Mario Isola admits that Friday runs Autodrome in Sochi was affected by Saturday’s weather forecast and the teams wanted to find out as much as possible about each of the three tire compounds.
Friday’s free practice sessions are expected to be the only ones in dry conditions, with heavy rain forecast for Saturday which could disrupt both final practice and qualifying.
Isola, the director of F1 and auto racing Pirelli Motorsport, says all ten teams were eager to learn more about how the soft, medium and hard mixes work in Sochi in order to find the best strategy options for Sunday’s race, which is expected to be held in drier conditions than Saturday.
Valtteri Bottas showed strong pace on every compound, with his best lap of 1: 33.593 being ridden on the soft red-walled compound, but the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team Driver also set the fastest time on the Medium Compound. McLaren F1 team‘S Lando Norris was the fastest driver on the tough mix.
“The weather expected for tomorrow influenced the free practice today. The drivers focused more on collecting a lot of data on all three connections and setting a lap time just in case the FP2 has an impact on the starting positions for the race tomorrow there will be wet conditions all day, ”said Isola.
“The track actually offered quite good grip and, as expected, a lot of track development, although the rain will probably reset the asphalt tomorrow, which adds to the question marks.
“Under these circumstances, the red flag in FP2 was unfortunate as the teams will likely start the race with a distinct lack of dry running.”
The post Mario Isola from Pirelli: “Tomorrow’s expected weather influences free practice today” first appeared on monter-une-startup.
