The first day of the United States Grand Prix ended on a somewhat subdued note, with the usual intrigue of a day of practice replaced with the opacity of a mandatory Pirelli tyre test.
With the first session characterised by a quarter of the grid handing their cars over to reserve or junior drivers the sport goes into the crucial qualifying day down on data and with the competitive order unclear.
What little we were able to glean from FP1 is that Ferrari and Red Bull Racing look closely matched at this early stage of the weekend. Carlos Sainz was less than 0.3 seconds quicker than Max Verstappen.
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But the Dutchman felt he lacked the front-end bite to make the most of the lap, while we couldn’t verify over relatively few laps whether Ferrari would be suffering its familiar front-tyre degradation problems, particularly given the 40°C track temperature.
Mercedes is the ballpark, but it’s a massive question mark whether his upgraded W13 will be able to keep up with the two leaders on Saturday. Lewis Hamilton was almost half a second off the pace, and while he was reasonably happy with the session, he noted how bumpy the notoriously uneven circuit surface was — one of his car’s key weaknesses.
Aston Martin was surprisingly competitive, with Lance Stroll heading the midfield and beating both Sergio Perez and George Russell, validating pre-race expectations of a competitive weekend, while Fernando Alonso was comfortably next best for Alpine.
Will any of these signs prove accurate by the time we get to qualifying and Sunday’s race? It’ll all depend on what’s now a crucial FP3 session.
PIRELLI’S PRIVATE FP2 EXPLAINED
In some respects Pirelli’s position in Formula 1 is an unenviable one. It has to design tyres to strict specification, and rather than make them as fast and as durable as possible, the Italian company has to make give compounds of varying quality to try to promote interesting strategies and races.
But it also gets only extremely limited access to current Formula 1 cars to test and develop its tyres, a problem exacerbated by this being the first season of new regulations. It was forced to ask teams to make ‘mule’ cars out of 2022-spec teams to approximate the expected downforce in private tests late last year, but these were only ever going to be so accurate.
The problem is then compounded again by the jam-packed modern F1 schedule that allows almost no time for in-season testing. In fact the sheet number of back-to-back and triple-header rounds means a Monday can’t even be tacked onto most rounds.
So Pirelli has instead asked for two elongated 90-minute practice sessions in lieu at the Japanese and United States grands prix — though the washed-out Japanese session has been transferred to Mexico next weekend.
The program is controlled completely by Pirelli right down to fuel loads and stint length. Each driver is given two sets of tyres, one of each of the two experimental compounds being evaluated, but they’re not told which tyre is which or which of the five compounds they have, making it a blind experiment.
Pirelli’s most important aim for 2023 is to make the front tyres grippier to try to neutralise this generation of car’s tendency to understeer, particularly in slow corners, as a side-effect of the ground effect aerodynamics back in force.
It’s an imbalance that particularly afflicted Max Verstappen — but benefited teammate Sergio Perez — early in the season when the Red Bull Racing machine was overweight, which exacerbated its slow-speed problems.
It’s also a component of Daniel Ricciardo’s struggles, with the Australian hamstrung by a lack of front-end feeling, which is severely shown up at slow-speed circuits like Monaco.
Pirelli also wants to even out the gaps between the compounds and in particular bring the hardest tyre, the C1, closer to the rest of the range to promote more interesting strategies.
This and next week’s test in Mexico are the only sessions Pirelli has to validate its work before locking in its compounds for 2023. If the new compounds get the tick of approval, they’ll hopefully lead to an improvement in racing next season.
GET READY FOR A FLAT-OUT FP3
The lack of a representative FP2 puts a lot more onus on the normally sedate FP3 on Saturday, which will now need to feature some long-run simulation running to make up for the lost hour on Friday.
Teams undertook some limited long-run sims in FP1, but given they’re undertaken alongside the regular basic set-up work required in first practice, they’re only so useful in predicting race pace.
In some respects, however, FP3 is the better session to simulate race pace given it starts at the same hour as the race will on the following day.
The session times on Friday and Saturday have all been offset to finish late — after 6pm, less than an hour before sunset — so that the packed-house crowd can get to the night-time concerts, which have become renowned parts of the US Grand Prix schedule. Green Day is performing on Friday night and Ed Sheeran on Saturday night.
FP2 and qualifying start at 5pm local time, whereas the race starts at 2pm.
It’s a substantial difference. On Friday track temperature dropped from 40°C in the blazing sunshine at 2pm to a cooler 30°C after 5pm as the sun set.
