Today there were two 40 minute practice sessions scheduled ahead of the qualifying and racing over the weekend. The first early in the morning, and the second after a long break late in the afternoon. As these practice sessions are official championship days, we can only run tyres which are issued for the Championship. Given that we are very happy where the car is and confident in the dry, we elected to save our new or best tyres left over from the first round and keep them up our sleeve for future rounds where we may need to do further work on the set up of the car.
As it was, the conditions were very varied anyway, with the first session starting on wets, and then gradually (and quite quickly in the end) drying to a completely dry track.
The second session was very wet, so much so that the session was delayed due to the sheer amount of water on the surface. Once it began it was still very wet, but again did start to improve quite quickly, but over the session we stayed on 2 sets of used wet tyres.
With some other teams using new tyres, today was not going to be about the timesheets, but more about learning to get the most out of the car and tyres in the wet conditions. We certainly achieved a lot in this area, and are all the more ready should there be rain over the weekend.
Qualifying tomorrow morning and then Race 1. Looking forward to Race Day!
