Ocon leads with some free 2 of pure long runs

On a sprint weekend, you win many things and lose others. On Friday afternoon, the classification allowed to add emotion and surprise, with the post of Kevin Magnussen, on a Friday that in the normal format the weekend passed without a fight or anything at stake. On the other hand, in this format, Free Practice on Saturday mornings are the biggest losers. It goes from a performance search Free 3 to a turn, with fast laps before the ‘quality‘, in a one-hour long run session that allows the teams to arrive with more data for today’s sprint race (8:30 pm / DAZN F1) and more importantly, for Sunday’s race. In that context, Esteban Ocon set the fastest time, a 1’14″604, beat perez (2nd in 0″184) and George Russell (3rd) at 0″312, with Fernando Alonso 4th at 0″445, Verstappen in fifth place by almost half a second and Sainz, 11th. The times do not represent the pure performance of the cars as everyone marks their turns thinking about race speed.

In this weekend format (next year there will be 6 sprint race weekends), car settings can no longer be handled from qualy on Friday, so teams and drivers cannot test in Free Practice 2 this Saturday of significant changes to their cars. All they can do is analyze the performance of their tires with the car as this is to better choose the strategy to follow in Sunday’s race. That was the session, full of long runs with different programs.

Sainz He did a long stint on medium rubber, to bring this compound to 28 laps, and finished with two stints on soft, some up to 21 laps, and others up to 6 laps. The reverse work was carried out by his teammate Leclerc, starting with softs and going to medium to study the performance of both compounds at the same time on the track with his two cars full of fuel.

A similar program was conducted Fernando Alonsowith an initial round of softs, up to 23 laps, and another medium, ending with the softs used to conduct the final tests.

In terms of rhythms, there is enough equality between performance and times with the soft rubber of Red Bull and Ferrarialthough it remains to be seen if those in red can keep up with the pace of the race Verstappen when the real fire starts, because of those Milton Keynes They even have a car that doesn’t damage tires as much.

The first clear answers will come from what will happen in the sprint race this Saturday. to him, Sainz He will start 5th on the attack looking for places to reduce his loss of places with 5 penalty places for Sunday’s grid for changing the combustion chamber of his power unit. Leclerc should also go on the attack from 10th place after the mistake of Ferrari in qualifying, like Fernando Alonso who will start in 7th, who wants to optimize his starting position this Sunday, he is sure to win a position in the short race this Saturday.