Picture courtesy of Kenny Ng. =)
Mark Webber on Friday set the pace for Red Bull Racing as practice opened for the Malaysian Grand Prix, and while the team's speed hardly came as a surprise, this is likely to be a far from predictable weekend.
After tires were hardly an issue in Australia two weeks ago, they are the main point of discussion at Sepang. While Pirelli hoped that higher track and ambient temperatures would be favorable, wear rates and degradation are high. So expect to see the sort of scenario suggested by winter testing in Barcelona, with three or four stops and drivers experiencing a sharp and dramatic drop-off in lap times when the tires go over the edge.
While it remained dry on Friday, as usual it had rained most afternoons this week. There remains a good chance that wet weather could impact qualifying, the race, or both. Webber was an amazing 1.7 seconds clear of Lewis Hamilton in the morning session--suggesting that he was running a different testing strategy to everyone else--but the gap closed in the afternoon, when Jenson Button was just 0.005 second behind.
“Obviously there's not much in it,” said Webber. “We're all pretty close, give or take a couple of tenths--who got traffic, who didn't, how their KERS worked. So far, so good, I'm toward the front somewhere. “It's still early days in the weekend. We got some good dry running in, and the car performed well. Obviously it was reliable, which was a nice bonus, so we got to check all the tires, and also Pirelli's new tire that they brought here.
Button was only 15th and struggling in the morning, but McLaren made drastic changes to his car's setup through the day and it paid dividends. The 2009 world champion was much happier, although he was unable to say what the real gap to Red Bull is. Hamilton was third and just 0.134 second shy of Webber as once again McLaren emerged as the most likely challenger to Red Bull.
Sebastian Vettel was fourth, while behind it was Mercedes GP versus Ferrari as Michael Schumacher led Felipe Massa and Nico Rosberg, while Fernando Alonso was ninth. The Mercedes drivers were upbeat about progress while Alonso admitted it had been a tough day, but expected to move forward on Saturday. Renault experienced a difficult day after both cars suffered problems with a new batch of front-suspension uprights. Nick Heidfeld had to drive back to the pits with a front wheel locked solid, while later in the morning session Vitaly Petrov had a front wheel more or less explode, shattering the left front suspension. After repairs, Heidfeld was eighth fastest in the afternoon.
Pastor Maldonado was a solid 11th for Williams, though his day was spoiled when he spun into the barrier as he entered the pit lane. Fellow rookie Jerome d'Ambrosio had a shock when a front-suspension failure pitched him off the road. Meanwhile, both HRTs logged some laps, although Tonio Liuzzi stopped when he hit a curb and managed to switch off his ignition.
No comments:
Post a Comment