08/06/2018
NEWS STORY
Friday in Canada provided a typical opening day of action, with high track evolution, plenty of traffic, a few contacts with the wall, and teams trying out different potential tyre combinations on both high and low fuel loads.
New for this year though is the P Zero Pink hypersoft tyre, which proved to be more than a second faster than any other compound in Canada. Red Bull's Max Verstappen, who used it to top both sessions, set a best time of 1m12.198s in the afternoon. Mercedes was the only team not to try the hypersoft today. Conditions remained dry and warm, with FP2 ending in 25 degrees ambient and 37 degrees of track temperature.
Mario Isola: "Both free practice sessions were interrupted by red flags and virtual safety cars, but we could already see that the hypersoft has a significant performance advantage over the other compounds of more than a second, balanced out by a shorter overall life with higher degradation, which is exactly what we expected of this tyre here. As a result, the teams tried out a number of different combinations of tyre usage during free practice on varied fuel loads, as they explored a number of potential strategy options, which might include running a harder tyre in Q2 tomorrow. On a very different circuit to Monaco, where the track was front-limited, the objective for most teams today was to assess the wear and degradation rate of the hypersoft on a rear-limited circuit that is all about traction. This information will form an integral part of the strategy calculation. Tomorrow's FP3 session will also be important to collect more data."