Brazilian GP - Four potential champions in top four places
Interlagos, 5 November – If you learned that both Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa had to park their F10s at the side of the track on the first day of practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix, you could be forgiven for thinking that it had been a terrible day. In fact, that was far from the truth, with Fernando Alonso ending the day third fastest and Felipe Massa two places behind him in fifth.
The Spaniard’s engine let go with just a couple of minutes of the morning session to go and the calm expression on his face and on that of the crew in the garage told the story that it had always been planned to retire this V8, which had served its full time in terms of mileage covered, fitting a different one for the afternoon session. In the case of the Brazilian, it was a more unusual failure that left him spectating in the afternoon after completing 19 laps. A hard jump over a kerb somehow triggered a failure in the Neutral Finder button, a device marshals use in the event of a car going off the track and getting stuck in gear. It meant Felipe had no gears to drive back to the garage. But in performance terms, the day had gone well by that point, with plenty of data gathered on both types of tyre, new aero updates seemingly bringing a small performance bonus and the two drivers generally happy with the handling of the F10.
As we head for Sunday and the penultimate round of the season, all the championship contenders, with the exception of Jenson Button, whose chances of retaining his 2009 crown are now very remote, made it to the top of the afternoon time sheet. No real surprise that Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber were the dominant force in first and second places for Red Bull. Fernando was third ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren. Felipe, delighted to be racing again in front of his enthusiastic and very noisy home fans, after missing last year’s race, was fifth, with Robert Kubica sixth for Renault.
Tomorrow comes the all-important qualifying session and if the F10 has not always been the best when it comes to getting tyres to work really well on the first flying lap, that might not be a problem on Saturday, given there is a very strong chance of it raining for the grid-deciding session and so wet weather tyres will be the order of the day and timing when to make the qualifying runs will be as crucial as the performance itself.
Credit: Ferrari S.p.A.
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