Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya

The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya (known as the Circuit de Catalunya until 2013) is a race circuit in Montmeló, Catalonia, Spain (outside of Barcelona) that was built in 1991.
It is known for hosting the Spanish Grand Prix, and for its use in off-season testing; this is down to the variety of types of corners and straights on the track and for the warm and sunny Spanish weather, which means dry running can be expected.
==Circuit History==
Plans for the circuit originated in the mid 1980s, when Catalan officials decided to wrest the Spanish Grand Prix from the Circuito de Jerez, and return the race to its 'home'. Catalonia had not hosted the race since the ill-fated 1975 Spanish Grand Prix. Construction started in early 1989, and the track opened with a Spanish touring car series race on September 10, 1991. The Spanish Grand Prix was run two weeks later, and soon after it hosted a motorcycle GP. The track remains one of the busiest in Europe, and is capable of seating up to 140,000 spectators.
==Circuit Layouts==
===Previous Layouts===
====1991-1993====
The main straight is 1,047 meters long, with the timing line about 40% of the way along, followed a complicated three turn complex. The first turn, known as Elf, is a flat an moderately tight 90° right, which is almost guaranteed to have some spins and the occasional collision at the start of a race. The trigger for this is often drivers who try to take the outside line at Elf, to gain the inside line at the second corner, an unnamed lefthander that turns 70° in a wider arc than Elf. This leads to the third corner, a 160° right with a wide and increasing radius, where the cars can generate up to 4Gs. This corner has been named Renault.
After a straight of roughly 100 meters (where Nico Rosberg knocked Lewis Hamilton off of the track in 2016), the track makes a 180° right with an increasing radius, named Repsol. Another short straight leads to a very tight, 150° left called Seat. A 200 meter straight, with a flat-out 45° left in the middle, ends at a moderate 90° left known as Wurth. This is followed immediately by a wide 30° right, taken under acceleration, then after another short straight, the track made a wider 70° right, called Campsa. Following an even shorter straight, the cars made a fast right-left chicane (Nissan) which put them on a 200 meter long straight that ran just behind the paddock.
This ended at a double-apex left called La Caixa. The first, tighter section arced about 135°, with the wider second section close to 90°. La Caixa was immediately followed by a sweeping 180° right named Banc Sabadell. A 100 meter straight took the cars into a wide and tricky 70° right (Europcar) which was critical for the final corner before the straight. This corner is New Holland, and comes after another 100 meter straight. New Holland is a sweeping 90° right that exits onto the front straight. Many a driver has botched the exit in the quest for extra speed down the straight. The track was measured at 4.747 km in this configuration.
====1994====
In the aftermath of the events at Imola, a hastily prepared chicane made of stacks of tires lashed together was added just before the fast Nissan chicane. While it was universally unpopular, it prevented the race from being canceled for safety reasons. Strangely, when the track was re-measured with the new chicane, it was found to have lost two meters, to 4.745 km.
====1995-2003====
After the circuit management had a chance to study the issue of the Nissan chicane, they came up with the sensible idea of simply getting rid of it. What they actually did was bypass it, turning the Campsa corner into an almost 90° right, with the now 400 meter straight shooting to La Caixa. The track also sported a much longer pit lane, with the entrance just before New Holland. The circuit now measured 4.730 km.
====2004-2006====
In late 2003, the track revised La Caixa. Instead of the wide, double-apex bend at the end of the straight, the cars made a sharp 135° left, then followed a new 100 meter straight, rejoining the circuit just before Banc Sabadell via a new, sharp 60° left kink. The reasons were twofold: increasing the overtaking going into La Caixa, and make the entrance to Banc Sabadell slower but more difficult. Despite this rather substantial change to the configuration, the track only lost three meters of length, now measuring 4.727 km.
====2007-2020====
Concerns over the speeds that the cars were reaching in the New Holland corner led to another revision. The Europcar corner became a sharp, 75° right. This led to a new 100 meter straight, followed by a left-right chicane with about 20 meters between the corners, called Chicane RACC. The net effect was a considerably slower exit from New Holland, and an increase of around seven seconds per lap. But to emphasize the haphazard manner of track length measurements here, adding this new section actually decreased the lap distance, down 72 meters to 4.655 km.
===Current===
The only change to the circuit over the past 15 years (aside from some minor revisions to the motorcycle layout) was unveiled in 2021, when the La Caixa bend became more of a sweeper than before, but still tighter than the original layout. This was largely at the request of the motorcycle crowd, but a change of thinking in Formula 1 made them decide that this would aid in overtaking. The new track length is now 4.675 km, which seems to be a plausible increase.
The current lap record is held by Max Verstappen, which he achieved at the 2023 Spanish Grand Prix.
==Event history==
The following is a list of Formula One World Championship events held at the Circuit de Catalunya:
Year	Event	Winning Driver 	Winning Constructor
 	 	Nigel Mansell 	
 	 	Nigel Mansell 	
 	 	Alain Prost 	
 	 	Damon Hill 	
 	 	Michael Schumacher	
 	 	Michael Schumacher	
 	 	Jacques Villeneuve	
 	 	Mika Hakkinen 	
 	 	Mika Hakkinen 	
 	 	Mika Hakkinen 	
 	 	Michael Schumacher	
 	 	Michael Schumacher	
 	 	Michael Schumacher	
 	 	Michael Schumacher	
 	 	Kimi Raikkonen 	
 	 	Fernando Alonso 	
 	 	Felipe Massa 	
 	 	Kimi Raikkonen 	
 	 	Jenson Button 	
 	 	Mark Webber 	
 	 	Sebastian Vettel 	
 	 	Pastor Maldonado 	
 	 	Fernando Alonso 	
 	 	Lewis Hamilton 	
 	 	Nico Rosberg 	
 	 	Max Verstappen 	
 	 	Lewis Hamilton 	
 	 	Lewis Hamilton 	
 	 	Lewis Hamilton 	
 	 	Lewis Hamilton 	
 	 	Lewis Hamilton 	
 	 	Max Verstappen 	
 	 	Max Verstappen 	
==Notes==
ja:カタロニア・サーキット
Category:Spanish Grand Prix
Category:Circuits
Category:Current Circuits
Category:Circuits in Spain
Category:Circuits that debuted in 1991
Category:Formula One races in Spain