27/10/2016
NEWS STORY
Unexpected cool weather conditions were experienced during free practice for the Mexican Grand Prix, with the morning session starting in just 14 degrees centigrade ambient and the afternoon warming up to only 16 degrees centigrade. Track temperatures peaked at 27 degrees centigrade at the start of FP2, but fell slightly during the course of the afternoon session.
These cool conditions caused some degree of graining and put the emphasis on tyre warm-up. As a result, the low working range medium tyre was quickest in the coolest conditions of the morning; however Sebastian Vettel went fastest of all for Ferrari in the afternoon with a time of 1m19.790s on the supersoft, ahead of the two Mercedes.
Weather conditions are not expected to be greatly different for the remainder of the weekend, with the possibility of rain as well (a few drops were seen at the end of FP1). This made today's work especially important: however, there was a very high degree of track evolution that means a full picture of relative performance is yet to emerge - which should be clearer following FP3 tomorrow with more rubber on the track.
Paul Hembery: "Nobody expected temperatures to be as low as they were today. As a result of this and also a high degree of track evolution - with the surface not appreciably different to how it was when new last year - it was hard to collect representative data today. It seems very unlikely now that we will have a warm weekend, so it will be interesting to see who unlocks the most out of the car and tyre package in these conditions."