Ladies and Gentlemen,

Opening day was devoted to learn the new Sochi circuit. The Mercedes topped both sessions as expected, the surprise was to find McLaren near the front. ALO appeared close to the top as is customary on Fridays, but it’s now clear that you need Mercedes power to be fast around here.

P1- ROS (1.42.311) HAM BUT ALO MAG PER KVY RAI VER BOT

P2- HAM (1.39.630) MAG ALO ROS BUT BUT MAS KVY VET VER

In general drivers had shown their liking for the track in contrast to the media and fans. They say it’s “very difficult to get an entire lap right” (ROS) but it has a nice flow to it. Every driver and every team came here backed by many hours of computer simulation, what they’d found was an unexpected very high level of grip. Pirelli’s selection of hard/med has proven to be too conservative, it was a surprise to find the tyres last more than ever before in this new surface. There’s very little difference in speed between the two compounds, but what changed the whole approach to the weekend from the technical side is that the med/primes maintain their grip after many laps, to the point where drivers were doing their best times in well used sets after multiple flyers!. As consequence the teams had switched their programs to understand and maximize their allocation of primes.The big challenge during QF will be not only to get as close to front as possible (forget overtaking around here) but to save at least one set of mediums at its best for the race. For Sunday there will be but one strategy: one stop.

To gather as much data as possible Mercedes tried 2 completely different set-ups for Nico and Lewis. ROS was almost a second slower so the team is now focusing in fine tuning HAM’s set up. Both McLaren are running near the front, but both drivers are downplaying their performance, the car has improved a little since Suzuka, they say, but they are not sure if they really are  the ‘best of the rest’, “let’s wait for tomorrow (Saturday) to see where we really are” said both BUT & MAG. Williams sounds more confident, the straights are their element and the FW36 feels well adapted to this stop & go layout with many slow corners. The opposite story comes from Red Bull, “we are going to suffer in this track” they say, the long straights showing their deficiencies as well as the lack of power on corner exit. Ferrari’s performance is always a question mark, their laptimes have more to do with ALO’s abilities to dial-in the chassis than its true pace. RAI is not happy with his F14T, the main problem is to get the tyres to operating temperature. He is 11th two full seconds behind HAM.

The human side of Formula 1 is very much present in Sochi, all the drivers are talking about how difficult is to get to their business of racing with Jules Bianchi present in their minds.

Let’s turn our attention to QF. As the track is evolving so rapidly it’s not a bad idea (depending on what part of the planet you are) to check the timechart from FP3 when the teams will concentrate their programs to prepare for single-lap performance.

Just in case (I fall asleep) here’s mine: Cato - HAM  ROS  BOT

‘Till tomorrow

Cato