Canadian Grand Prix – practice

June 9, 2007 by paul
Filed under: Uncategorized

I don’t know what happened yesterday but I definitely set the PVR to record Friday practice 2 on Speed but it wasn’t there when I went to watch it last night. Fortunately there are plenty of sources of F1 news, so I’ve caught up with yesterday’s sessions; there’s no TV coverage (at least not here) of this morning’s practice session, so I’ll watch it via the official FIA telemetry and the qualifying on TV with the telemetry as usual. (Weekend schedule)

Alonso was fastest in both Friday sessions (1:17.759 & 1:16.550); teammate Hamilton was 2nd fastest in the morning (1:17.967) and Ferrari’s Massa was 2nd quickest in the 2nd session (1:17.090). Hamilton: “I have to say it is an extremely tough circuit, it’s heavy braking, slowly building up to the pace, there are quite a lot of walls that you can easily hit and it is very, very slippery.” The afternoon practice was halted briefly when Finn Heikki Kovalainen collided with a wall, appearing to badly damage the left-hand side of his Renault, ending his day after just 13 laps. [source: BBC]

Saturday practice:
10 minutes in to the session and no-one has set a lap time as yet, although 19 of the 22 drivers have been out briefly.
Weather: air temp 24°C; track 39°C; wind 2.5m/s; humidity 59%; pressure 1015.1mBar.
Liuzzi looks like he might be the first to post a time… at last!
VL 1:22.946
15mins gone – 45mins remain of this session
VL 1:20.762
RS 1:19.744
RS 1:18.668
20mins gone
KR 1:18.667
NR 1:18.020
25mins gone
FM 1:17.661
KR 1:16.901
KR 1:16.819
LH 1:16.617
30mins left; yet to post a lap time are Sato, Heidfeld, Alonso & Coulthard.
27mins left: Red flag is out – session stopped but the clock ticks on
Apparently there’s oil on the track, believed to have been dropped by a Renault
25mins left – red flag still out
20mins left – ditto
17mins left – red flag is withdrawn and we’re off again, although I don’t know who would want to be first to see if the oil is all cleared up.
15mins left – no-one’s ventured out yet
10mins left – still no-one has gone out – I wonder if we’ll see anyone before the end of the session … and with that Trulli & Rosberg set off
Aha! Even though the red flag was withdrawn ~7 minutes ago, the session on restarted with 10mins left, hence the empty track
(Reminder: Hamilton is fastest @ 1:16.617)
About half the field is now on-track
5mins left
FA is posting fastest sector times: 21.3, 24.3 … S3′s not so good, but he jumps to P1
FA 1:16.465
LH posting good sector times too
LH 1:16.071
KR steals P2 with 1:16.460
3mins left
1min left; top 3 are LH, KR & FA
Chequered flag is out – current lap will count as usual

Top times are:

L.Hamilton (McLaren) 1:16.071
K.Raikkonen (Ferrari) 1:16.459 [+0.388secs to LH]
F.Alonso (McLaren) 1:16.465 [+0.394]
F.Massa (Ferrari) 1:16.666 [+0.595]
T.Sato (Super Aguri) 1:16.864 [+0.793] <– impressive
N.Rosberg (Williams) 1:16.975 [+0.904]

DC was P9 (1:17.391); JB was P12 (1:17.468).

p.s. I haven’t commented on Villeneuve’s comments (about Hamilton being dangerous / too aggressive) because (a) JV is a jealous ex-driver, and (b) he wasn’t all that good when he was driving! I haven’t noticed LH do anything I’d describe as dangerous – I think JV’s just bitter that it’s not him.