Silverstone, 19 June 2009

The first day of track action for the British Grand Prix went almost unnoticed as the political side of the sport took centre stage, but for the drivers, engineers and mechanics at Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, it was business as usual. Under past rules, there would have been a week long test at the Silverstone circuit prior to the race, but with the ban on in-season testing, acquiring data on Friday takes on more importance than usual, especially at such a technically demanding circuit. With this in mind, Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa racked up an impressive mileage, with the Brazilian completing 60 laps, exactly equivalent to a British GP race distance, and Kimi doing even more. However, they ended the day down in seventeenth and eighteenth places and, although some of the other teams may well have been running more new tyres and with less fuel, both drivers admitted this was going to be a tough weekend: points rather than podiums would seem to be the more realistic target for Sunday afternoon.




While the Brawn duo of Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello may head the Drivers’ classification at the moment, they finished fourteenth and sixth respectively on a day when the Red Bull Renaults looked on top form, with Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber topping both time sheets today, the only men to break under the 1m 20s barrier. A surprising third, given the Force India team’s performance so far this season, was Adrian Sutil, while Kazuki Nakajima was fourth for Williams ahead of the Renault of Fernando Alonso.



There are many traditions surrounding this event and of course one of them has to be the weather. So far, it has been fairly benevolent and although it is cold for mid-June, thanks to a strong wind, there has been no rain so far and in fact the only wet time predicted for the weekend is tomorrow morning, when rain is due to coincide with the end of the final hour of free practice, leaving dry and warm conditions for the afternoon’s qualifying.