Spa in Belgium is the setting for round 12 of the F1 2011 season, and the running after a 4 week break started in cloudy skies with rain ready to pounce. The track conditions were damp for FP1 and got worse during FP2.
Many teams came with updates, including Williams with a new rear wing, Mclaren with a revised rear wing and diffuser, and minor aero changes from the majority of the teams. Also Michael Schumacher's race engineer changed and the drivers began getting to grips with the DRS ban through Eau Rouge.
FP1
Free practice started in darkening skies but rain did not arrive till around 20 minutes into the session. All the cars flooded out of the pit lane as the green light came on. The main stories in the f1 air were Michael Schumacher's 20th anniversary of his debut race in 1991 and Bruno Senna racing instead of Nick Heidfield. The first lap times came from the two Mercedes drivers and ended up being the fastest laps as they were completed in the only dry running, before the rain flooded in 10 minutes into the session.
Many drivers chose the dry running to do system checks and test out new body parts and aerodynamic flow of the cars. This caused no competitive times other than those of Schumacher and Nico Rosberg's to be completed before the rain came.
Felipe Massa had problems of his own however when his helmet became "very very heavy" and was causing problems. Ferrari chose to ignore his complaints and set him off for another lap, before resolving the issue later on.
While the rain came down teams waited in the pits for up to 20 minutes until the rain eased. Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel went out for Banker laps on intermediate tyres and after a few tricky moments, decided it was the best choice.
The main headlines throughout the session were Bruno Senna crashing out with around half an hour left of the session. He spun the car at turn 9 and the back of the car crunched into the barrier, ending his running. It certainly was not the way the nephew of Ayrton Senna wanted to start his first race for the Lotus Renault Gp team. Then, just 10 minutes later Di Resta caused a red flag when he spun his car at turn 9, colliding with the barrier. The recovery truck had only just dropped off Senna's damaged Lotus Renault Gp car so the red flag came out. Jarno Trulli also caused breaths to be held in the other Lotus team garage as he spun at turn 14. The car did a full 360 spin before carrying on its way.
Top of the time sheets was Schumacher on his 20th anniversary weekend with a 1m.54.355 , followed by Rosberg around half a second behind. Next up with the damper times came Jenson Button trailing the dry runners by 8 seconds. Following Button in the timesheet came Vettel, team mate Hamilton, Sutil, Massa, Barrichello, Alguesuari. Rounding out the top 10 was Kobayashi for Sauber.
Alonso was just behind in 11th just ahead of Perez. Trulli was an inspired 13th hoping not to be unlucky this weekend. The team were exstatic as they finished ahead of many midfield runners. Of these midfield runners, behind the Lotus came Buemi, Maldonado and Mark Webber in the Red Bull. He was 6 seconds behind team mate Vettel after not getting a final drier lap in.
Second of the newer teams, Timo Glock finished 17th ahead of Tonio Luizzi and Belgian Jerome D'Ambrosio, in his first home race weekend. Di Resta ended up 20th ahead of Karun Chandhok, who was replacing Heikki Kovalianen only for FP1, and Vitaly Petrov. Bruno Senna after his session ending crash came 23rd ahead of Daniel Ricciardo who was 20.578 seconds off.
Fastest time: M Schumacher 1m.54.355
For all the times from FP1 click here
FP2
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| (c) Octane Photographic |
FP1
Free practice started in darkening skies but rain did not arrive till around 20 minutes into the session. All the cars flooded out of the pit lane as the green light came on. The main stories in the f1 air were Michael Schumacher's 20th anniversary of his debut race in 1991 and Bruno Senna racing instead of Nick Heidfield. The first lap times came from the two Mercedes drivers and ended up being the fastest laps as they were completed in the only dry running, before the rain flooded in 10 minutes into the session.
Many drivers chose the dry running to do system checks and test out new body parts and aerodynamic flow of the cars. This caused no competitive times other than those of Schumacher and Nico Rosberg's to be completed before the rain came.
Felipe Massa had problems of his own however when his helmet became "very very heavy" and was causing problems. Ferrari chose to ignore his complaints and set him off for another lap, before resolving the issue later on.
While the rain came down teams waited in the pits for up to 20 minutes until the rain eased. Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel went out for Banker laps on intermediate tyres and after a few tricky moments, decided it was the best choice.
