5 Reasons Why You Should Watch Friday Practice
On the Friday before every Formula 1 Grand Prix (except Monaco), there are two 90-minute practice sessions. Monaco has them on Thursdays.
Teams use them to work on setups and strategy choices for the coming weekend, while the drivers get an opportunity to learn or re-familiarise themselves with the circuit.
Even to an F1 nut, the on-track action tends to be painfully dull. Probably for this reason, the sessions are written off by a lot of fans as meaningless, boring and not worth watching.
But there's so much more to practice than watching cars trundling around a track...
An Early Look at How the Race Will Go
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Races these days are sadly all about driving to the stopwatch and are well within the cars' limits because the drivers have to conserve the tyres.
Most run-off areas are pathetically benign, and reliability-wise the cars are near-bulletproof.
So doing full race speed during practice isn't a big deal—and we get an early indicator of who is going to do what sort of lap times during the race.
Just as an example, during practice for Abu Dhabi, Sebastian Vettel was significantly quicker than Mark Webber on soft tyre race simulations. On clear laps he was doing mid-1:46s to low 1:47s.
Webber was in the mid-to-high 1:47s.
In the race, only Vettel was traffic free for the first stint—and he was doing almost exactly the same times as he did in practice, according to F1Fanatic's lap charts. And like in practice, no one else was close.
One can also get an early look at what's likely to happen regarding strategy.
The track needs to "rubber in" first, but the speed gaps between the two tyre compounds and how long each is likely to last generally become evident by the end of the second session.
A Chance to See Development in Action
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With such tight limits on testing, a lot of development work is done during the practice sessions.
Viewers learn which teams have new parts and whether they seem to be any good—information which is almost never mentioned during the competitive sessions.
Especially at the earlier races, you'll see a lot of Flow-Viz paint (this stuff) splattered over key aerodynamic areas during practice. The paint shows the team how air is moving over the surface in question.
And in Japan, we got a look at Williams' four different front wings.
You'll never see that sort of thing in qualifying or the race.
You Can See the Stars of Tomorrow
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Some teams use a third driver in the first Friday practice session (FP1). These are usually up-and-coming young drivers who are expected to graduate to a race seat in the near future.
It doesn't happen anything like as often as it should (as I wrote about here), but you can still see some potential stars.
In 2012, you could have watched the highly rated Valtteri Bottas in the Williams or Jules Bianchi for Force India a whole year before they moved up to race seats.
This year, it's been slightly less interesting, but we've seen two guys with promise: James Calado (Force India) and Alexander Rossi (Caterham).
Also on show were the rather less exciting Rodolfo Gonzalez (Marussia) and Ma Qinghua (Caterham again).
And best of all, in the final two races, we'll get a chance to see 2014 Toro Rosso driver Daniil Kvyat. He'll be taking over one of the baby bulls in both FP1s.
First practice is being extended by half an hour in 2014, and driver swaps will be permitted, so hopefully (I'm being optimistic here) we'll see a lot more use of young drivers next year.
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An Insight into How the Sport Really Works
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As I mentioned earlier, the on-track action is rather dull. But at least two commentators sit in a box above the track somewhere, one down the pit lane and sometimes one walking around from corner to corner.
There's little going on, so they need to find something else to talk about. They fill the time by discussing their favourite topic—the goings-on up and down the paddock.
These are people who travel, socialise and effectively live with the teams and drivers over the course of the season. They hear every snippet of news and every rumour—and they don't have to abide by the same rules team employees do.
Almost every interview given by a team member, owner or driver is as carefully crafted as any politician's speech. The ideal outcome of an answer in F1 is for the interviewer to learn nothing he didn't already know but to feel like he has a new story.
The commentary teams, on the other hand, just say what's on their mind at the time, with little in the way of an internal filter.
And the insight they provide to what is really going on in the F1 world is fascinating.
Occasionally something "secret" comes up that they can't discuss in detail. For example, in Korea, they told us one team principal doesn't think Nico Hulkenberg is particularly good. We never found out which one.
But sometimes we can discern hints from the way they speak.
So avoid the press conferences, ditch the driver interviews and pay little heed to the PR-speak doled out by the teams to meet media requirements.
If you want to know what's really happening, watch the practice sessions.
Interaction
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During the races and qualifying, the commentary team are too busy to pay attention to you and me.
But in practice, you can tweet questions or comments and—if you're lucky, as there are plenty of people doing it—they'll answer. They will on Sky Sports F1, anyway—I don't watch elsewhere, but they probably do too.
Want to know if a certain driver looks like he'll be in F1 next year? Want to know who looks good for the race or if a driver has the upper hand on a teammate? Are you dying to know which team is looking strong for the following year?
Just ask, and you might spark an insightful five-minute discussion about it.
So There You Have It
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So there you have it. Can you really afford to miss practice?
To a lot of people, finding an extra three hours (especially on a working day) isn't easy; for some strange reason, most families don't appreciate an F1 free practice marathon from 7 to 10 p.m. on a Friday night.
But practice is the sort of thing you can leave on in the background while doing something else. Just flick your head in the direction of the TV when you hear something interesting.
And as an added bonus, there's also a one-hour session on Saturday mornings before qualifying.
Give it a go; I'm sure it'll be worth it.
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