"Cato Batista" 02/07/2016 3:50:27 ID #957

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Seems the Mercedes are working even better here than in other tracks. Nico is so far having a smoother run than Lewis after day one, he was quicker on both sessions and if HAM was only 0.019s slower on FP2 the German is lapping consistently faster and trouble free.

The afternoon session was hit by a storm with heavy winds and rain almost flooding one sector (the pitlane) but completely missing the other half of the track. It dried up later on, but over an hour of data-logging track time to learn tyre management was lost, and most teams decided not to run wet-weather programs since the forecasts for Sunday is cloudy with possible passing showers but not expecting a full-wet race.

The new pavement is smoother and faster, and with the ultra-soft compound introduced by Pirelli lap times are already 1 second faster than last year’s pole. The challenge is now how to correct the early graining the tyres are showing in the grippy surface, in such a short track (the Mercedes are expected to lap in the 65 seconds bracket) each race pit stop will result in almost half a lap delay, pushing all the teams to find a way to make this a one stop race. Lower track temperatures will help, particularly in Red Bull’s case.

Ferrari looks again like the-best-of-the-rest but it’s hard to tell if they have a real advantage over the customer Mercedes teams Williams & Force India and the Red Bull senior and junior teams. So far the Italian cars are only staying in front in sector one which rewards horsepower. VET was caught with the wrong brake balance spinning into the kitty-litter, but it was VER who had the most damage today when he twice damaged his car  (a track rod and a front wing) when going over the new and very high sidetrack kerbing. Although he was very vocal against these new additions set in place to respect track limits, the rest of the drivers simply adapted to it.

FP1 ROS (1.07.373) HAM VET RAI RIC SAI MAS VER KVY BOT

FP2 - ROS (1.07.967) HAM HUL VET RIC SAI VER RAI BOT BUT

VET had a gearbox replacement and will have to take a 5 grid penalty.

Grid starting position is critical at the A1 Ring, QF will be of extreme relevance.

Let me try first, we have to catch Tim!! Cato -ROS  HAM  VET

Cheers