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How does the final showdown round of arguably the most closely-contested championship in history look after the first day of running? Close.
But neither Mercedes nor Red Bull has found the ideal trade-off between single lap and race pace as the track proved quite tricky for everyone to read, especially as it cooled into the evening.
With both teams further adrift of their potential than is usual on a Friday, it’s as if we are being teased further about the decisive outcome of this epic battle will be.
Max Verstappen topped the headline times in the first session, the Red Bull – as often seems to be the case – more quickly into the groove than the Mercedes.
Although Mercedes’ Silverstone upgrade ultimately widened its set-up window courtesy of the enhanced diffuser stall – something that really came home to roost with the baseline set-up rethink pre-Brazil – it still seems to take a little more massaging than the Red Bull to get it into its sweet spot.
But by the second session the picture had changed considerably.
There, the Mercedes was much the fastest car over a single lap, but slower on the long runs.
The Mercedes drivers were very happy with the balance on new tyres just as the Red Bull seemed to fall out of its sweet spot as the track cooled into the dusk hours.
Verstappen was 0.6s adrift of Lewis Hamilton’s session-heading time, and even 0.3s off Esteban Ocon’s Alpine (suspected to be running a higher engine mode), all of which tending to underline that this was not peak Red Bull-Honda.
But comparing the long-run times of the second session, Verstappen was much the fastest – though with the proviso it wasn’t on the same compound of tyre as the two Mercedes drivers.
Verstappen’s eight-lap soft-tyre run averaged 0.7s faster than the medium tyre run of the Mercedes drivers. That’s not a like-for-like comparison obviously, but 0.7s is more than the difference between the compounds accounts for.
Alpine for example, split its tyre choices and Esteban Ocon’s soft compound run was only 0.1s faster than Fernando Alonso’s medium over a similar distance. At Ferrari Charles Leclerc on softs was 0.3s faster than Carlos Sainz on mediums.
“The single lap was coming quite easily,” confirmed Mercedes’ trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin, “but the long runs weren’t great. Neither driver was particularly happy with the car.”
Understeer was prevailing limitation, but the team is confident that it has plenty of options to finesse the car for Saturday.
Verstappen was running a higher downforce rear wing than the sister car of Sergio Perez and it’s not clear yet if they will converge.
“We made a few changes to the set up across the two sessions,” said Verstappen, “and I do think they are positive. We are still learning and understanding a few things.
“The short runs didn’t go to plan, we are lacking a bit of pace but I think the long runs were more competitive so that’s important. I’m looking forward to qualifying tomorrow to put it all together.”
On their best single laps, Verstappen was losing 0.4s to Hamilton on the straights, half-a-tenth through Turns 6-7 and almost 0.2s in Turn 9.
But, with the Honda power units running towards the end of their mileage allocation – more so than the more recently replaced units available to Hamilton – some of the straightline difference today can probably be attributed to a lower engine mode.
By comparison, Ocon’s Alpine took 0.1s out of Hamilton on his way to that second-fastest time.
The Alpines do, however, look like they are back in the happy place they last visited in Qatar. Their long-run performance was also best of the rest after the top two teams and at this early stage of the weekend they appear to have a couple of tenths in hand over Ferrari – where Leclerc was much happier than Sainz.
“As the track grip comes up as it cools, the deg seems to increase,” said Leclerc, “but the balance wasn’t too bad.”
Sainz however was all at sea.
“We just have not hit the ground running with our set up,” he said. “and I felt we made no progress at the end, so we have a lot of work to do.”
As does everyone, it seems.
