German GP Free Practice 1
In glorious German sunshine, the 22 Formula One machines all went out to practice running their cars without the FRIC systems for the first time. Taking part in place of the usual drivers were Susie Wolff in place of Valtteri Bottas at Williams, and Giedo van der Garde in place of Esteban Gutierrez at Sauber. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two Mercedes led the way throughout the majority of the session; with Nico Rosberg just 0.065s ahead of team mate Lewis Hamilton. Just behind the Mercs was Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, putting in a very good lap to be just two tenths of a second behind Rosberg. Strangely, the two Williams cars seemed to lack a bit of pace in the morning session, with Felipe Massa only 11th and Wolff just two tenths behind in 15th place, which is not a bad effort at all in her second Grand Prix appearance, despite a scare early on as she lost oil pressure on her first lap.
Daniel Ricciardo was also pretty well placed in fourth place in the session but both he and home favourite Sebastian Vettel were delivering very strong times, lapping consistently while not being too far behind the Mercedes. Things seemed to be much better for McLaren, who have brought updates to this race, with Jenson Button fifth and Kevin Magnussen seventh. Kimi Raikkonen rounded out the top eight, with a second separating eight drivers, rather than the usual two in a session which passed with no real incident, but a lot of drivers struggling to find grip on the soft compound tyres.
Free Practice 2
In complete contrast to the first session, Williams bounced back by being well into the top 10 in the afternoon session as the already sweltering Hockenheim track heated up further, causing a few problems for some of the drivers. One of the first to have a problem was Kamui Kobayashi in the Caterham, whose car caught fire, leaving the Japanese driver to go into Kovalainen-mode and grab a fire extinguisher. This could leave Kobayashi facing a grid penalty for using a sixth engine component this year. After the Caterham was out of the way, the red-striped super soft Pirelli tyres came out, and the times came crashing down, with the Mercedes drivers finding a second a lap, which is massive on a short circuit of just shy of 80 seconds a lap, but this time with Hamilton on top, fractions ahead of Rosberg, who made an error on his first lap on his qualifying run. Just a tenth behind was Ricciardo, but the race simulation didn’t look quite as strong as the Mercedes, nor compared to Vettel. The two McLarens were in the top 10 again, albeit having swapped positions from FP1 and Raikkonen was ahead of Alonso, something which hasn’t occurred frequently this season.
Looking ahead to qualifying and the race, are Mercedes sandbagging? Quite possibly; surely losing the FRIC system couldn’t cost them all that advantage that they had. One thing we do not know is what conditions we will have on Sunday. Not only is it meant to be much cooler, but it could also be quite wet. If that is the case, it’s impossible to predict what will happen as we are yet to have a wet race in 2014.
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