Rain makes for difficult session (German GP practice one interactive data)

There’s little that can be read into this morning’s wet practice session at the Hockenheimring.

If nothing else, the session gave us a chance to see how the different drivers copes with the challenging conditions and what kind of choices they would face in a rain-hit qualifying or race.

View interactive chart full screen

Tick/untick drivers’ names to show their laps, click and drag to zoom

With the rain stopping early on in the session the track got prrogressively drier and faster as can be seen from the times.

Giving an indication of how much faster, the first lap of the session was Jaime Alguersuari’s 1’41.068.

By the time 90 minutes was up Adrian Sutil had lowered the mark by 16 seconds. But he was still ten seconds off a typical dry lap time.

Some of the big names that appear towards the bottom of the times do so because they didn’t set a quick lap when the track was at its best – such as Michael Schumacher, who did his best time 47 minutes into the session.

Alguersuari was the first person to switch from wet weather tyres to intermediates. He made the change when the fastest time was Nico Rosberg’s 1’30.864. It took Alguersuari seven laps to beat that time.

If the teams find themselves facing similar conditions in qualifying expect them to start thinking about intermediate tyres when the front runners’ lap times drop towards 90 seconds.

They may well get a taste of that soon as thunderclouds are heading towards the Hockenheimring as the second practice session approaches.

Drivers’ best times

Drivers’ ultimate laps

An ultimate lap is a driver’s three best sectors added together.

2010 German Grand Prix

Image (C) www.mclaren.com