"Cato Batista" 04/07/2014 21:29:00 ID #611

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Day one at Silverstone and no changes in the status quo.

Division A: Lewis ahead of Nico, not by much. The British was definitely faster in all 3 sectors but was never able to put together a complete lap but the German was 2 tenths slower despite using the harder compound. Neither of the Mercedes drivers was able to string all sectors without mistakes in this very demanding circuit. HAM had his engine stopping on track cutting his FP2 to only 14 laps compared to 35 for ROS. Mercedes performance was even more impressive in the high-load simulations lapping an average 3 seconds faster than the rest in the options. Pirelli’s seleccion for this track are Soft/white & Hard/orange.

Division B: Red Bull looks back in form, their problems from Austria were ECU-software related according to Renault. Both RB9s were consistently the best of the rest except for the irrepressible ALO whos found a way to get the 3rd best time in both sessions. The F14T is showing its shortcoming in this track where very fast directional changes are key. Kimi was 1.3 seconds slower than Fernando!.  Williams will not repeat their Austrian form: MAS had a big crash after only 7 laps in P1 and the team gave Susie Wolff (Mercedes motorsport chief Toto’s  wife) BOT’s car for her F1 debut, the first woman to drive an F1 in an official session for 20 years, but she had mechanical problems and the team had to write off most of FP1. As MAS’s car was rebuilt BOT did most of the team’s work focusing on race set-up. BOT sixth fastest time in P2 on hard tyres is a testament of the FW36 potential. Toro Rosso made it top ten in both sessions as they normally do, just behind McLaren.

P1- ROS (1.35.424) HAM ALO RIC RAI VET BUT KVY VER

P2- HAM (1.34.508)  ALO RIC RAI VET BOT BUT MAG RAI VER

The scene is set for QF tomorrow. HAM is just a fraction faster and smoother in corner entry than ROS as he is more comfortable with late-braking. That is translating to an advantage of aprox 2 tenths a lap. The problem for everyone and not only the Merc drivers is the wind that makes almost impossible to lap consistently, an issue compounded by the ERS-harvesting energy from the braking system that makes the balance to work inconsistently. These new-gen GP cars are definitely not easy to drive.

Our last QF effort in Austria yielded zero points, something we managed 2 times last season so we shouldn’t be too surprised!

Let’s see this time.

Cato HAM  ROS  RIC

Good luck!