The fourth round of the 2021 FIA Formula 1 World Championship began with training on Friday at the Circuit de Barcelona – Catalonia, Spain, as teams prepared for the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday.
The race on Friday took place under sunny conditions. The track activity on the opening day consisted of two 60-minute sessions – FP1 and FP2 – on the 4.655-kilometer track with 16 corners.
Both Mazepin and Schumacher started the first RP with a basic outing on the Pirelli P Zero White hard tire before switching to the Red Softs, where they set their respective fastest times of the session. Schumacher logged a 1: 20.766 to finish 18th, while Mazepin posted a best time of 1: 21.976 for 20th. Valuable time was lost thanks to a red flag stop to recover Alfa Romeo’s Robert Kubica’s stranded car. Just 10 minutes before the end, Mazepin and Schumacher returned to run some fuel on the soft and hard tires.
The FP2 started for the first time with a preliminary outing for both riders on the yellow medium. Schumacher switched to the soft rubber for his qualifying simulations and drove a lap of 1: 20.326 for the 19th, while Mazepin recorded a 1: 20.753 for the 20th on the timesheets. High-fuel stints with pit stops ended the afternoon’s route for Mazepin and Schumacher.
The Uralkali Haas F1 team drove a total of 102 laps on Friday over the 1st and 2nd RP – 49 from Mazepin and 53 from Schumacher.
Nikita Mazepin: “I think the track has improved with the sessions. Obviously Turn 10 is a bit new, which means the asphalt is very black so there is still some dust and oil in it. The more laps we do the more it is gummed. ” It’s a Friday again so there are three free exercises and we have another tomorrow. I always study when I’m out, but so far my weekend starts where I’m three steps from where I used to be, driving different cars and then slowly taking the steps forward. When I’m one step ahead of where I wanted to start I think this is a good day for me – today was no different. “
Mick Schumacher: “It was okay, a bit tricky here and there, but learned a lot today and definitely tried a lot to improve for tomorrow. It seemed like the hard tire was the hardest tire to switch on, it looked the same Everyone else, so we switched to soft tires pretty quickly in FP1, I’d say the progress over the day has been pretty positive, there are little things that we need to improve and we can improve straights, but we have one a bit of effort to find the downforce we want – but that’s exactly what we have and we have to work with it. “
Günther Steiner: “It was quite a difficult FP1 for both drivers to start on the C1 hard tire. Obviously, Nikita (Mazepin) was injured more while turning – there was very little grip on the C1, which gave him none.” a lot of self-confidence for the future. They had to readjust everything when they put on the softer C3 tires. I would say we made some progress in FP2, not necessarily on the timesheet – we can read this for ourselves. We made progress, I think we’re getting there slowly and that was only really possible because we had more than 100 laps today with no real problems. We have to keep working and hopefully we can find a little more in FP3 and are ready to qualify. At the moment I wouldn’t say we’re ready to qualify, but everyone will work hard to get there. “
Check out our Friday gallery from Barcelona here.
The post GP in Spain: Notes from the training team – Haas first appeared on monter-une-startup.
