F1 News
Date:
19/April/2013
Kimi Raikkonen led the Friday practice timesheets during
sweltering conditions at Bahrain’s Sakhir Circuit.
The Lotus star, winner of round one in Melbourne, moved up
from ninth in the opening session to edge out Red Bull’s Mark Webber by just
0.030s during the afternoon.
Red Bull’s triple title holder Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari’s
Fernando Alonso, the other drivers to win so after this season and either side
of Raikkonen in the World Championship, completed a close top four.
Raikkonen said: "It's nice to be fastest but you never know
what the others are doing.
“I actually made a mistake through the final corners on my
fastest lap, so there's still more time to be found. It's tricky to get the set-up
right here and the wind can make a big difference.
“It wasn't a bad start today… let's see what we can do from
here."
The result was especially satisfying for the Lotus team following
a last-minute change to the Bahrain tyre allocation, which has seen the compounds
switched from soft and hard to medium and hard.
“It was done on the Sunday night after the Malaysian race,”
confirmed Pirelli’s Paul Hembery. “Malaysia being similar from a tyre point of
view to here: very hot, very abrasive. We felt that both [tyres] had worked
well there and that was the right thing to do coming here.”
But Lotus, whose car is renowned for being gentle on its
tyres, appeared to feel that some of the larger teams had pressured Pirelli after
suffering on the soft option.
A survey on the official Lotus website, asked fans: “Who
should we blame for the sudden change of tyre allocation in Bahrain? Red Bull
Racing, Ferrari or (American action movie star) Chuck Norris!
Red Bull received over half of the votes cast…
No comments:
Post a Comment