07/07/2023
NEWS STORY
The British Grand Prix weekend has also begun with Max Verstappen dominating proceedings, topping the time sheets from FP1 and FP2 in his Red Bull.
He set the fastest time of the day in the second session in 1.28.078 on a set of Soft compound tyres, which here in Silverstone are the C3s.
After the Sprint weekend, F1 is back to the traditional format with Friday featuring two one-hour free practice sessions: the first was spent mainly searching for the best set-up on the cars, while the second was more a case of assessing the handling of the car-tyre package over short and long runs on a track which evolved considerably from one session to the next.
An initial look at the data shows that the behaviour of the compounds brought here by Pirelli (C1, C2 and C3) is in line with expectations. All three showed they are a valid choice for the race, as could be seen from the fact that the teams did some quite high mileage long runs on the Softs, the longest being 13 laps from both Perez and Hamilton. This compound naturally showed much more degradations than the Medium and Hard, but could prove competitive in a final stint with a relatively low fuel load.
When it comes to lap time difference between the compounds, here too, initial data from today is in line with simulation, with about six tenths difference between the Hard and Medium and 1.2 seconds between the Medium and Soft.
Simone Berra - Chief Engineer: "It was a very interesting day with a lot of data acquired and useful information especially looking to the race. We saw that the teams maybe concentrated more than usual in FP2 on assessing tyre behaviour over a long run, in some cases running a half-race distance on one set. This was the case for Hulkenberg who did 25 laps on a set of Hards, 20 of them in one run. The new construction made what one could call its official debut here, following on from the prototype test in Barcelona. From what we have seen so far there were no problems nor changes in tyre behaviour. It's worth noting that compared to last year, the lap times have come down considerably: almost nine tenths quicker when comparing the best 2022 time of 1.28.942 with today's 1.28.078, although today's track temperature was 15 degrees C higher.
"Tomorrow, there's a chance of rain especially for the earlier on track sessions, with the chances of a wet track diminishing over the course of the day. It's another unpredictable element on a Saturday that already looks like being closely contested, given that on the shortest runs, the gaps were very small, with 22 hundredths between first and second on the FP2 time sheet and all 19 drivers (Leclerc did not run in this session) within the same second and a half."
Check out our Friday gallery from Silverstone here.