The first Friday practice session at Suzuka (Part 3)
Lewis Hamilton’s accident drastically affected the session as some vital time was wasted by the yellow flag period. However, this will affect McLaren even more as Lewis was set to run some big tests in these practice sessions but it seems that after his
crash, it will not be possible.
The track finally cleared and Alonso started to push in his first run of the day. After some improvements from various drivers, Fernando barely avoided the same mistake Hamilton made near the Degner.
Mark Webber and Rubens Barrichello joined the track and scored as the fifth and seventh fastest respectively. Jenson Button led the McLaren testing effort as the only McLaren driver testing their latest upgrades. Mark Webber scored the second fastest lap
of the session after an hour passed into the session.
However, Webber struggled in the next lap as he left his braking a bit late before the 180-degree hairpin and missed the apex by at least a meter but still managed to improve his time.
Kubica became quite a threat to the Red Bulls as they were constantly out timing each other. The top three drivers kept challenging each other for the top three positions but Vettel was clearly the fastest out of the three. The Red Bulls cleared Kubica’s
time by half a second near the 70min marker and returned to the pits after a successful testing.
The Red Bull of Mark Webber was then parked into the garage so that the engineers could study the data acquired by his car. Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg enjoyed a clear track and improved their performance. Rubens moved to sixth place after two
flying laps. Both of the Williams were no in 6th and 7th places.
Jaime Alguersuari made a huge mistake at the hairpin but managed to control his way on to the track without any visible damage to his Toro Rosso. However, Hamilton was still in fifth place even though he did not score any more laps since his accident. Lewis
must be praying for a rainy weekend ahead in order to catch up with the rest of the drivers.
Meanwhile, both of the Williams returned to the pits after some strong laps but Alguersuari stayed out on track and score a lap slower than his teammate Buemi. Button and Alonso came out for a late run on their used tyres alongside Michael Schumacher.
The session took an interesting turn as Sebastian Vettel decided to come out on the track as well to test their final set of harder tyre compound. Many drivers decided to come out on track and go for a final run with just 10mins left in the first session
of the Friday practice.
None of the drivers was able to improve their times on worn hard tyres but stayed on track for testing. Jenson Button followed his teammate’s footsteps and it seemed that both of the McLarens will end their practice session in despair. Jenson slid on the
very same Degner as Lewis Hamilton but regained control of his McLaren and saved it from the tyre wall. McLaren took a sigh of relief or otherwise, their test sessions would have ended in vein. The drivers returned to the pits as the 90mins of the practice
session ended. The order remained the same with the Red Bulls on top followed by Robert Kubica’s Renault in third. Adrian Sutil also made an impressive performance as he finished in 4th place ahead of Lewis Hamilton who stayed in fifth position
keeping in mind he crashed in near the 45-minute marker. We can say that if McLaren were to stay out for longer, it might have been stronger than the Red Bull.
However, the chequered flag wrapped up the first practice session and it seems that Red Bull is the dominant team out of the top 3 teams. On the other hand, Ferrari and McLaren performed relatively equally. The second practice session will clear things even
more for the race ahead that is set to take place at Suzuka this weekend.
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