evancharley5: Another practice washout hampers teams’ progress | 2012 German Grand Prix Friday practice analysis

Another practice washout hampers teams’ progress is an original article from F1 Fanatic. If this article has been published anywhere other than F1 Fanatic it is an infringement of copyright.

The extent of the rain that fell during practice at the Hockenheimring seemed to catch the teams by surprise.

Notably, none of those who usually run test drivers in the first session chose to postpone their runs until the second, which would have given their regular drivers the benefit of a drier track, as we have seen them do before.

Mark Webber admitted the teams had been caught out by the conditions: “That was a bit unreal.

“We didn’t expect the rain to be this bad today, but it was quite heavy at times – we even used the extreme full wet tyre. That’s two races in a row now with tricky conditions.”

They all had to make do with what little dry running they had in the first session, particularly those such as McLaren who had major updates to evaluate. Lewis Hamilton said the team were pleased with what they’ve seen from their revised sidepods and other upgrades so far:

“The men and women back at the factory did an incredible job to get all the upgrades to the track this weekend – they all deserve a big pat on the back for that. It’s quite a positive step. It’s still difficult to accurately predict was sort of a step we’ve taken as we couldn’t back-to-back between the old and new components, but it’s definitely a step forward.

“Hopefully, we’ll get more of an indication as the weekend progresses – although, with more wet weather predicted for tomorrow, it might not be until Sunday that we can tell what we’ve got. Still, the car doesn’t feel bad at all.”

However the complicated rear wing arrangement seen on Kimi Raikkonen’s Lotus will not be raced here. Trackside operations director Alan Permane said: “Both cars ran with aero updates, which were rather more visible on one car than the other.

“We’ve seen encouraging signs from our latest prototype concept and although we won’t race it here, it’s likely to make another appearance during practice in Budapest.”

Today the cars were close to the pace seen at the track in 2010. Jenson Button’s fastest lap of 1’16.595 was three-tenths off the best time set on Friday during F1′s last visit to Hockenheim.

On that occasion Sebastian Vettel’s pole position lap came within half a second of beating the track record set by Michael Schumacher in 2004. If we get dry running tomorrow the top teams may get close to that again, but the forecast at the moment is for more rain.

Here’s the data from today’s practice, mostly from the first session which was the drier of the two.

Longest stint comparison – first practice

This chart shows all the drivers’ lap times (in seconds) during their longest unbroken stint:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/charts/2012drivercolours.csv

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Sebastian Vettel	82.513	80.517	79.264	78.764	79.441
Mark Webber	83.066	81.718	81.509	81.642	81.518	81.336	84.233	85.835	81.46
Jenson Button	80.497	80.322	79.925	79.833	79.92	79.963	80.086
Lewis Hamilton	77.093	77.263	86.036	86.222
Fernando Alonso	81.766	77.37	83.385	80.408	78.799	82.424
Felipe Massa	78.53	78.31	80.441	78.051	77.995	88.296
Michael Schumacher	77.649	77.382	82.598	84.309	87.588	82.456	83.615	109.314
Nico Rosberg	79.559	84.862	80.053	80.488	80.49	90.682	86.692
Kimi Raikkonen	83.564	84.987	85.908	78.831
Romain Grosjean	78.508	83.197	81.336	80.975	78.13	84.157	82.114
Jules Bianchi	79.173	78.972	91.306	90.151	83.106	87.958
Nico Hulkenberg	79.804	79.111	81.314	78.103	81.905	77.599
Kamui Kobayashi	81.147	78.889	83	91.246	78.226
Sergio Perez	82.185	81.109	79.242	81.685	79.687
Daniel Ricciardo	79.676	79.16	78.709	82.383	80.438	82.772	82.845	87.737	84.268
Jean-Eric Vergne	79.742	79.52	79.039	82.22	79.443	79.097	80.243	80.01	87.121	80.846
Pastor Maldonado	78.67	86.979	78.02	86.764	84.182
Valtteri Bottas	84.148	80.788	79.969	81.036	80.515	79.768	80.043	87.863	79.044
Heikki Kovalainen	81.675	80.072	81.841	86.997	85.223	87.463	83.341
Vitaly Petrov	82.665	79.798	87.676	79.801	79.674	95.84	96.011
Pedro de la Rosa	85.313	83.643	95.237	83.032	82.416	84.538
Dani Clos	84.84	85.047	86.459	86.535	86.422	88.146	85.644	85.343
Timo Glock	81.307	81.189	85.534	80.973	90.01	80.539
Charles Pic	90.187	89.937	81.262	81.772	82.843	87.093	91.515	83.179

