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F1 insider: German Grand Prix

Grand Prix Friday traditionally sees teams experiment with aero settings, check tyre wear and fuel consumption, and generally fettle their cars ahead of the main event on Sunday. The in-season testing ban has, of course, meant that Fridays have also become test days, with new bits and pieces being evaluated ahead of deployment in a race – although not necessarily in the immediate Grand Prix.

Thus McLaren tested its ‘blown floor’ – in which speeding exhaust gasses create a vacuum, which in turn sucks the car to the ground – in Silverstone despite the components not (then) being race ready. But, track time on the British circuit enabled the team to evaluate various floor designs, and verify their performances against wind tunnel readings. A few tweaks here and there, and said underbodies would be ready for deployment a race or two hence...

All teams have similar programmes, testing various parts without necessarily aiming to race them that weekend. Parts are shipped, work lists prepared, components bolted on and off, exchanged for further variations, cars returned to ‘normal’ specifications ... such is the rate of development in F1 that it never stops.

With a four-week break looming after next week’s Hungarian Grand Prix and F1’s intra-team agreements stipulating full factory shutdowns for at least a fortnight during the period, drivers and engineers are obviously anxious to get components for the upcoming high speed grands prix at Spa-Francorchamps (Belgium) and Monza(Italy) up and running. 

So the best plans were hatched for Friday in Germany. Except the weather refused ball in Hockenheim, with torrential  rain alternating with brief sunny periods – absolutely the worst possible conditions for testing and evaluation purposes, when a stable, consistent track is required for comparison purposes.

Thus the times were all over the place, particularly during the opening 90-minute session, when drivers re-acclimatised themselves with the  4,574-km circuit situated in dense forests 20 km from Heidelberg in south-central Germany.

For eight drivers, fully one third of the 24-strong grid, Friday marked their first experience of the Hockenheimring’s somewhat patchy tarmac in an F1 car, for even if they made their debuts in 2009, a time-share deal with Nürburgring (not the 22-kilometre granddaddy of all tracks, but the comparatively tiny ‘Newburgring’ lying in its shadow) means F1 gets to visit the city of Hockenheim (pop.21 000) in even years, with the circuit in the Eifel hosting the Grosse Preis von Deutschland during ‘odds’.

Was a time when Hockenheim, sadly better remembered for the 1968 death of Grand Prix legend Jim Clark than sporting history, meant a foot-flat blasts through the trees at 360 km/h, for the then-seven kilometre circuit effectively consisted of a long oval with a stadium section attached at the northern end.

Hockenheim revamped

All that changed for 2002 with the emasculation of the track with a EU62m (R620m) revamp which resulted in the current layout, and increasing spectator capacity from 83 000 to 120 000. Ironically numbers immediately began dropping, with just 65 000 expected this Sunday. That’s a far cry from the 100 000 Red Riding Hoods who Hockenheim in worship of Michael Schumacher and Ferrari during their heyday, and all the more baffling for MS is now back, this time in a Silver Arrows bearing the hallowed three-pointed star.

Add in that Germany has a total of six drivers in the race – including title hot shot Sebastian Vettel – and a third of the grid is powered by German (Mercedes) engines, and it becomes even more baffling. At Silverstone a fortnight ago a capacity 115 000 crowd rocked the Northamptonshire circuit – yet that country had just two drivers to call their own, while ticket prices (though over-priced in every instance on account of the eye-watering race hosting fees charged by F1 tsar Bernie Ecclestone) were roughly comparable despite the UK finding itself in worse financial straits than does Germany.

How can it be that the land which gave the world the steam engine attracts twice as many to its Grand Prix than does the country which invented the car and every single form of internal combustion engine currently in  production – four stroke, to stroke, diesel and rotary – plus has a third of drivers on the grid sporting its flag? Answers on a postcard to Hochenheimring GmbH please...

But, back to the action: during a morning where Bridgestone’s wet and intermediate tyres were used, local driver Adrian Sutil once again proved his mastery of slippery conditions by setting fastest time of the session for Force India. That the car is powered by Mercedes made the feat all the sweeter for the sparse crowd which endured windy, wet conditions.

Second was Felipe Massa, the Brazilian getting a fillip from being at the sharp end once more after a few races in which he battled tyre challenges, with reigning champion Jenson Button – another ‘Regenmeister’ – third from Rubens Barrichello, who won his maiden race here for Ferrari in 2000 in streaming conditions.

How unrepresentative the times, though, were is clear from comparisons between the sessions: where pre-lunch Sutil circulated in 1 25.701 seconds, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso lapped in 1 16.265 in the afternoon to record the fastest time of day. A further indication of their topsy-turvy nature is that Red Bull Racing duo of Vettel and Mark Webber – driving arguably the fastest cars - ended 11th and 14th respectively in the morning, while championship leader Hamilton crashed his McLaren, ripping off all four corners.

After lunch Spaniard Alonso, still beaming after his country lifted the FIFA World Cup a fortnight ago, just pipped crowd favourite Vettel, ending the day 0,029 seconds ahead of the 23-year-old, on track to become the sport’s youngest-ever world championship should he take the title by Abu Dhabi.

