Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Practice – Friday
The final practice sessions have started for the Formula 1 2016 season and here’s a roundup of what happened during both practice sessions earlier today – ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this weekend.
Some of the teams immediate reactions are below and near the bottom you’ll also be able to see a brief overview from most of the teams.
RedBull – Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Practice
Max Verstappen
“My last Friday at the track for this season wasn’t bad. We have a few issues with the car today which meant aborting the last run was the sensible thing to do so we can check the car and be sure that we are ready tomorrow morning.”
“The grip is always a little bit difficult in the first session here with the temperatures being higher but you already can tell – it’s a lot better as the track is cleaner in FP2.”
“The ultrasoft compound dropped off quite quickly but the soft seem to be performing well. Ferrari look strong but we are also up there – I had a bit of traffic on my quick lap so I’m confident that we are competitive.”
“It should be an exciting qualifying tomorrow.”
Daniel Ricciardo
“It’s hot here – even if it’s night time. The tyres get worked pretty hard both the front and the rear. I still think we look pretty good.”
“If we put it together tomorrow we’re more or less there and I’m confident that it’ll be a good fight for third place.”
“As expected, the Mercedes are still ahead but I don’t think they’re miles ahead – so looking at today, maybe we can still race them on Sunday.”
“It’s a dangerous circuit around here but you don’t see any reason to hold back in practice, here you can definitely push and go on the limit so we will see tomorrow.”
“I think everyone predicts Lewis will take pole tomorrow so it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out – I definitely feel comfortable today and am looking forward to the next few days.”
Sauber – Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Practice
Marcus Ericsson
“It’s been a mixed day. It was looking good on the soft and supersoft compounds but for some reason, we were really struggling to get the ultrasoft tyre to work.”
“We struggled with the grip which we needed and that’s going to be a challenge going forward tomorrow. There’s surely room for improvement on the ultrasoft compound.”
“Nevertheless, I was able to run fair amount of laps – we will looking into everything in more detail and I am confident that we can find some things to improve.”
Felipe Nasr
“In FP1 we seemed to have quite a good balance on the car with the higher temperatures however this is not really relevant – qualifying and the race will be in the evening.”
“Overall, it was important that we went through our programme and later on, in FP2 I was compromised on my quick lap so I didn’t really have a good reference there.”
“We still have work to do on the balance of the car and to extract more out of it – it is good that we have the evening to analyse all the data in order to make steps forward.”
Brief Overview
Mercedes
In FP2, Lewis Hamilton was back on form setting the fastest lap time however his team-mate Nico Rosberg was right behind with one of the closest differences we’ve seen. The two title competitors just have 0.079s between them!
Hamilton suffered with flat-spots throughout the session and at one stage feared that there was an issue with his car – telling the team to take a look. Everything came back as OK.
Ferrari
As we’ve seen throughout the year, Ferrari tend to look very strong during the practice sessions and sometimes qualifying and the same was showcased today at the Yas Marina Circuit.
Vettel managed to put his Ferrari up in third place whilst his team-mate, Kimi Raikkonen only managed sixth place.
RedBull
Both RedBull drivers split their main rivals – the Ferrari drivers with Verstappen setting a time for 4th fastest and Ricciardo in 5th.
Speaking after the sessions, both drivers are very confident about their cars, their pace and are looking forward to tomorrow – pushing their cars to the limit.
Williams
Sadly, it hasn’t been the best of seasons for the Williams team however both drivers did manage to make the top 10 in the practice session.
Valtteri Bottas in 7th and Felipe Massa in 10th.
Force India
Initially hoping for a stronger performance, it hast been the best of days for the two Force India drivers who were both complaining about lack of power down the straights.
McLaren
Jenson Button suffered with mechanical problems earlier on however he still managed to set a respectable time for 12th place right behind his team-mate.
Fernando Alonso had a bit more luck out of the two and although not brilliant – he managed to set a time for 11th.
Toro Rosso
Kvyat’s season hasn’t been particularly strong – probably a season he’d like to forget. The practice session didn’t give him much confidence going ahead for qualifying tomorrow suffering with a big spin fro Turn 16 to 17 – resulting in punctured tyre!
His team-mate, Sainz didn’t go back out after the incident as the team decided it would be best to investigate the problem ahead of FP3 and Qualifying.
Lots more coming soon!
The Formula 1 Girl 🙂
xx