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Red Bull has announced that the team will host their junior academy driver Juri Vips in the first Free Practice session in Barcelona. According to the regulations in place, every team has to run two mandated young driver tests during the season. Red Bull has chosen to get the first of these two tests out of the way in Barcelona.
Juri Vips is currently racing in F2 alongside other academy drivers that include Liam Lawson, Jehan Daruwala, and reigning F3 champion Dennis Hauger. At the moment, Vips is eighth in the championship standings after getting compromised by multiple unfortunate incidents.
The Estonian driver has been one of the favorites for the team as he took part in the post-season test that was conducted last year as well.
The driver is expected to take the place of Sergio Perez for the first free practice session and will be looking to make an immediate impact as he gets compared to none other than reigning F1 world champion Max Verstappen.
Vips will not be the only junior driver getting the opportunity as Nyck De Vries will be doing the same for Williams. For De Vries, this does appear to be an evaluation of sorts as the Grove-based outfit eyes the Mercedes academy driver as a possible replacement for Nicholas Latifi.
Meanwhile, Robert Kubica will also be taking the place of Guanyu Zhou in Alfa Romeo, as part of his test driver duties rather than as a rookie.
Red Bull hoping to keep Ferrari in check at Barcelona
Ferrari is expected to bring a major upgrade to Barcelona for the Spanish GP. The track at Catalunya is anyways one that should play to Ferrari's strength. Bringing a performance upgrade to the track is only going to give the Italian squad a further boost in terms of performance against its competitors.
Meanwhile, Red Bull has had an upper against its Italian competitors in the last two races. The car has shown an ability to manage its tires better than Ferrari and that ability has been used by Max Verstappen to the most to overtake Charles Leclerc on the track.
Although this event is Carlos Sainz's home race, the emphasis is still going to be on the two title protagonists at the moment as we could see another battle playing out between Red Bull and Ferrari.
