F1 Bahrain Blog: TGI Friday afternoon

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Written by Kate Walker

Friday, 12 March 2010 13:17

And it's all change on the timesheets, all afternoon. The drivers are going for it in some longer sessions, word is that qualifying-style laps are more likely to happen tomorrow.

Skipped watching some of the early laps as I wanted to get out to the paddock and record the engines. Managed a rubbish recording on my phone, so tomorrow I'll do the same with the laptop and see if it sounds any better. Have now officially decided that if I ever get married, my wedding march will be F1 engines. Maybe if I get good enough at the journalism I can have the three-seater Renault F1 car as my wedding car?

Anyway, back to the serious business of racing. Times are obviously changing constantly, but as I type this Nico Rosberg's top of the sheets with a 1.55.409 and has been for a good 10 minutes. Next up is Lewis Hamilton, whose 1.55.854 puts him in the middle of a Mercedes sandwich. Schumacher's 0.494s slower than his teammate at the moment, but he's been steadily climbing up. The rest of the top ten is Button, Hulkenberg, Vettel, Sutil, Barrichello, Liuzzi, and Petrov, in that order.

Not much in the way of decent times from the Scuderia yet, but it looks like they're going for race simulations. Hulkenberg's the only driver in the top ten to have done more than ten laps, whereas the Ferrari boys have done 13 (Alonso) and 17 (Massa).

The keen-eyed race fans among you will spot that none of the lap times I've been quoting bear any relationship to last year's race or qualifying laps. It's not that the cars now weigh more than a herd of elephants, or that everyone's doing a go-slow to look extra special tomorrow. The length of the F1 circuit has been extended by half a kilometre, and lap times have gone up accordingly.

The new circuit involves six new corners but no new overtaking zones. Should be some interesting break wear on the new hairpin which joins old circuit and new, and the added corners won't be helping the tyres any.

Speaking of tyres, the powers that be have decreed that the teams now have even fewer tyres for a race weekend than they used to. The assumption was that we would see significantly less running on Friday as a result, but that doesn't seem to be the case today. I guess after the Spanish weather in February, this is the closest they're getting to a full-on test session.

Big 'ooh' from the press room as Alguersuari span off the track just now at turn 13, but once he'd pointed himself in the right direction he kept going like the well-trained racer he is. So far this afternoon there have been a couple of off-track moments, but nothing serious enough to cause more than a few seconds' delay.

Signing off now before the timesheets change completely, but I'll be back in about an hour with a run-down of the finished session. Kate Walker Girlracer Magazine http://www.girlracer.co.uk