By Abhishek Aggarwal
Austin, 1 Nov 2019: The first two practice sessions on Friday at the US Grand Prix at the Ciruit of the Americas proved that the track is a bit tricky due to the bumpy nature.
The first day of the weekend and the two practice sessions are done and the track (10 to 25 C) and air temperatures (5 to 15) were a bit colder than usual and as a result favoured some due to more downforce and thick air from the circuit. The first practice session saw Red Bull’s Max Verstrappen at the top whereas Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton topped the second practice session.
Many felt that the track was a bit bumpy and the likes of Romain Grosjean (Turn 5 followed by a crash), Daniel Kvyat (Turn 17) and Sebastian Vettel (Turn 15) spun around while many of the drivers had lock-ups and showed break sparks followed by understeer.
The first practice session also witnessed 2020 Test tires being used for the first time by both the drivers of Haas team and Lewis Hamilton, however the result wasn’t that favorable (+2 secs than the best lap) due to the drivers taking those runs a bit slow.
At the team principals’ press conference, Mattia Binotto on being asked about this week’s race pace, said: “First, we are still lacking downforce compared to our competitors and that’s an area of weakness, something that we improved all through the season. I think that today we’ve got a good package but not good enough and we are very aware that having downforce is important, certainly on some circuits, like Budapest and Mexico. But if you look from Budapest to Mexico we did a great step forward in the right direction. So we will need to add further downforce, we will need to add further downforce for next season and that is important for the race pace, tyre degradation and so on. Adding downforce will mean adding drag and we will be slower then on the straight. But still today we believe we’ve got a good engine and that’s in our favour and we hope to keep the same advantage in the future.”
Tomorrow’s qualifying will look interesting with both Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton pushing hard and getting competition from the two Prancing Horses’ drivers.
Here are some photos for INDIAinF1 from Austin on Friday:
