Mark Hughes on how Mugello’s first F1 race is likely to unfold

“It’s fast,” said Lewis Hamilton of the Mugello track after his first day of driving it. “It’s definitely a real challenge. I’m just not that great at it yet, but I’m working on it.

“It almost feels like Turkey. It’s incredibly fast through [Turns] 6, 7, 8, 9 [Casanova, Savelli and Arrabbiatas]. It’s intense. I have to say it’s amazing to experience it.”

It’s unusual to hear drivers saying they need to find time from themselves rather than the car. But Hamilton was not alone in that.

These cars produce power and downforce that puts them rather out of scale with a track such as this that allows so much of their potential to be unleashed for such a high proportion of the lap. Even the best of drivers were finding themselves having to build up to it.

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Coming to a track generally outside the experience of F1 was always going to be an intriguing prospect. Mugello is a circuit, what’s more, that provides an unusual sequence of interconnected high-speed, long-duration turns.

There is not a slow part on the entire track and the lowest gear used in the whole lap is fourth (at first corner San Donato). With just one significant straight, it is obviously a high-downforce track and many of those evocatively-named curves are taken with the throttle foot absolutely pinned to the floor.

Combined with an abrasive surface, it means the lateral loads on the tyres are extreme and unrelenting. A tyre only really gets a chance to dissipate the heat created from cornering when travelling down the straight.

“It’s one of the most physically demanding circuits I’ve ever been at” :: Lewis Hamilton

Consequently, it gets very little cooling time around this lap. The sliding energy on the tread is high. Likewise, the stress loads applied to the core. With both core and tread uniformly overworked, this was expected to have significant strategy implications.

Pirelli reckons the fastest way to run this race is to two-stop. But that’s just based upon the lap time numbers of estimated time loss from tyre degradation vs time loss for a pitstop.

Once you factor in the game theory of what the others might do and the impossible-to-calculate time losses through traffic, the strategists looking after the faster cars will surely be looking for ways to make the one-stop work, as usual.

It might be expected that to pull this off would require a lot of tyre management by the drivers. But actually the apparent degradation of even the softest tyre Pirelli brought (the C3) was surprisingly low. It may be that the relative lack of braking (the brakes are used only six times through the lap of 15 corners) is helping counteract the pounding they are taking laterally. Whatever the reason, teams and drivers alike were surprised.

Neither Mercedes nor Red Bull got to make lengthy stints on the softest tyre in the afternoon, but Valtteri Bottas – quickest in both sessions – did a strong eight-lap run on them in the morning. There was little indication anyone was in significant trouble with tyre degradation.

Neither Bottas (who was quickest in both sessions) nor Lewis Hamilton were absolutely nailing the tyres through the long Correntaio and Bucine corners in the race stint-sim runs, but otherwise were running at a reasonably hard pace.

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“The tyres worked better than we were expecting,” said Bottas. “It’s a really high energy circuit and always in the high-speed corners they are going to be overheating – and seems like Sunday it’s going to be really hot as well – but they were OK.”

Max Verstappen’s Red Bull was consistently quicker than Mercedes in that final sector and was just 0.048s off Bottas in the morning, though a chunkier 0.25s off in the afternoon (when he was behind both Mercedes rather than just Bottas).

A red flag for a Lando Norris accident prevented Verstappen completing his planned long run on the softs. When the session restarted he did a seven-lap race stint simulation on mediums. At the end he reported that the tyres were finished, but he was at that stage lapping only 0.3s slower than at the start of the stint.

The Mercedes drivers were still going strong at this point, so perhaps Verstappen had just pushed a little harder than them in the early part of the run.

“There are times where there’s no point changing the car because you’re not driving it well enough” :: Lewis Hamilton

Intriguingly, the pattern of relative performance between Mercedes and Verstappen is not as settled as it usually looks at this stage of the weekend. Verstappen did the fastest averages of all on both the soft and the medium, but the margins were small.

The lack of obvious overtaking spots and the single DRS zone suggest that this isn’t going to be an overtaking-fest but it will be interesting to see if any moves are triggered by driver mistakes – because the physical work-outs are going to be extreme.

“It’s one of the most physically demanding circuits I’ve ever been at,” confirmed Hamilton.

“Yeah, there’s a few places that there’s definitely not much space to do mistakes,” said Bottas, “and that’s how it should be. It brings an extra excitement. You make a mistake, you’ll be penalised for it. I like these types of circuit.”

Hamilton was definitely half-a-step behind his team-mate in getting comfortable with the place. He was working more on himself than the car.

“There’s not a huge amount of change I need to do to the car at the moment because when you’re experienced there are times where there’s no point changing the car because you’re not driving it well enough,” he said.

“So you’ve got to get to the point that you’re at the limit and then you can tweak it. So there are areas that I’ve got to make a big change but I’ll do that tonight and hopefully improve it tomorrow.

“The first and second sector is a little bit weak for me, particularly the first sector so there’s plenty to come from that section as you saw Max and Valtteri were very quick through there.

“A lot of studying tonight. Hopefully I’ll rectify that tomorrow.”

By contrast, Verstappen seemed remarkably on top of it all.

“Balance wise, there are always things that can be improved, but overall I was pretty pleased,” he said.

“This is a very cool track to drive in an F1 car with so many fast corners and to be able to take Arrabbiata 1 and 2 flat out easily is quite incredible and really enjoyable to drive.

“It is pretty physical and I felt alright today but of course 59 laps in a row in the heat is not going to be easy.

“I like a bit of a challenge and we shouldn’t complain as we train hard to sit in these cars and we should just enjoy it. In terms of tyres, I expected it to be worse so let’s see how they hold up over the rest of the weekend.

“The track is my type of track – really flowing with no slow corners, so I’m looking forward to doing more laps.”

Other than the three usual suspects, the other stand-out was the better-than-usual performance of Ferrari around its own track – Charles Leclerc third-quickest in the morning, just 0.3s off Bottas and Verstappen, though falling back to 10th in the afternoon, one place behind Kimi Raikkonen’s Alfa Romeo.

Sebastian Vettel’s long run on the softs in the afternoon was a lot more competitive than his medium-shod run and directly competitive with the Renaults of Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon.

Leclerc – like Hamilton – didn’t really get a proper run together amid the red flags. The Ferrari’s high drag won’t be unduly punished here and the flowing layout is less punishing of the power shortfall, but it’s still not the easiest of cars – both Leclerc and Vettel spun at the long Correntaio right-hander.

In reality, the Renault looked genuinely the third-quickest car, more instantly onto a good pace than either of its two usual rivals Racing Point and McLaren. But this part of the grid – including the Monza-winning AlphaTauri team – is incredibly densely-packed and the slightest imbalance can tumble you down the order.

Taking out the traffic-compromised and cool-off laps, the averages of the leading contenders looked as follows. The order is however skewed by the varying length of the runs.

SOFTS

Verstappen (4 laps) 1m22.788s
Bottas (7 laps) 1m22.887s
Vettel (5 laps) 1m23.085s
Ocon (7 laps) 1m23.868s
Ricciardo (10 laps) 1m23.872s
Perez (11 laps) 1m23.982s
Gasly (5 laps) 1m24.209s
Stroll (11 laps) 1m24.226s

MEDIUMS

Verstappen (7 laps) 1m22.623s
Perez (6 laps ) 1m22.627s
Bottas (8 laps) 1m22.678s
Stroll (7 laps) 1m22.727s
Ocon (6 laps) 1m23.340s
Vettel (10 laps) 1m25.090s

HARDS

Hamilton (5 laps) 1m22.769s
Ricciardo (4 laps) 1m23.068s

Practice 2 Results