20/07/2018
NEWS STORY
This region of Germany is not new to heatwaves, and today temperatures ranged just below and above the 30-degrees mark. In these hot conditions, Scuderia Ferrari drivers managed to progress through the respective run plans, which included using only the Soft tyre in the morning, before switching to different programmes for P2. Both ran on the Ultrasofts before Seb (4th fastest) tried a race simulation on the Mediums, while Kimi (5th) fitted the Softs. The SF71H car responded well through both sessions and now the night will be spent looking for improvements in view of tomorrow's P3 and qualifying, which may be affected by a different kind of weather.
Sebastian Vettel: "The car has been working well today and it's been a normal Friday. Today, we tried a little bit of everything. I think we got along quite well with the tyre selection that we used today. Now we have to find out how we've been working compared to the others, but I think that even if we can still improve our lap time, the car is fine. I think the high temperatures we had today could probably have an impact somehow, but we don't know exactly what the weather will be like. Tomorrow it should rain, but on Sunday we expect it to be dry again. It was very nice to see a lot of Ferrari flags here today and it's great to see a lot of people supporting us!"
Kimi Raikkonen: "Friday is the only day that we can use as a test, trying a lot of things and different solutions. It was a very normal day and later this evening we‘ll analyze what we have learned today and put things together for qualifying. Tomorrow the conditions might be a bit different from today and a bit more tricky. On Sunday if the weather stays warm like it was today, for sure it will be challenging for the tires; it's going to be more similar to Austria, with a limit on the tyres, and whoever makes the best job in managing them is going to have some advantage. So far we have been reasonably strong in most places, we'll see how it goes here; it looks pretty close."
Check out our Friday gallery from Hockenheim, here.