The Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi literally heated up today with the two practice sessions for Sunday's Formula 1 race starting in the afternoon and continuing in the evening.
With track temperature changing from 47 degrees Celsius in the first practice session to 33 degrees Celsius in the second one, the track conditions only looked like they should in the race in the evening.
Lewis Hamilton: “Today was a fairly standard Friday program for us, although the second session is always more valuable here as it’s so much more reflective of the race conditions. As the temperatures cool down, the characteristics of the car change and you get an increase in understeer, so the main challenge is to try and pre-empt the set-up that you’re going to need. Physically it gets easier when the sun goes down but you don’t even notice the visibility change as they do such a good job of lighting the track. A decent start today but there’s a lot of work ahead of us over the weekend and we’ll give it everything we can as always.”
Nico Rosberg: “We didn’t learn a great deal during the first practice session today as it was so hot and we won’t have those conditions in qualifying or the race. I struggled a little on the option tires but was able to find a better rhythm when we switched to the primes. It should be an interesting race from a strategy perspective as the tires seem to be right on the limit of one or two stops. Our aim is to be the best of the rest again which I’m quite confident we can achieve and score some important points.”
Both Mercedes-AMG Petronas drivers completed a total of 125 laps – which is the equivalent to more than two races on Sunday – running soft (option) tires in the beginning and switching to medium (premium) ones in practice two.
Lewis Hamilton: “Today was a fairly standard Friday program for us, although the second session is always more valuable here as it’s so much more reflective of the race conditions. As the temperatures cool down, the characteristics of the car change and you get an increase in understeer, so the main challenge is to try and pre-empt the set-up that you’re going to need. Physically it gets easier when the sun goes down but you don’t even notice the visibility change as they do such a good job of lighting the track. A decent start today but there’s a lot of work ahead of us over the weekend and we’ll give it everything we can as always.”
Nico Rosberg: “We didn’t learn a great deal during the first practice session today as it was so hot and we won’t have those conditions in qualifying or the race. I struggled a little on the option tires but was able to find a better rhythm when we switched to the primes. It should be an interesting race from a strategy perspective as the tires seem to be right on the limit of one or two stops. Our aim is to be the best of the rest again which I’m quite confident we can achieve and score some important points.”
Both Mercedes-AMG Petronas drivers completed a total of 125 laps – which is the equivalent to more than two races on Sunday – running soft (option) tires in the beginning and switching to medium (premium) ones in practice two.