Ferrari step up in Spanish sunshine Ferraris Spanish weekend turned out almost perfect at Fernando Alonso stormed from the third row of the grid to take an all-conquering victory in front of his adoring fans at Barcelona. Utilising an aggressive four-stop strategy, Alonso was able to push past his rivals to take the chequered flag, as teammate Felipe Massa drove an equally strong race from ninth place to take third and bring Ferrari within 14 points of Red Bull in the constructors championship. Into the Weekend After a three-week break, the European season opened with the Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona, home of thousands of miles of pre-season testing. The teams had their first chance to get back to the factory since the season began, and sought to bring a raft of upgrades to either consolidate or improve their current position in the field after the shakedown of the first four rounds thousands of miles from home. Red Bull looked strong going to what is well known to be an aerodynamically efficient track, with a series of flowing corners that suit their high levels of basic downforce and help further their position at the top of both championships. Ferrari, after a woeful race in the deserts of Bahrain, needed to get back to the top of the grid and take a strong result after failing to convert their potential into points. Lotus were rocked by the news that technical director James Allison would be leaving the team, with most people suggesting Ferrari had managed to lure him away from the former-Renault team. With such news over them, they looked for another strong result like the last race, where they played an excellent strategic game to take two podium positions. Force India intended on staying ahead of McLaren and taking more solid points from their evident pace, whilst McLaren themselves were hoping that their hard-worked upgrade package would give them a significant step forwards and back to where they certainly should be. Similarly, the Williams team were looking for a notable improvement on their particularly poor season to date, and get to the head of the midfield, especially considering they won spectacularly in Spain last year. Through the rest of the midfield, Sauber and Torro Rosso hoped to regain some of the performance that deserted them in Bahrain and at the back Marussia wanted to wrest back control of the tail end from Caterham, after they jumped ahead with an aerodynamic package at the last race. Barcelona is a flowing circuit with a priority on aerodynamics and balance, which means that the constant load on the tyres creates high degradation. Pirelli again supplied the hard and medium tyres for the weekend, and additional tyres of a prototype hard compound for Friday practice sessions. Similar to their 2012 hard compound, they intend for it to have a better operating window and allow a larger focus on racing rather than strategy as we saw in Bahrain. This followed discussions with the teams and studying data from the first four races regarding the tyre compounds and durability, electing to move to a tougher hard tyre, though resisting pressure from Red Bull to make the tyres significantly more durable. Strategy will certainly be key to the race, and it will again be a tortoise-and-hare decision between a conservative two-stopper or an aggressive three.