Weather was good for the FP2 session however an unnecessary red flag with 20 minutes to go interrupted the running. Here are the laptimes for main contenders who completed meaningful long-runs:
Dots represent the tyre compound. Orange = Hard. White = Medium
The usual suspects are up the front, with the exception of Kvyat who we’ll discuss later. Rosberg averaged quarter of a second quicker than Vettel, and this gap usually increases from Friday to Sunday. Vettel has a couple of laps off the pace however Nico was asked to cool the car early on so both runs were compromised.
The clearest degradation curve comparison of the different compounds are from the Toro Rosso drivers’ runs thanks to their consistency. The Medium compounds on Sainz’s car falls away from lap 3/4 whilst Verstappen’s primes show very little sign of dropping off in the first 10 laps.
The most interesting stint here is from Kvyat who averaged the fastest on the hard tyre in his Red Bull RB11. If we say the hard tyre is 0.7 seconds slower as Pirelli have suggested, then he averages a net 1.352 seconds faster than his team-mate Ricciardo when the two have been neck and neck over a single lap on low fuel.
1.352 seconds… Silverstone is a high-speed circuit. The race is 52 laps. Say the car starts with 100kg. 100 kg divided by 52 laps = 1.923kg/lap fuel usage. At Silverstone each kg of extra weight costs 0.040 seconds in an F1 car, so the time loss per lap from using fuel is 0.077 seconds. More fuel/cost information can be found here: (http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/f1-information/going-to-a-race/)
1.352 seconds diveded by 0.077 seconds of fuel cost per lap = a fuel difference between the two Red Bull cars of 17.6 laps. 17 or 18 laps.
I would expect the first pit window to be a little less than 17 laps. In Malaysia (same tyre compounds), the first pitstops from cars which did not pit under the safety car happened on lap 17/18 – and of course the mediums had some easy laps behind the safety car. Malaysia a circuit with similar length and comparable characteristics.
