The time of 1’17”277 Charles Leclerc handed first place to the Monegasque, with an improvement of over two seconds (of which half a second attributable to the softer compound available this year) compared to last year and very important improvements in medium and high speed corners where the load counts. Ferrari starts from a good base which, however, it must develop if it wants to really try to annoy Red Bull, in particular the evolution of the track will require development of the set-up over the course of the night. The difficulties of the Red team today can be identified in two areas, the first is the lack of efficiency with open DRS which could make the battles on the track more difficult on Sunday, the other is slight difficulty in changing direction in the fast chicane and on the last corner; on the other hand, the SF-24 proved to be very strong in all types of corners, especially at medium and low speed, and held up on the straights perhaps thanks to a slightly more aggressive mode in some sections of the track. Even starting from Pole Position it will be very difficult to shake off the Red Bullsor any rivals, given the four DRS zones available from the second lap.
Red Bull was the protagonist of a less than perfect day, first with a mistake by Max Verstappen which caused damage to the bottom of his RB20, but above all with a less than perfect set-up which compromised the performance in the lap with little fuel but especially in the race pace simulations, with a lot of degradation. Ferrari has managed to limit this phenomenon on the fronts, e Helmut Marko himself recognized the goodness of Leclerc’s stint: “In the long runs they were impressive. As far as we’re concerned, our set up isn’t great yet.” The chances of a two-stop race appear to have increased after the first two hours of free practice, with both Ferrari and Red Bull keeping aside two sets of medium and two sets of hard per driver, indicating that there is still a lot of uncertainty about what the best strategy is for the 58 laps on Sunday; Despite the track evolution, Pirelli believes that graining will continue to appear over the course of the weekend so it will be important to keep it under control, as the SF-24 did quite well today.
Mercedes’ difficulties
Further back the trio of McLaren, Aston Martin and Mercedes he seems to be a few tenths behind Ferrari; McLaren showed better straight-line speed than Jeddah thanks to a modification on the wing and similar to the Red, but the most significant losses are in the medium and low speed corners of the circuit in the flying lap, while according to the findings of the race simulations the MCL38 seems to show a similar gap in Jeddah towards the Red. Aston Martin could be a nice surprise in Qualifying by exploiting its own version of the “super DRS” – to be confirmed tomorrow when everyone increases power – on the four main straights, but the AMR24 it suffered in the high-speed sectionsas well as significant degradation at high fuel levels which is causing quite a few problems for the Silverstone team this year.
In the group of chasers Mercedes is definitely the team that encountered the greatest difficulties today: the weekend started with a test program on the track due to the lack of correlation between the simulator and the track, a constant for the Brackley team since the new regulations came into force. In particular the second session of Lewis Hamilton it went to waste, and George Russell he didn’t do much better, especially in the race pace simulation. After Jeddah it seems that Melbourne will be another uphill race for Mercedes, which continues to struggle to hit the small operating window of the W15.
In midfield the news that caused the most sensation was Williams’ decision to have Alexander Albon race Logan Sargeant’s chassis, after the Thai damaged his. James Vowles had to make a very difficult decision also in light of the fact that the FW46 showed a good pace today in the hands of the American, and the Grove team wants maximize your chances of getting points because the opportunity appears to be there. The group is very compact, with Racing Bulls, Sauber and Haas certainly very close to trying to annoy Albon tomorrow; Also Alpine showed good progress in the race simulation but historically the French team runs with less fuel than its rivals, so we will see the real pace tomorrow Ocon e Gasly in what will seem like the third very difficult appointment in a row for Bruno Famin’s team.
1970-01-01 00:00:00
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