Understanding F1: Friday Practice Sessions Explained

Every race on the formula 1 calendar starts off with the Friday practice sessions. The two practice sessions are of 90 minutes each. So, let’s see the events that occur during the two practice sessions.

As the first practice session gets underway, all the teams and drivers do one to two outlaps to check whether all systems are functioning normally. Once the engineers are happy with the functioning of various systems, the teams are given green light to test various updates and find the optimum setup.

During both practice sessions, teams test the behaviour of the tyres and other components on high and low fuel loads. Also, they try to find the optimum setup which will make the car quick in qualifying as well as in race.

To find the optimum setup is very difficult. This is because, in qualifying, the drivers need to put in fast laps within two to three laps. This means that the teams have to setup their car in such a way that it heats the tyres and brakes up to optimum temperature quickly. Also, in qualifying, the teams fuel their cars to very low fuel levels to get a fast lap while in the race, the drivers start with very heavy fuel loads and so have to preserve their tyres to get an advantage over other rival teams.

Now, if a team sets up their car very aggressively to heat up the tyres quickly, then the team will be very quick in qualifying. But when it comes to the race, the drivers of that team will start to struggle with their tyres within few laps as the tyres will start to degrade due to the large amount of heat generated.

So, all the teams have to find a compromise between qualifying and race setups. Most of the time, friday practice sessions are spent on finding this optimum setup.

If a team brings an update package to a race, then all the updates are tested during the two practice sessions to see whether they work as expected. To test the updates, teams put various sensors on the car and also use aeropaints to see how the aerodynamics behave with the new updates.

The friday practice sessions are also very important for the drivers as they visit every circuit once in a year, which means that they have very little practice. So the friday sessions also allow the drivers to get back into rhythm.

That is all about the events during the friday practice sessions. Stay tuned for more articles in this Understanding F1 series.