British GP 2013 - QF

Expecting a dry weekend  half the grid didn’t even bother going out on FP1. The afternoon session was used by everyone to evaluate tyre wear with very little time set aside to work on QF settings.

Today’s lower temperatures were causing front-left tyre graining, but the real problem they will have to deal with on the warmer days coming up will be back-tyre degradation, specifically as we'd seen in the past when the rubber reaches ‘the cliff’ and suddenly loses most of its grip. This is the issue that affected Mercedes in Barcelona where they fell from the front row to outside the points by lapping 2 seconds slower than the winning Ferrari. Rosberg was quickest in the mostly dry second practice ahead of the Red Bulls. Massa had his 3rd practice accident in the last 3 races seriously affecting Ferrari’s preparations; Alonso was left to continue with his initial program of medium compound evaluation but the team was now left very little data on the hard compound. Both Force India and Toro Rosso are showing their good form of lately making it easily in the top 10. McLaren is having its worst season in ages, Button & Perez are still losing ground to the front and very soon we could see them giving up on this season to concentrate on next year’s car.

FP2 results (let’s not bother with FP1)-

ROS (1.32.248) WEB (+.299) VET (.432) DIR (.584) HAM (.633) RIC (.923) VER (1.042) SUT (1.065) GRO (1.074) ALO (1.246)

What we learned from the leading teams long runs (aprox 15 laps stints) is that Lotus continues to be very gentle with its rubber, both options & primes, and they definitely have the fastest chassis on the mediums. To everyone’s concern Vettel was very quick on hards on his long stints, even quicker than Webber on mediums (!). Hamilton showed a lot of progress managing hard compound durability –he was faster than team-mate Rosberg on mediums- surely making the rest of the pitlane very angry thinking this is a direct result from that private Pirelli test.

It will not be a bad idea for you to wait until P3 Saturday’s results to make your QF picks, but it’s becoming clear that the front grid positions will fall in Red Bull or Mercedes’ hands.

The most interesting of all Silverstone’s stats is that pole position doesn't have a significant advantage: only in 4 of the last 18 races the poleman has won the race.

In other news, I want to invite you to sign up for twitter from the front menu of the CFA web page. Now there are several racing sites around the world following us in @f1cfa. Check it out.

My QF picks: WEB  ROS  VET

Good luck

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