Why Free Practice are Important – Formula 1 Abu Dhabi GP FP1 & FP2
This time on season 2023 the we already have an F1 World Champion and Constructor Champion too but the fight for second place on the Constructor Championship is very close between Mercedes and Ferrari, in my opinion disappointing but interesting, as none of the two teams are consistent, as a fact is the overall feeling for most teams, their performance goes on and off depending on the track this looks like only Red Bull really figure out the car they running at the moment and the rest of the teams never did even after most of them including Ferrari and Mercedes has ended changing parts of the car into similar to Red Bull RB19. In my opinion, after this is my blog and you will get my opinion even when I'm wrong; for a team to be consistent I need to see them finish race after race fighting for a certain level at the grid, you cant be third today and the next to races get a DNF and out of points, that's the way it has been for Ferrari, Mclaren, Mercedes and Aston Martin.
After Red Bull lock down P1 (Max Verstappen) and P2 (Sergio Perez) for the F1 Drivers Championship there is still a big fight for P4 between the four gentlemen above, from this four drivers in my opinion the most astonishing is Lando Norris, on 2023 he has shown that the moment he gets a car that can perform at top level on the track he is capable of getting a podium any day of the year and has probably clear any doubts that people had about him at least in my mind he is a top driver but on 2023 has put down real facts with his performance on tracks like Silverstone and Interlagos just to mention a few, Alonso is no surprise he is one of the greatest drivers there is on the grid but Aston Martin had a very dramatic slow down in performance Austria but since Texas they have been getting their car back together, the Ferrari duo is probably the worst in terms of consistency and to be honest I don't think it was the drivers fault for the most part on 2023 it has been a combination of bad luck and attention to details but I think on 2024 they will improve because I do recognize after Binotto got out and Vasseur in, the team seems to be more in harmony and Leclerc more focus than before he is starting to recognize his mistakes publicly different than during the Binotto regime.
During FP2 drivers were reporting bumps along the track, cars running too low looking to get the most performance out of it seem to be the reason for both the Ferrari driver and Haas, there was a possible explanation for this from the F1 commentators, as temperature of the air and track starts to lower same does the pressure and density of the air, this cars gets most of their down force from the floor of the car that creates a suction effect but when the temperature goes lower so does the suction and if the car bottoms out in a fraction of second that down force is gone leaving the car with no grip and the driver without way to control the car anymore at very high speed like it happen to Carlso Sainz and probably same to Nico Hulkenberg.
Because of this two crash a big part of FP2 was red flag, on top some drivers were not on their cars during FP1 because for Abu Dhabi reserve drivers were the ones driving for the most part leaving drivers with only FP2 session for the day, Max Verstappen felt that the balance of the car was not on point specially on the last sector where the car felt like a kangaroo bouncing all over the place, this was mention by Checo, this is one of the reasons why free practice sessions are so important for drivers to get their cars setup the best possible according to their driving style, tracks and cars change depending on the weather and surface, on top of a lot of other factors to consider, eliminating or reducing free practice sessions will never be an answer and Sprint Races are just a money grab to "attract" more viewers but if I ever have the opportunity to go to a F1 Grand Prix I would prefer to go to a free practice and watch the race on tv, you can see the cars go in and out of the pits, drive slower, evolve with the track, its so much more fun at least to me.
Abu Dhabi is going to be a great race I think, I watch Las Vegas but didn't put out a post about it since I have been dealing with an elbow injure that kept me away from the keyboard, could not hold my arm on top of the table to type but I'm feeling a lot better now.
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