RB6s untouchable in Turkey’s turn eight (Second practice interactive chart)
Mark Webber was the fastest man through sector two in Istanbul
The second practice session in Istanbul ended with the top teams not far apart on lap time. But each seems to be strong at different points on the Istanbul track.
Read on for analysis and interactive data from second practice.
View interactive chart full screen
Tick/untick drivers’ names to show/hide their laps, click and drag to zoom
The second session at the Istanbul circuit this afternoon was run in hotter temperatures – the track surface was already above 50C before the green light came on.
As usual, drivers generally started the session on the harder tyres, did some quick runs on soft tyres in the middle of the session, then ended the session with a longer run on used hard tyres.
The fastest times came when the drivers switched to the soft tyres. Of course we don’t know the fuel loads, but the cars seem encouragingly closely-matched. Remember that when Red Bull dominated qualifying at Spain they had showed a similar performance advantage in second practice as well.
Today the RB6s were faster than anything through the second sector – including the long, fast turn eight – by three tenths of a second. Onboard pictures showed their car was visibly more stable around the four-apex turn than anything else.
But McLaren clawed back much of that in the final sector, thanks to being quickest through the speed trap – 2kph faster than anyone, and 5kph faster than the Red Bulls.
On top of that Jenson Button drove a peach of a first sector on his quickest time.
Ferrari may not be too far behind either – Fernando Alonso lost time behind Michael Schumacher on his first soft tyre run.
However, form tells us that McLaren have often looked better on a Friday than Saturday or Sunday – they’ve been fastest in eight of the 14 Friday sessions so far this year.
Cue the mind games: While Button played down his car’s performance today, Sebastian Vettel said he is wary of the McLaren threat:
I think McLaren looks very competitive here, their [F-duct] system seems to be working well and they seem quite a bit quicker than everyone else on the straights.
Sebastian Vettel
Red Bull ran their F-duct for the first time today but it seems they’re not quite happy with it yet – Mark Webber described it as “not the most straightforward of systems.”
But Vitantonio Liuzzi is pleased with Force India’s implementation of McLaren’s innovation:
I think it’s working pretty well, it’s a clever solution to it and not too difficult to use considering what you have to do.
Vitantonio Liuzzi
The engine that failed in Webber’s car was apparently very close to the end of its operating life and the team aren’t concerned about losing it.
Two other drivers to sufer technical trouble today were Nico Hülkenberg, who had hydraulic problems in the Williams, and Jarno Trulli, whose Lotus lost third gear.
Lotus appeared to have a healthy margin in hand over Virgin. The latter said they were mainly concentrating on high-fuel runs, but Timo Glock admitted he wasn’t sure the team had gone in the right direction on set-up:
We experienced a lot of balance problems with the car and this morning I was worried because it looked like we were going backwards rather than moving forward in the way we had hoped.
Timo Glock
The reduced gap between the new teams and the midfield will be partly down to Jaime Alguersuari once again doing a long run in the second practice session in the Toro Rosso. Still it seems the new teams are gradually cutting the gap to the midfield.
Tomorrow’s qualifying session should give us more definitive answers to the question of who’s quick around Istanbul.
Who do you think is going to win the Turkish Grand Prix? Make your Turkish Grand Prix predictions now to win great F1 prizes
| Pos. | Car | Driver | Car | Best lap | Gap | Lap | At time | Laps |
| 1 | 1 | Jenson Button | McLaren-Mercedes | 1’28.280 | 15 | 55 | 30 | |
| 2 | 6 | Mark Webber | Red Bull-Renault | 1’28.378 | 0.098 | 15 | 63 | 23 |
| 3 | 5 | Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull-Renault | 1’28.590 | 0.310 | 10 | 51 | 27 |
| 4 | 2 | Lewis Hamilton | McLaren-Mercedes | 1’28.672 | 0.392 | 16 | 51 | 32 |
| 5 | 8 | Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | 1’28.725 | 0.445 | 14 | 54 | 30 |
| 6 | 4 | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | 1’28.914 | 0.634 | 17 | 79 | 22 |
| 7 | 3 | Michael Schumacher | Mercedes | 1’28.974 | 0.694 | 11 | 55 | 22 |
| 8 | 11 | Robert Kubica | Renault | 1’29.225 | 0.945 | 22 | 63 | 34 |
| 9 | 12 | Vitaly Petrov | Renault | 1’29.501 | 1.221 | 10 | 27 | 36 |
| 10 | 7 | Felipe Massa | Ferrari | 1’29.620 | 1.340 | 17 | 72 | 26 |
| 11 | 14 | Adrian Sutil | Force India-Mercedes | 1’29.629 | 1.349 | 9 | 79 | 16 |
