F1 Canadian GP - Practice session

As the F1 battalion moves towards North America in Montreal, Canada the competition is heating up! The Gilles-Villeneuve Circuit with two high speed stretches and two 180 degree corners provides the required amount of excitement. And with the Red Bulls in their top form there is no looking back for them unless they fight it out bitterly amongst themselves as in the last race. Other than the above mentioned two high speed stretches there are three more where the Red Bulls can assert their supremacy over the others.

Adrian Sutil finished sixth in the second practice session.

Practice Session 1The first practice session was not as expected for the Red Bulls as their experiments with their tyres was not successful. The top 4 positions were dominated by four Mercedes powered cars. Jenson Button in McLaren – Mercedes topped the session with a time of 1:18.127 followed by Schumacher in Mercedes GP with a best time of 1:18.285. Jenson’s team mate Hamilton was third with a time of 1:18.352 just four hundreth of a second ahead of the German Rosberg. Vettel follwed Roseberg just ahead of Kubica in sixth. Alonso, Liuzzi, Hulkenberg and Barrichello rounded of the top ten ahead of Sutil and Massa. The surprise of the session was Red Bull’s Mark Webber who came fourteenth with a timing of 1:19.609 with Indian Karun Chandok in 20th position.

Practise Session 2Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time in the second practice session with a time of 1:16.877, and only Fernando Alonso with 1m 16.963s for Ferrari got anywhere close to him. The session started with Rosberg setting the pace at 1:17.151 which remained his best time till the end of session thus placing him

Canadian Grand Prix

third behind Alonso ahead of Mark Webber who’s best was 1:17.273. Massa with a time of 1:17.401 was fifth who was .014 seconds ahead of Sutil. Hamilton, Kubica, Schumacher and Luizzi rounded of the top ten while Button in 11th was the last of the cars with a lap timing within 1:18.

There were numerous offs in the tighter chicanes and in the hairpin, as drivers pushed as hard as they could in relatively cool and slippery conditions, but there were no significant incidents.

The feedback from most of the drivers and team principle’s was that the track was very slippery and they had trouble getting acquainted with the tyres. Everyone was mostly running on soft tyres and it was getting more tougher for them to get the grip on the track. Everyone was facing the problem of graining and were mainly focusing on getting the tyres together which was not resolved even till the end of the second session. The track was pretty green and so the tyres were wearing out quickly which looked good intially. With this much greenery it is expected that in case on rains even the hard ones wont be able to sustain longer runs which is a big headache for the teams to sort out. And with rains predicted in the Qualifying and the Race hope for some exciting action.