Such a difference will have a significant effect on tyre wear and therefore strategy, which means FP3 will be crucial to understanding the best way to manage the race and therefore will likely be a very busy hour of track time.
YOUNG DRIVERS GET FIRST CRACK
Every team must devote two practice sessions, one per car, to fielding a rookie driver in Formula 1 — again, to compensate for the lack of in-season testing time in modern F1.
But as is typical for teams dealing with rules that are mildly inconvenient, most of them have left it until the last minute to satisfy the rules.
Most of these rookie sessions hasn’t been completed before this weekend, but four teams ticked off one of their two in FP1.
Ferrari fielded Robert Shwartzman, McLaren sent out 2021 IndyCar champion Alex Palou, Alfa Romeo handed F2 runner-up Theo Pourchaire his first F1 experience, and Logan Sargeant got behind the wheel of a Williams car.
They were particularly important sessions for Pourchaire and Sargeant, who are both on Formula 1 trajectories in the next two seasons as prized junior drivers.
Pourchaire was in the frame for the F2 title this year before eventual champion Felipe Drugovich blew him away after the mid-season break. Zhou Guanyu was subsequently re-signed at Alfa Romeo for another season, with Pourchaire recently announced as the team’s official reserve as he embarks on a make-or-break third F2 campaign in 2023.
But Alfa Romeo boss Frederic Vasseur is a fan, and the 19-year-old Frenchman acquitted himself well enough in his first F1 trial to keep the faith that he could be an option in 2024.
Logan Sargeant is a better bet for an F1 debut — the first American to enter an official F1 session since 2015 is favourite to replace Nicholas Latifi at Williams next year.
Sargeant needs to finish fifth in Formula 2 this season to acquire his superlicence — he’s currently third, but the drivers in fourth, fifth and sixth are tied just nine points behind him — but a clean 100 kilometres of practice time has earnt him a bonus point towards his application.
“In all honesty, the best thing I can do is take in as much information and knowledge that I possibly can and use that to my advantage hopefully going forward,” he told America’s SpeedCity Broadcasting. “I just need to perform the best I possibly can, and whatever falls into place falls into place.”
Palou, who described the capability of his McLaren F1 car as “insane”, was impressive for his consistency in his first-ever sample of current F1 machinery, having had only a couple of private tests in old F1 cars prior to this weekend. He’s not currently in the frame for a seat but is considered an interesting proposition given his American notoriety combined with European junior single-seater experience.
Shwartzman, one of Ferrari’s test drivers, isn’t on the driver market radar, having not raced this season after finishing second to Piastri in last year’s F2 campaign.
GIOVINAZZI BUTCHERS HIS LAST CHANCE
Antonio Giovinazzi was the fifth driver to commandeer a car during FP1, but you would’ve missed his cameo had you tuned in a few minutes late.
The Ferrari reserve driver, in his second session with Haas as a favour to the Scuderia, crashed his car after just four laps, and though he was able to limp back to the pits, he took no further part in the session thanks to a burnt-out clutch.
“I wasn’t pushing and there was a lot of gusts of wind and I lost the car,” Giovinazzi said, according to The Race. “Unfortunately it stuck in the barriers there and then I burned the clutch trying to go out and the session was over.
“A big sorry to the team for what happened. But it’s racing and sometimes it happens.”
It wasn’t enough to lighten the mood of team boss Guenther Steiner.
“Obviously on your [fourth] lap to put it in the wall is not fantastic, I would call it, to say the least,” the unimpressed Steiner told Sky Sports afterwards.
A session-ending crash just four laps into the first practice session reflect poorly on Giovinazzi if the Italian is expecting to be a candidate to replace Mick Schumacher next year, whose seat is at risk largely because of his propensity to crash.
However, Giovinazzi isn’t understood to be a contender for the drive, with Nico Hulkenberg the preferred alternative if Haas decided to axe the younger German.
The team is expected to make its decision after next weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix.
Giovinazzi is an outside chance of a Williams drive in the unlikely even Sargeant doesn’t acquire a superlicence, otherwise he’s likely to appear in the World Endurance Championship, perhaps as part of Ferrari’s 2023 debut into the hypercar class.
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
FP3 is at 6am on Sunday, with the pre-qualifying show live from 8am ahead of Q1 at 9am.
The United States Grand Prix pre-race show starts at 4:30am before lights out at 6am.
