Ferrari must change approach: "So we lose these dates"
General
- GPblog.com
Whereas the first and second free practice sessions both lasted an hour and a half in 2020, from this season they will only last a single hour. This means that teams in Formula 1 have less time to prepare for qualifying and the race. So choices have to be made, Laurent Mekies has stressed.
The sporting director saw during the opening weekend in Bahrain that especially the long runs suffered.
"At least during FP1 you can't try long runs anymore. Nobody did that, maybe in the future we’ll find the way to do that again, but for the moment this kind of work will disappear. So we lose this data," Mekies said in an interview with Sky Italia.
Making choices
Whereas in 2021 a driver could sometimes do a long run with two types of compounds in the hour and a half of second practice, this too is no longer possible due to the changes decided by Liberty Media and the FIA.
"You can no longer afford to do a long run with two different tyres with each driver. So we will have to choose before the start of the session who is going to try the soft compound and who is going to try the medium compound, otherwise we will no longer have any data on how the different compounds work." It is almost impossible to collect good data on the hard tyres as well.
According to the 43-year-old Ferrari chief, "This situation, therefore, requires even more teamwork."
Most racing teams take between five and ten minutes to make certain changes to the car in the pit box during practice sessions, so the team need to be on the same wavelength to get their driver back on the track quickly and lose as little time as possible.