Sector times and ultimate lap times – first practice

	Car	Driver	Car	Sector 1	Sector 2	Sector 3	Ultimate lap	Gap	Deficit to best
1	3	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	16.785	35.944	23.866	1’16.595		0.000
2	4	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	16.892	35.942	24.062	1’16.896	0.301	0.197
3	5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	16.806	36.042	24.244	1’17.092	0.497	0.278
4	7	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	16.874	36.253	24.049	1’17.176	0.581	0.206
5	15	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	16.794	36.438	23.980	1’17.212	0.617	0.201
6	10	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	16.898	36.453	24.110	1’17.461	0.866	0.669
7	12	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	17.180	36.237	24.182	1’17.599	1.004	0.000
8	18	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	17.049	36.468	24.214	1’17.731	1.136	0.289
9	8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	16.949	36.308	24.525	1’17.782	1.187	0.133
10	6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	17.048	36.410	24.418	1’17.876	1.281	0.119
11	19	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Renault	17.176	36.462	24.359	1’17.997	1.402	0.425
12	14	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	17.042	36.305	24.683	1’18.030	1.435	0.196
13	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	17.146	36.307	24.590	1’18.043	1.448	0.296
14	9	Kimi Raikkonen	Lotus-Renault	16.970	36.197	25.343	1’18.510	1.915	0.321
15	16	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	17.313	36.720	24.613	1’18.646	2.051	0.063
16	11	Jules Bianchi	Force India-Mercedes	17.397	36.584	24.673	1’18.654	2.059	0.318
17	17	Jean-Eric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	17.410	36.693	24.672	1’18.775	2.180	0.264
18	21	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham-Renault	17.553	36.970	25.041	1’19.564	2.969	0.110
19	20	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham-Renault	17.599	37.215	24.894	1’19.708	3.113	0.255
20	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	17.520	37.570	24.749	1’19.839	3.244	0.283
21	25	Charles Pic	Marussia-Cosworth	17.521	37.484	25.164	1’20.169	3.574	0.000
22	24	Timo Glock	Marussia-Cosworth	17.721	37.521	25.275	1’20.517	3.922	0.022
23	22	Pedro de la Rosa	HRT-Cosworth	17.878	37.519	25.674	1’21.071	4.476	0.067
24	23	Dani Clos	HRT-Cosworth	17.996	38.009	25.735	1’21.740	5.145	0.000

Complete practice times

Pos	Driver	Car	FP1	FP2	Total laps
1	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1’16.595	1’28.516	43
2	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1’17.093	1’30.617	38
3	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1’17.370	1’31.207	41
4	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1’17.382	1’32.777	38
5	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	1’17.413	1’28.402	54
6	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1’17.599	1’28.495	39
7	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1’17.915	1’27.564	51
8	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1’17.995	1’29.719	37
9	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	1’18.020	1’27.476	34
10	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1’18.130	1’28.420	41
11	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1’18.226	1’29.785	46
12	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1’18.339	1’27.902	45
13	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Renault	1’18.422		28
14	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’18.709	1’28.513	53
15	Kimi Raikkonen	Lotus-Renault	1’18.831	1’29.327	36
16	Jules Bianchi	Force India-Mercedes	1’18.972		21
17	Jean-Eric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’19.039	1’29.364	60
18	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham-Renault	1’19.674	1’32.241	46
19	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham-Renault	1’19.963	1’30.331	50
20	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1’20.122	1’28.877	48
21	Charles Pic	Marussia-Cosworth	1’20.169	1’30.090	39
22	Timo Glock	Marussia-Cosworth	1’20.539	1’30.220	34
23	Pedro de la Rosa	HRT-Cosworth	1’21.138	1’42.566	32
24	Dani Clos	HRT-Cosworth	1’21.740		27
25	Bruno Senna	Williams-Renault		1’30.291	22
26	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes		1’30.437	14
27	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT-Cosworth		1’32.349	17

Speed trap – first practice

	#	Driver	Car	Engine	Max speed	Gap
1	7	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	Mercedes	316.9
2	8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	Mercedes	315.6	1.3
3	9	Kimi Raikkonen	Lotus	Renault	314.7	2.2
4	3	Jenson Button	McLaren	Mercedes	314.5	2.4
5	10	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	Renault	313.9	3
6	20	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham	Renault	313.8	3.1
7	12	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	Mercedes	313.8	3.1
8	11	Jules Bianchi	Force India	Mercedes	313.7	3.2
9	15	Sergio Perez	Sauber	Ferrari	313.7	3.2
10	4	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren	Mercedes	313.4	3.5
11	19	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	Renault	313.3	3.6
12	25	Charles Pic	Marussia	Cosworth	312.9	4
13	24	Timo Glock	Marussia	Cosworth	312.5	4.4
14	14	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber	Ferrari	312.5	4.4
15	18	Pastor Maldonado	Williams	Renault	312.2	4.7
16	17	Jean-Eric Vergne	Toro Rosso	Ferrari	312	4.9
17	16	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso	Ferrari	311.9	5
18	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull	Renault	311.8	5.1
19	21	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham	Renault	311.4	5.5
20	6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	Ferrari	309.8	7.1
21	5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	Ferrari	309.2	7.7
22	23	Dani Clos	HRT	Cosworth	307.6	9.3
23	22	Pedro de la Rosa	HRT	Cosworth	307.5	9.4
24	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull	Renault	305.6	11.3