‘The target is to finally have a perfect weekend,’ said Alonso, who grappled with officialdom in Valencia and Silverstone, scoring just four points in the last two races. ‘We have done some good Fridays before, but we need to do a perfect Saturday and a perfect Sunday.

‘If it’s behind the Red Bull and we are not quick enough to challenge them then okay, but if we can be in front of them then even better,’ added the 2005/6 champion. ‘Friday is not very representative of the times, and perhaps this Friday was even more strange because of the track conditions, which changed constantly.’

‘We tested everything we wanted to test. Now we have to analyse the data, but it was a positive Friday.’

Vettel, fourth in the championship behind Hamilton, Button and team-mate Webber, did not seem too perturbed at failing to top Friday’s times at home, admitting that changing weather conditions made it hard to judge times from the day’s proceedings.

‘It was slippery today obviously,’ he said. ‘The conditions were changing all the time, so to really judge lap times is quite difficult because you have to see when everyone was out on the circuit, and in which conditions. But it was important to get some dry running in the afternoon, I think, and it looked promising.’

Indeed it does, even if Massa split the two blue cars, with Webber making it a Ferrari-Red Bull-Ferrari-Red Bull quartet.

‘It wasn’t the easiest day for everyone – the track conditions were pretty tricky, so selecting the right tyres at the right time wasn’t straightforward, but we got some good information out of P2 when the track was
pretty dry,’ was the Australian’s summary of his day’s work.

‘We were also able to learn how both types of wet tyre worked here, so we evaluated the car in almost all conditions today. The car felt good, but we’ve got some work to do tonight. Ferrari look strong and I’m looking forward to the race,’ concluded the winner of the last race in Silverstone and last year’s Nürburgring edition of the German Grand Prix.

Optimistic Schumi

Fifth and sixth went to Mercedes’ pairing of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher  - in that order. ‘In the wet conditions this morning, the car was very good and our pace looked quick,’ said the former, who admitted to battling on the intermediate tyres working. ‘In the dry this afternoon, I was less happy with the balance of the car in general.’

Schumacher, who on Thursday conceded to having given up on this year to focus on 2011, had a couple of excursions which damaged the underfloor of his W01. He remained, though, optimistic: ‘If everything goes as it should tomorrow, we should reach fifth or sixth position, which is a step forward, and maybe even more in the race. But for sure, we will do everything possible to achieve a good result for our fans at our home race.’

Lewis Hamilton, 2008 German winner – thus the last victor at this venue – was next up, his crew having virtually rebuilt the Briton’ McLaren MP4-25A after his morning crash. ‘It was very slippery and I hit the limiter coming out of Turn Three, shifted gear, which spun the wheels, and had an oversteer moment,’ explained the 2008 champion.

‘I tried to correct it and that put me onto the grass, where I was just a passenger. The accident took all four corners off the car, so I was a little bit upset with myself. The guys work so hard during the week to get the car ready, and then you get to the track, do a few laps, and total the car, which isn’t great. It was a huge amount of work for the guys, too, but they’ve just been phenomenal.’

Team-mate Button fared less well, even without the time-wasting inconvenience of a crash, for he was left to do the bulk of development on the ‘blown’ floor and long ‘fuel’ runs.

‘Lewis had a problem this morning,’ said Jens after ending 15th, ‘so I had a busy afternoon running through our long-run programme in P2.The new floor appears to be working well. We still need to look at the data to see how much of an improvement it’s giving us, but there’s no negative to it, which is great.’

Team boss Martin Whitmarsh, too, seemed content with proceedings, confirming the new underbody would be raced this weekend. ‘This afternoon Jenson knuckled down to a disciplined programme of long running on heavy fuel loads, concentrating on race durability,’ he said. ‘We feel we have decent pace here – and, as I say, having concentrated largely on long running on heavy fuel loads today, will focus on qualifying practice tomorrow morning.’

"It was a difficult Friday"

Eighth fastest was Robert Kubica, whose Renault team boss Eric Boullier on Friday exclusively told Wheels24 it was embarking on an aggressive development programme to ‘catch Mercedes’ in the constructors’ championship and commence work on next year’s R31 model.

The Pole gave an insight into the tyre challenges facing the grid this weekend, for Bridgestone is supplying tyres from the company’s extreme ends of the rubber spectrum, namely (super) hards and super softs. More on the implications of this after Saturday qualifying.

‘It was a difficult Friday because of the weather conditions which meant we ran all four tyre specifications at different points during the two sessions. These conditions make it difficult to test anything properly, so we concentrated on getting a feeling for the tyres.

‘The super-soft compound actually performed quite well, possibly helped by the low temperatures, but it was more difficult to judge the hard compound because the track was still a bit damp when I ran with it,’ said Robert.

Rounding off the top ten were the Williams duo of Barrichello and team-mate Nico Hulkenberg, the latter ending the day as fourth-best German, with Sutil eventually placing 14th in the afternoon and Timo Glock, rumoured to be heading to Renault, ending the opening day on his home track as fastest ‘new team’ driver for Virgin.

Wet weather is expected to continue throughout the day, which should add a twist to qualifying strategies, particularly as race day forecasts are for dry, 25C skies...
 
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