2021 Abu Dhabi GP : Post-Friday practice reactions from Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes

Mercedes dominated the Friday practice sessions at Yas Marina circuit ahead of important Qualifying and Sunday’s race. 2021 Formula One champions will be decided on Sunday, December 12th.

In the FP1, Max Verstappen was Fastest but Mercedes drivers are not far away. Valtteri Bottas completed 27 laps with a fastest lap time of 1:25.205, which is good enough for P2, +0.196s shy of Max’s time.

Meanwhile Lewis Hamilton completes 25 laps and sets fastest lap time of 1:25.355,+0.346s down on Verstappen’s P1 time. But his time is good enough for P3.

In the twilight FP2 conditions, Lewis goes fastest with a 1:23.691 lap, which is +0.641s faster than title rival Max Verstappen in P4 and +0.343s clear of Esteban Ocon in P2. The Brit also managed to complete 26 laps.

Valtteri Bottas comes home in P3 ahead of Max Verstappen after completing day high 29 laps. His fastest lap time, 1:24.083 is +0.392s slower than Lewis’ P1 time.

Lewis Hamilton

“It’s been a decent day, I like the changes they’ve made to the track – it’s made it free-flowing and more enjoyable. It’s obviously close between us all and a little unknown in terms of relative pace but I’m sure it’s going to be super close, as it has been in the previous races. The car doesn’t feel too bad, it started off in a good place and then got a bit worse in FP1.

In FP2, it was little better with some of the changes we made. Now we just need to crunch through the data and try to figure out how we can improve, the target is always moving. On my long run, I was trying to follow the car ahead and it still wasn’t easy here but it should be better than in the past. Overall I feel good, I feel great in my body and we made some positive steps setup-wise so we’ll try to perfect it tonight and come back hard tomorrow.”

Valtteri Bottas

“It was nice to get a feel of the modified layout, the track feels better than before with more flow and some increased overtaking opportunities. When I had a little moment on track, I went off-line where it’s very dusty and I was a little too wide on the kerbs before that corner and paid for it in the next one – a nice drift!

We changed the car quite a bit from FP1 to FP2 and it felt like a step forward so I’m comfortable overall with the car, but none of the laps today were amazing so there should still be more to come. We had a decent long run with the Medium tyre and the car was pretty consistent, you could feel the new faster corners stressing the rear axle a little more than before. We’ll do important work overnight and be ready for tomorrow.”

Andrew Shovlin

“It’s been an interesting day and we’ve covered quite a lot of ground as far as the setup work goes. In the morning we weren’t particularly happy with the single lap work but the long run was well balanced. In the afternoon, the single lap was coming quite easily but the long run wasn’t great and neither driver was particularly happy with the car. 

The challenge tonight is to understand the effect of the changes we’ve been making and to find the right compromise between the low and the high fuel running. We’re warming up the simulator in Brackley for a busy night of setup work but we’ve got a good read on the issues today, so hopefully between the work here at the track, and the work back there, we can make some good progress overnight.”