The second round of the 2021 FIA Formula 1 World Championship began with training on Friday at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo and Dino Ferrari in Imola as the teams prepared for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix on Sunday.
Two 60-minute sessions – FP1 and FP2 – on the 4.909 kilometer long track with 19 corners made the track time on Friday with the weather conditions in Italy sunny but fresh – the air temperature was 11 degrees Celsius (51.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and track the temperature at 22 degrees Celsius (71.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
In the first race, Mazepin and Schumacher pursued identical tire strategies. Both started the session with the Pirelli P Zero Yellow Medium Rubber. After the wake-up runs were full, Mazepin drove 14 laps to Schumacher on the 9th. The next step was to switch to new sets of P Zero Red soft rubber. A badly timed stop with a red flag for the battered cars of Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon consumed valuable track time and left Mazepin and Schumacher only one excursion on the soft terrain. Mazepin set a fastest lap of 1: 18.823 – good for 18th place overall, before a final lap from the final corner and subsequent contact with the barrier in the last minute produced a second red flag. Schumacher finished his morning excursion in 19th place overall, his best lap of the session with 1: 19.480 on his nine-lap run on the soft terrain.
Schumacher was the first to try the P Zero White hard tire in FP2. He followed up with a stint on new softs – he set his fastest lap of the session with a 1: 17,350, which would put him in 19th place on the timesheet. The reigning F2 champion ended his running session with a short, high-fuel stint on the medium terrain. A precautionary gear change on Mazepin’s VF-21 after his retirement in FP1 meant that the rookie switched to FP2 20 minutes before the end of FP2. After a short stint on medium tires, the team switched to softs for an eight-lap run. Mazepin’s best lap was a 1: 17.857 for 20th place overall. He finished the track on Friday with a fuel-rich foray on the hard tires.
Uralkali Haas’ F1 team drove a total of 84 laps over FP1 and FP2 on Friday – 38 from Mazepin and 46 from Schumacher.
Nikita Mazepin: “I think we had a positive day – I really learned a lot about the car. I think I took another very good step forward with the team to understand which car I want to drive. Me had a good lap time in FP1 it was a good qualification simulation, I was happy with it. I made a mistake from which there was no turning back, but overall it was a positive FP1 and then FP2 the table I wouldn’t want to go to sleep because I thought I left some time out there. There is of course a balance I haven’t mastered yet, but we have time. All eyes are now on the third RP – that Weekend is making progress and I have to keep going too. “
Mick Schumacher: “It was fun, it felt great today. The track hasn’t changed much since 2016, so that was positive. In terms of the feeling and the fun, it was definitely similar to my last visit here back then The colder conditions today meant we could push a lot more in a row, which has both positive and negative effects. The only negative is that it’s a cold temperature and it takes forever to warm up the tires. Sometimes it’s even for a long time Difficult visibility It is even more difficult to keep the temperatures there and keep them there. On the positive side, it means a lot of laps so I can try a lot of things right away, especially on the C2 tire. I was able to really figure out the limit especially on the FP2 and improving with every lap on C4. The first lap was a warm-up, then we went through the run and improved with every lap, right now we’re pretty happy happy, but it only really counts in qualifying. “
Günther Steiner: “No unsuccessful FP1 and FP2. We had a few small problems during the sessions, but overall I think that our learning process with the drivers will continue – we are making progress. We are getting faster, it is not consistently faster.” Obviously Nikita (Mazepin) was spun on his final lap and it was a pretty fast lap – a very fast lap, but it started on the final corner. It wasn’t ideal and we lost some time with him in FP2 when we just changed his gearbox to check it out. If you do that, you will be out of sync with other cars in FP2 and then your tires will get cold and it’s a downward spiral. So his FP2 wasn’t ideal. Mick (Schumacher) did an overall good job in the two hours he had today to get the best out of his laps. “
Check out our Imola Friday gallery here.
The post Emilia Romagna GP: Notes from the training team – Haas first appeared on monter-une-startup.
