Yas Marina, 21 November – This year’s grand finale, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is taking place later than usual, having taken over the final slot on the calendar from Brazil. The two week time difference means that it’s noticeably cooler and less humid this year. That’s generally a good thing for car reliability and driver and mechanic comfort levels, however it doesn’t change the unique to Abu Dhabi puzzle of a track that gets cooler as the working day progresses, because the opposite is usually the case.
Unfortunately in the Ferrari camp, dealing with that puzzle was left mainly to Kimi Raikkonen, after Fernando Alonso was sidelined right at the start of FP2 with an electrical problem. However, the Spaniard had done 22 laps on the rather dirty track this morning and overall, the Finn rattled off 56, so there’s still plenty of data for the engineers to study.
It’s been one of the mantras of this season and again this weekend, tyres will play a key role. The Soft-Supersoft Pirelli combination has never been used at Yas Marina before and while the softer of the two is clearly quick, it only seems to have a one lap life in terms of delivering a fast qualifying lap, so getting a clean run tomorrow evening will be vital to get a good grid position on a track that offers few passing opportunities.
On the subject of qualifying, the rules have had to be modified again: after Caterham and Marussia pulled out, only four cars were knocked out at the end of Q1 and Q2 in recent races, but with the return of Caterham this weekend, five cars will have to go at the end of the first two parts of qualifying.
With all eyes on the championship contenders in the Mercedes camp, it was Lewis Hamilton who asserted his superiority today, topping both time sheets ahead of Nico Rosberg. While the silver cars are comfortably quickest, it all seems very close behind between McLaren, Red Bull, Williams and Scuderia Ferrari, so hopefully the final qualifying of the year will deliver an exciting grid.