| 12 | 10 | Nico Hülkenberg | Williams-Cosworth | 1’29.987 | 1.707 | 9 | 74 | 17 |
| 13 | 23 | Kamui Kobayashi | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’30.053 | 1.773 | 14 | 39 | 34 |
| 14 | 22 | Pedro de la Rosa | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’30.176 | 1.896 | 7 | 36 | 34 |
| 15 | 16 | Sebastien Buemi | Toro Rosso-Ferrari | 1’30.386 | 2.106 | 21 | 68 | 32 |
| 16 | 15 | Vitantonio Liuzzi | Force India-Mercedes | 1’30.627 | 2.347 | 6 | 12 | 28 |
| 17 | 9 | Rubens Barrichello | Williams-Cosworth | 1’30.766 | 2.486 | 19 | 64 | 32 |
| 18 | 17 | Jaime Alguersuari | Toro Rosso-Ferrari | 1’30.933 | 2.653 | 5 | 12 | 37 |
| 19 | 19 | Heikki Kovalainen | Lotus-Cosworth | 1’31.610 | 3.330 | 21 | 61 | 37 |
| 20 | 25 | Lucas di Grassi | Virgin-Cosworth | 1’33.013 | 4.733 | 19 | 74 | 28 |
| 21 | 18 | Jarno Trulli | Lotus-Cosworth | 1’33.081 | 4.801 | 8 | 16 | 11 |
| 22 | 24 | Timo Glock | Virgin-Cosworth | 1’33.312 | 5.032 | 20 | 68 | 29 |
| 23 | 21 | Bruno Senna | HRT-Cosworth | 1’33.420 | 5.140 | 19 | 56 | 35 |
| 24 | 20 | Karun Chandhok | HRT-Cosworth | 1’33.740 | 5.460 | 4 | 8 | 25 |
2010 Turkish Grand Prix
- Hamilton’s engineer got it wrong over Button pass, Whitmarsh admits
- Technical review: Turkish Grand Prix
- McLaren told Hamilton Button wouldn’t pass him during the Turkish Grand Prix
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- Kobayashi: ‘Q3 means more than a point’
- A brilliant race in Turkey shows F1 is on the right track (Making F1 better)
- Horner blames both drivers for crash
- Renault aiming to beat Mercedes
- 2010 Turkish Grand Prix – the complete F1 Fanatic race weekend review
wasiF1 said on 28th May 2010, 17:18
I lost the link but can anyone please help me where I can find the numbers of engine each driver have used?
steph said on 28th May 2010, 17:37
F1wolf.com and click 2010 season
Patrickl said on 28th May 2010, 18:45
Or the fia.com F1 mediacenter after the race weekend is finished (in the post event tab).
Tiomkin said on 28th May 2010, 17:20
Nice interactive chart Keith, but could you put a button to deselect/select all? All that mouse bashing is tedious.
chiliching said on 28th May 2010, 20:51
Hi Keith, I would just like to suggest if possible that it would also help fellow f1fanatics if the sector times are also tabled.
innim said on 28th May 2010, 21:08
if you need them they are available here:
http://www.formula1.com/results/season/2010/830/6738/best_sector_times.html
Also shows speed trap results and stuff like that :)
haha said on 28th May 2010, 21:01
Webber looked funny when he struggled to be understood by the stewards after his break down.
Mike said on 29th May 2010, 8:04
I hope they show it again before the race, anyone found footage of it?
Charlie Watts said on 28th May 2010, 22:50
How on earth is Heikki Kovalinen almost 1.5 seconds quicker than any of the other new teams!? Incredible. There must be some explanation unless it was actually the normally ubbeatable at Turkey Felipe Massa in Heikki’s helmet and Heikki took the underwhelming Massa’s place at Ferrari.
F1Fan said on 29th May 2010, 0:53
So much for Massa closing the gap to Alonso. He span on the soft tyre and had to run almost all of P2 w/ a single set of softs. And that’s his favorite track. On equal terms Alonso cannot be touched. By anyone.
M0tion said on 29th May 2010, 2:51
Qualy 4-2 to Alonso just like Rubens over Hulk.
Not much more championship point difference than between Button and Hamilton.
Massa had 3 goes at finding the limit at T8 and one cost him his fast lap set of tyres which SD said Massa would otherwise have been equal to Alonso. Nobody has found the limit in Turkey better than Massa in past years.
The above is all on the record. Don’t count your fantasies as reality quite yet. Alonso is good as a total package but others are as fast in the car.
Mike said on 29th May 2010, 5:45
Alonso is good, but just because the car doesn’t suit Massa doesn’t mean no one can touch Alonso.
Obviously Hammy can, And I think Kubica could, possible Heidfeld, Rosberg could give it a go, Vettel and Webber, Schumacher on a good day…. Maybe Chandok, but that’s as far as I’ll push my point.
Brian Lara said on 29th May 2010, 5:56
I think a Bull will win followed by a Red car. I will agree with Keith’s trend analysis that the Mclarens don’t improve much after friday and say no podium for them
Ben said on 29th May 2010, 6:13
Hey Keith, this is probably the scientist in me getting narky, but can you please label the axes on the graph? I can figure that the y axis is laptime, but what is the x axis?
Burnout said on 29th May 2010, 7:12
X axis is the time elapsed during the session i.e. how many minutes into the session that lap was done
Toncho said on 29th May 2010, 8:57
The Virgins are sandbagging or HRT has really cut the gap??