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The
Spa-Francorchamps circuit, in the heart of Belgium’s Ardennes region, is
well known for its variable weather but conditions for the two free practice
sessions today were at least consistent: cool temperatures and heavy rain in
both sessions.
As a result, due to the treacherous conditions, teams chose to drastically
limit their running during the sessions, with only a few drivers venturing
out on Pirelli’s Cinturato Blue full wet tyres. The P Zero Silver hard tyres
and P Zero White medium tyres that have been nominated for the race weekend
remained unused but under the latest regulations the teams also had access
to an extra set of intermediate tyres today if required, which also remained
unused as conditions were too wet.
The fastest time of the day was set by Sauber driver Kamui Kobayashi during
the morning session, who established a benchmark of 2m11.309s towards the
end of the session on the full wet tyres – half a second faster than
Williams driver Pastor Maldonado. Kobayashi was also the first driver to set
a flying lap earlier in the session, before beating his previous time with
20 minutes to go.
The rain was even heavier during the afternoon, meaning that no drivers set
a proper lap time within the allocated hour and a half session. The Mercedes
drivers were first to take to the circuit with just over half an hour left
to go, followed by a handful of other competitors including former world
champion Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) and reigning world champion Sebastian
Vettel (Red Bull).
In the final 20 minutes more drivers ventured out, but only 10 drivers set a
definitive time in free practice two after the chequered flag had fallen,
with Marussia’s Charles Pic setting his team’s first fastest time of
2m49.354s on the occasion of their 50 th grand prix. However, the teams also
used the time to carry out some straight-line aerodynamic testing as well as
practice starts and pit stops, which will be crucial on race day.
Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery commented: “We’ve had a
lot of rain so far this season – particularly in Britain and Germany – but
in Spa today the rain was consistently some of the heaviest that we have
seen over the course of one day. Under those circumstances it was very hard
for us and the teams to learn anything much, and with many teams having
brought important upgrades to the track, it was understandable that they did
not want to risk them by going off, particularly as drier conditions are
predicted for later in the weekend. But with weather conditions in Spa
always being notoriously unpredictable, experience of running in the wet
will always be useful, especially as the drivers have all been stationary
for five weeks over the summer break. It says a lot about the skills of the
drivers as well as about the efficiency of our tyres that despite the
monsoon-like conditions, none of the drivers hit anything or had any big
problems. We’ve evolved the wet tyres from last year in order to improve
resistance to aquaplaning and there’s been a step forward, but some
conditions are always going to be undriveable. It’s just frustrating as
everyone obviously wants to be out there and collecting information, but
realistically nobody has learned much today. This clearly increases the
workload for all the teams tomorrow during the hour-long free practice
session before they head into qualifying, which is expected to be dry.”
Pirelli numbers of the day:
Sets used overall:
Hard: 0
Medium: 0
Intermediate: 0
Wet: 27
Highest number of laps per compound:
Hard: 0
Medium: 0
Intermediate: 0
Wet: 23
Longest runs per compound:
Hard: 0
Medium: 0
Intermediate: 0
Wet: 8 laps (De la Rosa, Karthikeyan, Petrov, Pic, Ricciardo, Vergne)
Pirelli facts of the day:
Pirelli’s Cinturato Blue full wet tyres are about six times more efficient
at dispersing water than a normal road car tyre. The full wets disperse
around 60 litres of water per second at full speed, whereas an average road
car tyre can only disperse around 10 litres of water per second, at much
lower speeds. The last time that no lap times were set during a free
practice session was again in Belgium, back in 2005. |