The main headlines throughout the session were Bruno Senna crashing out with around half an hour left of the session. He spun the car at turn 9 and the back of the car crunched into the barrier, ending his running. It certainly was not the way the nephew of Ayrton Senna wanted to start his first race for the Lotus Renault Gp team. Then, just 10 minutes later Di Resta caused a red flag when he spun his car at turn 9, colliding with the barrier. The recovery truck had only just dropped off Senna's damaged Lotus Renault Gp car so the red flag came out. Jarno Trulli also caused breaths to be held in the other Lotus team garage as he spun at turn 14. The car did a full 360 spin before carrying on its way.
Top of the time sheets was Schumacher on his 20th anniversary weekend with a 1m.54.355 , followed by Rosberg around half a second behind. Next up with the damper times came Jenson Button trailing the dry runners by 8 seconds. Following Button in the timesheet came Vettel, team mate Hamilton, Sutil, Massa, Barrichello, Alguesuari. Rounding out the top 10 was Kobayashi for Sauber.
Alonso was just behind in 11th just ahead of Perez. Trulli was an inspired 13th hoping not to be unlucky this weekend. The team were exstatic as they finished ahead of many midfield runners. Of these midfield runners, behind the Lotus came Buemi, Maldonado and Mark Webber in the Red Bull. He was 6 seconds behind team mate Vettel after not getting a final drier lap in.
Second of the newer teams, Timo Glock finished 17th ahead of Tonio Luizzi and Belgian Jerome D'Ambrosio, in his first home race weekend. Di Resta ended up 20th ahead of Karun Chandhok, who was replacing Heikki Kovalianen only for FP1, and Vitaly Petrov. Bruno Senna after his session ending crash came 23rd ahead of Daniel Ricciardo who was 20.578 seconds off.
Fastest time: M Schumacher 1m.54.355
For all the times from FP1 click here
FP2
Free Practice two began in damp but drying conditions in Belgium. The drivers flooded out to get some drier running in before the suspected rain showers arrived.
The rain held off until mid way through the session giving drivers the chance to use the slick tyres in more ideal conditions.
Kamui Kobayashi became the first driver to set a lap time in free practice two with a 2m.16.279 in damp conditions. This lap came with 1 hour 25 minutes left in the session. Webber topped that with some consistent lap times improving every time, concluding with a 2m.08.351 before Senna and Vettel overtook the Aussie to top the time sheets. Drivers began setting times on the slick tyres within half an hour of the session.
With half an hour gone and the track significantly drier than when the session began, Jenson Button in his lightly modified Mclaren had topping the times with a lap time of 2m.02.206 with the top 5 being completed by Schumacher, Alguesuari, Hulkenberg, standing in for Adrian Sutil, and Fernando Alonso.
Just as the hour mark had come along, there became a new leader in the times. Webber re-took his lead with a time of 2m.01.015
Throughout the session, on a track improving all the time, sections on the track such as the first corner, and the bus stop chicane, caused many incidents such as running wide, spinning, and locking up.
The first lap on slicks came from Fernando Alonso with 55 minutes left, his first lap was 4.7 seconds faster than Webber's previous effort, and became the first driver of the session to dip below the 2 minute mark.
This caused the whole field to dive into the pits to change tyres, and when times on slicks had settled down Vettel was in first position in the 1m.51's followed by both Mercedes drivers, split by Hamilton, and Webber.
Rain began to fall again just before the 50 minute mark. This caused many drivers to abandon their dry running and crawled back to the pit lane. There was a silence of F1 engines for over 25 minutes before the rain eased off, and the cars slowly emerged to do some intermediate tyre running to dry of the track.
The times stayed as they where 30 minutes earlier with Mark Webber leading the way on a 1m.50.321 just 0.140 ahead of Ferrari's Fernando Alonso. Both Mclaren's then followed with Button 0.4 and Hamilton 0.5 seconds down respectively. Massa came 5th ahead of Rosberg, Perez, who finished as the first driver over 1 second down, followed by the Force India's of Hulkenberg and Di Resta. Vettel finished 10th but was the only driver in the top 10 not to use the soft tyre in the dry window. He completed his fastest time on the Medium tyre.
Michael Schumacher finished free practice two 11th with Maldonado the first over 2 seconds down on Webber in 12th. Following him came Kobayashi, Alguesuari, Buemi, Barrichello and Senna. Bruno Senna ended the session 3.5 seconds down but however he did end up ahead of Vitaly Petrov.
Trulli was first of the new teams again, ahead of Glock, Kovalainen, D'Ambrosio, and Liuzzi. Rounding out the top 23 came Daniel Ricciardo on a high after 2 second places at Silverstone in the 3.5 formula Renault series.
Vitaly Petrov came 24th with his fastest lap being on the intermediate tyres.
The field spread was 11.913 seconds.
Fastest time: M Webber 1m.50.321
For all the times from FP2 click here
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