Friday Night In Barcelona

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Practice session 2 has been completed this afternoon and now teams will dissect all the information gathered from the first two sessions. This sport is very much data driven which will decide what strategy the teams will adopt for the qualifying and race day.

Pirelli have given some hints of what they expect saying it will be a two stopper. What was obvious was the hard tyre which was the medium tyre last week is not the tyre to use this week. The drivers were struggling to find grip and the times reflected that.

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This track offers a bit of everything and what is important is sector 3 which has multiple bends making it the slowest part yet this is the section where time is made up. This is important for drivers not to overheat the tyres before this section as the tyres will not last as long if they do. Slow and smooth through this section is the fastest way and where some teams are concentrating on improvements. The thinking is you spend the bulk of the race in the slower corners so finding 10th's of seconds in these sections is where the race is won.

Practice sessions though are not anywhere near the race car set up though as race day the car has a full tank of fuel and will only get to practice conditions as the car becomes lighter later in the race. 120 kg of fuel on board against 20 or 30 kg during testing will change the way the tyres react.

This race looks as though it will be boring and teams will start on either the soft or the medium tyre. Both tyres have shown that with the harder compound being used they won't degrade at the rate they did last weekend. Mercedes look head and shoulders over everyone else again as they do favor the harder compounds.

The drivers may have finished practice 2 but the day is far from over and this is where their input starts. Drivers will spend between 3 and 5 hours this evening working with the engineers on car set ups. This is the part we never see and never hear about. Normally they would be dining with sponsors tonight as well but with no extra people around they can concentrate on the cars.

It is funny to think that Vettel is the one driver who is very thorough on his input and it would be a good insight as to how he is these days with his relationship with Ferrari. Schumacher was known to be very hands on and time didn't matter as he wanted to get things right. I suspect Hamilton,Verstappen and Bottas are in the Schumacher way of thinking and have the experience to make a difference.

After all is said and done I cannot see how Red Bull can pull another rabbit out of the hat with a strategy to upset Mercedes. The tyres just don't allow this and possibly they will start with a soft tyre instead of a medium. We will know this only during qualifying 2 tomorrow but still predict a boring race with Mercedes way out in front.