24/11/2017
NEWS STORY
Another all-time lap record fell on Friday, with Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton beating his own benchmark from 2011 in FP2, which up to now had been the fastest-ever lap of the spectacular Yas Marina circuit.
Currently, around 0.8 seconds separate the supersoft from the ultrasoft, a slightly bigger gap than had been originally envisaged. However, this gap could reduce depending on pace management during the race.
Mario Isola: "From what we can see so far, wear and degradation seems very low here, like we expected. As is virtually always the case, the FP1 and FP3 sessions are less representative when it comes to data collection, so most of the useful work here was concentrated into FP2 starting at 5pm - like qualifying and the race. The initial data from the sessions suggests that the three top teams are closely matched in terms of race and qualifying pace. Race strategy looks like it's going towards a one-stop but with a comparatively wide pit stop window, which opens up a number of tactical possibilities."
Check out our Friday gallery from Yas Island, here.