2019 Brazilian Grand Prix - Free practice

Interlagos, November 15, 2019

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM FP1 AND FP2

• Rain this morning that meant FP1 was declared a wet session. The FP2 session in the afternoon was dry but cool, with ambient temperatures of around 20 degrees centigrade.
• Red Bull’s Alexander Albon was fastest this morning on the intermediate tyres, with the track drying up in the closing minutes of FP1 to enable some limited slick tyre running. However, there were still some damp patches.
• In FP2, the teams sampled all three of the slick tyres available, with Sebastian Vettel leading a Ferrari one-two on the soft tyre.
• The remainder of the weekend is expected to be dry, meaning that only the data from FP2 is really relevant. Both practice sessions today ended under a red flag.
• Low tyre degradation was seen in FP2, pointing at a one-stopper on Sunday.
• On the short Interlagos circuit, the performance gap between the soft and the medium is around 0.5 seconds up to now, while the gap between the medium and the hard is a bit bigger: around one second (although data on the hard tyre is in relatively short supply).

MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF F1 AND CAR RACING

“The wet morning session was useful to have a look at crossover points between wets and inters and slicks, while we then got some good dry running in the afternoon. There is a short and intense lap here, which means that the gaps are always close. We experienced cool conditions throughout the day, with ambient temperatures of 20 degrees centigrade and track temperatures struggling to get past 23 degrees. These conditions clearly affect tyre behaviour. Nonetheless, the tyres seem to be working very well so far, with no graining despite the cool weather. In any case, temperatures are expected to get warmer for the rest of the weekend, which could alter the picture of tyre behaviour when it comes to performance gaps and degradation, opening up the door to some different strategies.”