope that we’ll be able to improve our positions during tomorrow’s race.”