Belgian GP – Sun and spray in Spa
Spa-Francorchamps, 23 August
“It’s the same for everyone” is the usual mantra trotted out over the Belgian Grand Prix weekend whenever the rain arrives. The famous saying therefore made an extremely early appearance in the Ardennes, as rain was a feature of the very first free practice session of the weekend. Unfortunately, it wasn’t even a useful sort of rain, which gives drivers time to collect data on both the Extreme rain tyres and the Intermediates. Instead, the track was only really damp in parts, meaning that running the Intermediates for too long meant risking damage to tyres that might be needed again over the next two days, while, naturally enough, the Dry Pirellis didn’t get up to temperature, or provide enough grip.
However, with more rain bound to appear at some point over the next two days, both Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa ventured out in the damp this morning, to get a feel for the greasy track. The real work had to wait for the afternoon, when it was actually hot and sunny. Therefore, over the course of the three hours, the Spaniard and the Brazilian completed a total of 69 laps and if that doesn’t sound like much of a day’s work, remember that each lap of this fantastic rollercoaster of a track is just over seven kilometres in length, the longest by far on the calendar.
Having been fastest in the morning, the Spanish Ferrari driver did not get the best out of his flying lap on the softer Medium compound and was classified seventh, while his Brazilian team-mate showed that the F138 is looking quite competitive compared to the front runners, with a fourth fastest time, eight tenths slower than the “Friday pole” time. Again, taking the lap length into consideration, that is not a big gap here. That fastest time came courtesy of the car and driver that lead both classifications at the moment, namely Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull. His team-mate Mark Webber was second, while Romain Grosjean was third for Lotus. Behind Felipe, Jean-Eric Vergne was fifth in the Ferrari-powered Toro Rosso, with Kimi Raikkonen, one of the undoubted Spa maestros, completing the top six.
“It’s the same for everyone” is the usual mantra trotted out over the Belgian Grand Prix weekend whenever the rain arrives. The famous saying therefore made an extremely early appearance in the Ardennes, as rain was a feature of the very first free practice session of the weekend. Unfortunately, it wasn’t even a useful sort of rain, which gives drivers time to collect data on both the Extreme rain tyres and the Intermediates. Instead, the track was only really damp in parts, meaning that running the Intermediates for too long meant risking damage to tyres that might be needed again over the next two days, while, naturally enough, the Dry Pirellis didn’t get up to temperature, or provide enough grip.
However, with more rain bound to appear at some point over the next two days, both Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa ventured out in the damp this morning, to get a feel for the greasy track. The real work had to wait for the afternoon, when it was actually hot and sunny. Therefore, over the course of the three hours, the Spaniard and the Brazilian completed a total of 69 laps and if that doesn’t sound like much of a day’s work, remember that each lap of this fantastic rollercoaster of a track is just over seven kilometres in length, the longest by far on the calendar.
Having been fastest in the morning, the Spanish Ferrari driver did not get the best out of his flying lap on the softer Medium compound and was classified seventh, while his Brazilian team-mate showed that the F138 is looking quite competitive compared to the front runners, with a fourth fastest time, eight tenths slower than the “Friday pole” time. Again, taking the lap length into consideration, that is not a big gap here. That fastest time came courtesy of the car and driver that lead both classifications at the moment, namely Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull. His team-mate Mark Webber was second, while Romain Grosjean was third for Lotus. Behind Felipe, Jean-Eric Vergne was fifth in the Ferrari-powered Toro Rosso, with Kimi Raikkonen, one of the undoubted Spa maestros, completing the top six.
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