Zandvoort,
03
September
2021
|
17:26
Europe/Amsterdam

2021 Dutch Grand Prix – Friday

TYRE GAP

FRIDAY TYRE SUMMARY

  • With just 20 minutes run of FP1 (following delays in recovering Sebastian Vettel’s stricken Aston Martin) FP2 was the crucial session today, run at exactly the same time as qualifying and the race (15:00). Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc went quickest in the session ahead of his team mate Carlos Sainz, with both cars using the P Zero Red soft C3 tyre to set their best times. Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton topped the times in the short morning FP1 session.
  • With Zandvoort returning to Formula 1 for the first time since 1985, the emphasis today was very much on learning the track and how the three hardest tyre compounds in the Pirelli range – selected for this weekend – interact with it.
  • The afternoon FP2 session got underway in 25 degrees centigrade ambient and 30 degrees on track, with sunny weather. This session was also interrupted by two red flags, albeit for less than 15 minutes in total this time.
  • As expected, the brand new track was quite ‘green’ all day before any rubber was laid down, with sand and gravel also pulled onto the track.
  • The limited running today meant that the information about the tyre gaps is really only based on FP2. Between soft C3 and medium C2 there is a gap so far of 0.7 seconds, higher than an our initial estimation, while the gap between medium C2 and hard C1 is 0.6 seconds, based on our pre-event simulation (with not enough information available from the session).

FORMULA 3: LATEST NEWS

Prema’s Dennis Hauger took pole from Trident driver David Schumacher, who had held the top spot for most of the session. All the drivers used the P Zero White hard tyre: the single compound nominated for this weekend in Formula 3. The championship leader claimed his third pole of the season in the final seconds of the session (following a red flag) but it’s Campos Racing’s Amaury Cordeel who will start from the front of tomorrow’s Race 1 grid after qualifying 12th. Hitech’s Jak Crawford went fastest in free practice this morning: a session also affected by two red flags.

MARIO ISOLA – HEAD OF F1 AND CAR RACING

There was at least one red flag during every session today – including Formula 3 free practice and qualifying – which obviously limited all the running and made it harder to draw any firm conclusions. It was also quite a dirty track, with sand and gravel on the surface. However, the teams still managed to obtain some of the data that they needed on this unique and unforgiving new track – and this was useful preparation, as safety cars and red flags seem likely to be a possibility during the race as well. More work and information is needed tomorrow though in order to get a clearer idea of the optimal strategy. We managed to get a good idea of the gap between medium and soft today, while we do not yet have enough data to accurately predict the gap between medium and hard. Despite the impressive banking at Zandvoort, the tyres are exactly the same as we bring to the other races, with the latest structure introduced from Silverstone designed to cope with even the heaviest loads.

TOP 3 TIMES
FP1
Hamilton 1m11.500s SOFT C3 NEW
Verstappen 1m11.597s SOFT C3 NEW
Sainz 1m11.601s SOFT C3 NEW
FP2
Leclerc 1m10.902s SOFT C3 NEW
Sainz 1m11.056s SOFT C3 NEW
Ocon 1m11.074s SOFT C3 NEW
BEST TIME BY COMPOUND
FP1
HARD C1 Verstappen 1m12.755s
MEDIUM C2 Norris 1m12.679s
SOFT C3 Hamilton 1m11.500s
FP2
HARD C1 Gasly 1m12.831s
MEDIUM C2 Bottas 1m11.664s
SOFT C3 Leclerc 1m10.902s
MOST LAPS BY COMPOUND SO FAR
COMPOUND DRIVER LAPS
HARD C1 Latifi 16
MEDIUM C2 Ocon 24
SOFT C3 Alonso, Bottas, Verstappen 20
TYRE STATISTICS OF THE DAY
  HARD MEDIUM SOFT
Kms driven* 864 1235 1575
Sets used overall** 18 22 37

* The above number gives the total amount of kilometres driven in FP1 and FP2 today, all drivers combined.
** Per compound, all drivers combined.

MIN. STARTING PRESSURES (slicks) EOS CAMBER LIMIT
PRESSURE 22.0 psi (front) | 21.5 psi (rear) -3.00° (front) | -2.00° (rear) CAMBER