An Exciting Friday for F1
It’s been ages since I felt the need to grab a screenshot from the f1.com live timing screens, but Friday free practice two was just such an occasion.
The day had got off to a bit of a slow start with all teams opting to sit in their garages for the first 25 minutes of session one, and it looked like all of last week’s testing had conspired to make this Friday a dull day.
However, during the break before practice two, I get the impression that a number of teams figured they didn’t have as much information as they needed, because from the off it was action all the way through the second session.
Force India climbed to the top of the timesheets early on, with Fissi leading Sutil, but more surprisingly they managed to hang in there for quite some time. I don’t remember when that team were so high up the ranking so late in the day.
The fun didn’t stop there though, because the Williams team achieved a similar one-two soon afterwards, this time with Nakajima the lead driver.
That sort of thing has to be kept for posterity.
And if that wasn’t enough, Renault followed suit as well, their second driver coming out ahead of his (double world champion) team mate. It all made for a fantastic break from the norm.
Without a doubt this was my favourite F1 Friday so far this season, and Christine will have a full run down of the action shortly. In the meantime I’m just going to smile at the timing sheets some more!
April 25th, 2008 at 5:33 pmOllie said:
Well McLaren didn’t have a great afternoon and I think some teams were running with a heavy fuel-loads. Just going through various statements (and reading copiously between the lines) trying to ascertain who did what. I don’t think it was all down to awesome pace, but it is nice to see a different order every now then, definitely.
April 25th, 2008 at 5:37 pmme said:
yeah, not suggesting that fif1 have actually found that pace (although maybe a small amount).
ferrari were running full tanks. bmw were doing their usual. etc.
April 25th, 2008 at 5:44 pmOllie said:
That partly explains Massa’s drop off and Kimi’s small margin over the Renault’s.
April 25th, 2008 at 5:45 pmOllie said:
Bah, no comment editing here yet. Ignore the glaringly obvious grammar error.
April 25th, 2008 at 5:46 pmme said:
monday, just don’t want to introduce it during heavy commenting sessions. it shouldn’t cause issues, but you never know. also gotta do some more style tweaking.
kimi also got baulked by a load of traffic on his final run.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:15 pmlou said:
Im glad I managed to watch/ live comment on FP2! Made my day!Thank you so much for keeping my upto date with the timings etc! really really appreciated it!
April 25th, 2008 at 6:18 pmlou said:
Yay! An edit button!!!
Just in time for must comment monday. - what happened to that by the way? 
April 25th, 2008 at 6:20 pmme said:
christine still does it religiously.
i’ve fallen off the wagon because videos come out tues / wed and take up every spare moment i have. that’s may excuse anyhow.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:04 pmlou said:
ahaha yes i know how you mean. Only my excuss is revision! :/ But thanks to the live commenting i have become much more confident of voicing my views etc.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:21 pmlou said:
Has anyone seen Barichello’s comments regarding practice? IF you haven’t here they are;
Erm, is it me but is this normal? and if so, have the drivers come out and said ‘We had the correct set up, but now we lost it!’ I may be being really stupid/ unobservant.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:29 pmme said:
sometimes, but here i think the specific problem is testing last week involved slicks.
they put down more rubber than current tyres so for three days the track got better and better. then it rained hard almost every day since. so the track is clean and not sticky.
i think what most of them are saying is “it should be the right setup for sunday”.
lewis pointed out that his car was good the moment it hit the track in testing, so it’s not only the tyres, but they are a large part of it. temperature is probably different, wind too.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:34 pmSteven Roy said:
It’s not unusual for a driver to be totally satisfied with a car and to go out on the track a few hours or days later and find that the handling is all over the place. A minor change in temperature, wind speed or direction, humidity etc can upset the aero. Track temperature or a different mix of rubber on the track can affect the mechanical grip.
One comment that was made on the radio that may help explain why he is having problems is that between the test session and the start of free practise there was a 1000km sportscar race on the track. The sportscars use different rubber so all the F1 rubber has been coated with sportscar rubber.
The problem with finding the ideal set up at the end of a 3 or 4 day test is that there can be 4 or 5000 laps worth of rubber on the track. If the rubber on the track is essential to a prticular driver’s set up then he is guaranteed to struggle on a Friday. He may find that he has the ideal set up for the race.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:41 pmlou said:
Oh right! Thanks.
Its just the way he phrased it i think. Made me think it was not the track but something they had done. I think i better get an early night tonight, am getting abit confused just recently. 
April 25th, 2008 at 7:45 pmlou said:
I like the pages section on the left by the way, but where have the usual, most recent comments, and top commenters gone?
April 25th, 2008 at 7:46 pmme said:
hehe, you weren’t meant to see that!
we’re upgrading wordpress right now. 2.5.1 came out this afternoon.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:52 pmlou said:
lol! ahaha oh right.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:52 pmme said:
should all be back up and running now. apologies.
the pages you saw are all of christine’s transcripts. usually we hide them to save space, but everytime we do an upgrade, our fudged code fix gets replaced by the default installation so we go in and change it.
all is well though.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:40 pmme said:
in case anyone hasn’t already seen them, axis has a video of the honda bunny ears:
axisofoversteer.blogspot.com/2008/04/ri…
April 25th, 2008 at 9:03 pmlou said:
Yep all look like its back to normal!
Oh interesting. I would soo love to be able to understand all about blogs and everything. Its something that really interests me.
April 26th, 2008 at 1:04 ambrendan stallard said:
“If the rubber on the track is essential to a prticular driver’s set up then he is guaranteed to struggle on a Friday. He may find that he has the ideal set up for the race.”
Steven,
Keep up the technical stuff, good, very helpful. I’ve been watching F1 for most of my life and its clear I haven’t got a clue what’s going on under the surface.
(Apart from Alonso being a bum, of course):)
brendan
April 26th, 2008 at 4:58 pmAlianora La Canta said:
I got several screen grabs of the Force India part of second practise, three of which are particularly pleasing to me because the player in the corner of the screen was showing a Force India car as well
April 26th, 2008 at 6:34 pmlinks for 2008-04-26 » vee8 - a Formula 1 blog said:
[...] An Exciting Friday for F1 - Sidepodcast Some of the surprising names topping the timing sheets during Friday practice 2 (tags: SpanishGrandPrix practice GiancarloFisichella ForceIndia AdrianSutil KazukiNakajima Williams Renault) [...]
April 26th, 2008 at 6:47 pmme said:
glad i’m not the only one who does this sort of thing
April 27th, 2008 at 11:33 amAlianora La Canta said:
Well, it’s not every day that my favourite team ends up in P1…
April 27th, 2008 at 11:45 amScott Woodwiss said:
Oh yeah, Raikkonen and Ferrari normally struggle in the qualifying department.
April 27th, 2008 at 11:47 amme said:
think alianora might be referring to force india there scott!
April 27th, 2008 at 11:52 amScott Woodwiss said:
ah right, didn’t read the thead title
my mistake
April 27th, 2008 at 4:19 pmAlianora La Canta said:
I was indeed referring to Force India, me
I should probably have said “P1 a significant way into the session” rather than just “P1″ though - I can see where Scott’s confusion came from. Sorry!