Friday free practice for the British Grand Prix turned out to be more complicated than expected. Lap times in qualifying trim are encouraging – Carlos was second fastest just 22 thousandths slower than Max Verstappen -, but there is still work to do in terms of race pace. Furthermore, in the second session, the team only had data from Carlos Sainz’s car to work with, as Charles Leclerc was reduced to the role of spectator for the full hour, because of a short circuit on his SF-23.
FP1. All the drivers struggled considerably with grip during the first hour of practice as the track was very slippery. Charles and Carlos started working on set-up running the Medium tyres first before switching to the Soft compound on which they set their best times: 1’29”280 for the Monegasque and 1’29”375 for the Spaniard. They each completed 25 laps ending the session with a higher fuel load, Sainz reverting to the Medium tyres and Leclerc sticking with the Softs.
FP2. As mentioned, only Carlos was out on track. Once again he started off on the Medium compound and low fuel, then switching to Softs to set his best time of 1’28”100. Towards the end of the hour, Sainz kept the same tyres but upped the fuel load to simulate race conditions. For his last four laps, he again used Mediums, completing a total of 29 laps.
Risk of rain on Saturday. The final free practice session takes place tomorrow and it will be particularly important for Charles to continue working on set-up, particularly in race trim. Then comes qualifying at 15 local (16 CET) on a day when the forecast is for a strong chance of rain.
Carlos Sainz #55
It was a challenging Friday here in Silverstone. FP1 was quite tricky because of the wind and the track conditions but we completed a good programme and I think this helped us make good progress in FP2.
We need to keep working on tyre management and race pace. This should be our main point of focus going into tomorrow, as today we could see that over one lap we were not too bad. Overall, we are quite happy with today but of course there’s still some work to do.
Charles Leclerc #16
While the feeling in the car was good on the low fuel run, we still have some work to do to improve our race pace. We hope to make some steps forward by tomorrow, even though the conditions will be very different as we expect it to rain.
It’s a shame that I couldn’t take part in FP2 because we lack some race simulations for Sunday, but we will work on maximizing what we have in preparation for qualifying and the race anyway.