Chinese GP: Pirelli Friday Practice Review

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton topped both free practice sessions in China, using the soft tyre in the morning and then the ultrasoft to go fastest in the afternoon, with Ferrari also within a tenth of a second after FP2.

The forecast of rain did not materialise until right at the end of the session, but temperatures remained cool and cloudy, with 19 degrees centigrade ambient and 21 degrees on track at the end of FP2.

Teams concentrated on gathering data across all three compounds with different fuel loads in order to formulate their race strategies, with a dry race expected on Sunday. A lot of the work consisted of direct tyre comparisons, with teams assessing the overall performance of the ultrasoft compared to the medium and soft.

MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF CAR RACING
“This is the first race of the season where we have a gap between the compounds, with our nominations being medium, soft and ultrasoft, missing out the supersoft. The thinking behind this strategy was to have a fairly even time gap between all three compounds available. This has proved to be the case so far, with a gap of about 0.9 seconds between medium and soft, and a slightly smaller one between the soft and ultrasoft, leading to a total difference of around 1.6 seconds from medium to ultrasoft. This should lead to some interesting strategies, with some cars seeming to be more at home on certain compounds than others. A lot of this behaviour is of course influenced by weather, and it looks like teams will have to adapt their cars and strategies to what are likely to be slightly warmer conditions in the race, which should play to the strengths of the harder compounds available, with a higher working range.”

FREE PRACTICE 1 – TOP 3 TIMES
DRIVER 		TIME 	  COMPOUND 
Hamilton 	1m33.999s SOFT NEW
Raikkonen	1m34.358s ULTRASOFT NEW
Bottas 		1m34.457s SOFT NEW

FREE PRACTICE 2 – TOP 3 TIMES
DRIVER 		TIME 	  COMPOUND
Hamilton 	1m33.482s ULTRASOFT NEW
Raikkonen	1m33.489s ULTRASOFT NEW
Bottas 		1m33.515s ULTRASOFT NEW

FP1 - BEST TIME BY COMPOUND
COMPOUND 	DRIVER 	  TIME
MEDIUM 		Ricciardo 1m35.696s
SOFT		Hamilton  1m33.999s
ULTRASOFT 	Raikkonen 1m34.358s

FP2 - BEST TIME BY COMPOUND
COMPOUND        DRIVER    TIME
MEDIUM		Bottas 	  1m34.387s
SOFT		Raikkonen 1m34.063s
ULTRASOFT 	Hamilton  1m33.482s
INTERMEDIATE	Ocon	  1m51.665s

MOST LAPS BY COMPOUND SO FAR
COMPOUND 	DRIVER 	  		LAPS
MEDIUM 		Leclerc   		21
SOFT		Ericsson, Sirotkin	21
ULTRASOFT 	Gasly 			22
INTERMEDIATE	Ocon, Perez		3

TYRE STATISTICS OF THE DAY
		    MEDIUM  SOFT  ULTRASOFT  INTERMEDIATE
Kms driven* 	    1182    2288  1994 	     70
Sets used overall** 17	    33	  30	     6

* The above number gives the total amount of kilometres
driven in FP1 and FP2 today, all drivers combined.
** Per compound, all drivers combined.