After a four-week pause in action, Formula 1 come to alive in Spa, Mercedes looked strong at 2021 Belgian GP Friday practice session after Valtteri Bottas finished P1 in FP1.
The early morning rain at the circuit gave opportunity to teams to try wet weather tires before switching their focus to slicks. Mercedes focused more on long run pace and optimizing the car for better race pace than going for glory runs.
Valtteri was fastest in FP1 with a lap time of 1:45.199, while Lewis finished P18, +3.025s off Bottas time after he was held up into the final chicane on his Quali simulation on the Soft tyre. Both drivers managed to complete 18 & 17 laps in the morning session respectively.
In the afternoon session, Max Verstappen sets early pace but the Mercedes duo not far behind. It was P2 for Valtteri in the second practice session with lap time of 1:44.513, +0.041s shy of Max’s leading time.
Lewis close behind in P3 with a 1:44.544 lap, Just 0.072s separated the top three drivers in FP2.
Lewis Hamilton
“Finding the right balance here is a big challenge. In FP1, we tried one way, and then we changed it this afternoon. The pace was quite similar – you try one option, and you are faster in the first and third sectors, but slower in the middle. And then you try the other option and it’s the opposite.
So, figuring out the right balance is really tricky. It’s also tough to gain knowledge in these short sessions but we’re navigating it the best we can and at least it was dry for most of the running. Overall, it was an okay day, but I didn’t quite have the car underneath me, so we’ve got some work to do tonight to figure that out.
The weather is also going to play a big role. If it does rain, you obviously want more downforce, but then if it doesn’t rain, you are a sitting duck on the straights. So we have to be very careful with the changes we make.”
Valtteri Bottas
“Everything felt pretty good out there today. As we saw from the timesheets, it’s going to be very close with Red Bull once again so we’ll look into the detail tonight and see what marginal gains we can find. The pace on both the short and the long runs was pretty decent.
It’s always tricky to compare in detail from the practice sessions, but at least the feeling is good, so that is a positive start to the weekend. We looked quite fast on the straights with the wing level we ran and in the race, it’ll be important for me to be quick in sectors one and three, to make the overtakes. But then, if it rains, you want more downforce. So, session by session, we need to see how it is going to look. That decision will be key for Qualifying.”
Andrew Shovlin
“We’ve had a pretty clean day overall. It’s often tricky on Friday here with the long lap and unpredictable weather but we’ve made good use of the sessions and have ended up with a reasonable balance.
It’s hard to know quite where we stand; the circuit is very power sensitive so going up and down on modes can give big swings in lap time but the car seems to be working as it should and it looks like we’re there or thereabouts on pace. There’s a bit more to find on the balance and Lewis had some vibrations on the long run that won’t have helped but hopefully we can make some further progress with the car overnight. We’re expecting more of the same from the weather over the rest of the weekend, it’s quite hard to read more than 30 minutes into the future so planning qualifying and the race could be tricky but it’s not unusual to be in that position here.”
