It’s unusual for a Friday of a grand prix weekend to have seen two practice sessions completed in perfectly dry conditions yet reveal so little about where the teams stand heading into qualifying.
After the planned 2023 prototype tyre test originally scheduled for the Japanese Grand Prix was abandoned due to relentless rain at Suzuka, Pirelli packed up their test compounds and flew them to North America to run during the second practice sessions of the United States and Mexican grands prix weekend.
While teams are typically free to carry out whatever run plans they wish as they gather data ahead of the competitive sessions on Saturday and Sunday, Friday at the Circuit of the Americas was unique in that all teams were told exactly what runs to carry out by tyre supplier Pirelli.
After the extended, 90-minute session was over, teams, drivers and the tyre supplier had all gained crucial information on how next year’s compounds could perform, with 513 total laps of the circuit completed in that time – almost ten race distance’s worth around the Austin track. After the session was run without incident or interruption, Pirelli were pleased with a productive afternoon.
“The work we did in FP2 here will allow us to analyse valuable data collected on the harder compounds, just as next weekend’s FP2 session in Mexico City will give us some useful information on the softer compounds,” said Pirelli’s chief engineer, Simone Barra.
While the second practice session taught the paddock a lot about the tyres they could be racing on next season, it did not reveal much about how each team looks heading into today’s qualifying session. With the vast majority of the field only running on the prototype compounds, the results from the second session were effectively meaningless, making only the first practice session truly representative.
On the basis of the times at the end of the first hour, Carlos Sainz Jnr put Ferrari on top of the times with a fastest lap two tenths quicker than Max Verstappen. But as the track evolved rapidly and, with five guest drivers stepping in for first practice runs, Mercedes driver George Russell admitted that it was even hard to draw conclusions from the opening session.
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“FP1 was a bit of an odd session for everybody,” Russell explained to media after the session.
“There was a…
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