Nov 11, 2011
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119 laps from three drivers was the outcome of the first day of practice for the penultimate round of this year’s Formula 1 World Championship for Scuderia Toro Rosso. After giving our two race drivers as much track time as possible at the new venue in India a fortnight ago, Jean-Eric Vergne was back on the scene, the Frenchman replacing Sébastien Buemi during Free Practice 1. The French media seemed to get terribly excited about this, especially as Lotus Renault gave another Frenchie, Romain Grosjean a run in their car this morning instead of Bruno Senna. That particular battle worked out in favour of our man who seems particularly keen to remind his national media that he is four years younger than Grosjean!
It was effectively JEV’s (that’s what Monsieur Vergne likes to be called) first outing, given that his Korea run only lasted a handful of laps in conditions more suited to power boats than F1 cars. With three drivers to manage it was fortunate therefore that Pirelli provided teams with some experimental tyres on top of the usual allocation, which meant we could run a full programme without concerning ourselves with tyre conservation. Running for just the 90 minutes of what we still call the “afternoon session” even though the first one did not start until 13h00, Sébastien Buemi ended the day with the twelfth fastest time, two places ahead of team-mate Jaime Alguersuari. The same six drivers who have dominated the season were again at the top of the time sheet here as darkness fell on this amazing facility. Today, it was McLaren’s turn to take the two top places, with Lewis Hamilton a couple of tenths faster than team-mate Jenson Button. Then came the Ferrari duo of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, while Mark Webber was fifth for Red Bull Racing. His team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who is the only winner of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, having won both races staged so far, completes the top six.
To confuse all of us having trouble setting our alarm clocks for the unusual Twilight timetable, Saturday’s free practice starts at 2pm with qualifying getting underway at 5.
Credit: Scuderia Toro Rosso (www.scuderiatororosso.com)
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