After watching the final practice session, one thing came to mind. This weekend is going to be crazy. Absolutely mad.
Nelson Piquet carried on the surprises by setting the fastest time when testing a low-fuel set up. He set a time of 1:15:750 to storm to the top of the timeboards, and make the crowd at Magny Cours rather happy.
Mark Webber barely missed out on first, just 0.009 seconds slower than Piquet, with a time of 1:15:759. Sebastien Vettel pursued him throughout the session, and ended up in third, with a time of 1:15:827. The visually similar STR3 is well suited to this circuit, and Gerhard Berger believes that Q3 is a possibility.
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Nico Rosberg managed to get fourth place, and will be encouraged by his pace. Rosberg will need pace, as he will take a ten place grid penalty tomorrow. He set a time of 1:15:974.
World champion Kimi Raikkonen managed to get fifth place, and set a time of 1:16:003. He barely forced out Jarno Trulli from fifth, after Trulli set a time of 1:16:147 to get sixth.
Trulli pushed Lewis Hamilton down to seventh place in the dying seconds of the session. Hamilton set a time of 1:16:182. Hamilton was not focusing at all on low fuel laps, he decided to run heavy fuel in preparation for the long race ahead of him.
Sebastien Bourdais, Felipe Massa and David Coulthard rounded out the top 10 in that order, with respective times of 1:16:235, 1:16:256 and 1:16:282.
Across the grid of 20 cars, just 1.928 seconds separated first place and 20th. Nick Heidfeld was a victim of this closeness, when he set a time of 1:16: 687, he thought he was secure in the top half of the order.
As we now move into qualifying, the Ferrari's still look favourite to take pole position, but I do believe that the Toro Rosso's will be running very strong this weekend. I expect to see one in session three.
I'll be back later with a qualifying report.
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5 months ago
Ive always said that you cant honestly gauge anything at all from the practice sessions ... Maybe at best you will see how particular cars deal with the different sector times but when it comes to comparing one car against another in the partice sessions there are too many variables being changed by the teams and the drivers so its best to wait till qualifying for this one ... More than the Friday practices the Saturday ones especially, its like 2 hours before Qualifying starts and you find that the big boys will hold back and keep their cards very very close to their chests, why would they want to go and give it their all at this crucial stage in the weekend. As we can now see because qualifying is finished the drivers all bar Alonso who we expected would have a good qualifying place didnt perform ... Vettel and Piquet in particular so to relay my first point ... Practice sessions should only be analysed when looking at particular cars through particular corners, sections and speed traps maybe ? Never try to compare one cars pace to another purely off the practice sessions. Good article though. Your on the ball with the time getting it out quickly. I was eating breakfast, ha ha !
PS - Yes I know I copied this comment from my comment on Edwards article ... But they are pretty much saying the same thing so I thought I would give same reply ... Saves me time ! Ha ha !
from 5 months ago
i was eating my breaky aswell, luckily for me, i'm not sitting at the computer screen to watch it. I watch it thorugh my ps3. good eh?
from 5 months ago
See now I cant get the figures to run through my PS3 ... Did you have to DL Java to do that ? Just shows up a black screen for me on mind which is disappointing otherwise I would split the 42" to show times and feed on there ... Help ?
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