The fastest car through the speed trap in first practice today was not a Mclaren – but a Renault.
Take a closer look at the data from first practice in Canada including an interactive chart of all the drivers’ lap times below.
View interactive chart full screen
Tick/untick drivers’ names to show their laps, click and drag to zoom
Renault fastest in speed traps
Red Bull’s Christian Horner has complained about the Renault engines being – he claims – 20-30bhp down on their rivals engines. So how were the R30s the quickest cars through the speed traps by 4kph in this session, with Vitaly Petrov clocking 319.2kph?
This is most likely explained by different downforce levels. During practice the BBC said McLaren, who have often been the quickest cars through the speed traps this year, were running a higher downforce rear wing than their rivals.
McLaren may think they can find more lap time by trading off their straight line speed advantage for more downforce, making them quicker in the corners yet still reasonably competitive on the straights.
As for Renault, they were a couple of tenths of a second off their benchmark rivals Mercedes. Let’s see if they continue to show the same performance through the rest of the practice sessions.
Teams may choose to trim their downforce for the race to improve their ability to overtake, make themselves harder to pass, and reduce their fuel consumption.
The fastest Cosworth-powered car was Bruno Senna’s HRT, ranked 12th at 309.1 kph.
The Red Bulls, who are not using their F-duct this weekend, ranked ninth (Sebastian Vettel, 312.5kph) and 20th (Mark Webber, 306.2kph).
McLaren faster than they look
We’ve seen McLaren top the times sheets on Fridays several times before this year.
But the manner in which they did it today suggests their full advantage over their rivals is greater than Jenson Button’s 0.158 second margin over Michael Schumacher.
In the past we’ve seen them do a lot of low-fuel running, working on their qualifying performance. Today each of their drivers did a single stint with what appears to be a reasonably low fuel load followed by a longer stint.
All of their closest rivals set their times later in the session, as the track became cleaner and grippier.
Although Button set the fastest time Lewis Hamilton set the quickest three sectors – had he strung them together he would have matched Button’s lap to within three thousandths of a second.
Expect the lap times to get much quicker in the second session, assuming it stays dry. In the last F1 race at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in 2008 the fastest time of the weekend was set in second practice before the track started to break up. The best lap, a 1’15.752 set by Hamilton, was 1.8 seconds faster than the best from first practice.
Car | Driver | Car | Best lap | Gap | Lap | At time | Laps | |
1 | 1 | Jenson Button | McLaren-Mercedes | 1’18.127 | 10 | 57 | 23 | |
2 | 3 | Michael Schumacher | Mercedes | 1’18.285 | 0.158 | 14 | 74 | 19 |
3 | 2 | Lewis Hamilton | McLaren-Mercedes | 1’18.352 | 0.225 | 8 | 57 | 19 |
4 | 4 | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | 1’18.356 | 0.229 | 23 | 92 | 23 |
5 | 5 | Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull-Renault | 1’18.549 | 0.422 | 27 | 93 | 27 |
6 | 11 | Robert Kubica | Renault | 1’18.662 | 0.535 | 14 | 70 | 19 |
7 | 8 | Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | 1’18.726 | 0.599 | 10 | 62 | 21 |
8 | 15 | Vitantonio Liuzzi | Force India-Mercedes | 1’19.097 | 0.970 | 23 | 89 | 25 |
9 | 10 | Nico Hulkenberg | Williams-Cosworth | 1’19.282 | 1.155 | 22 | 71 | 31 |
10 | 9 | Rubens Barrichello | Williams-Cosworth | 1’19.313 | 1.186 | 18 | 75 | 19 |
11 | 14 | Adrian Sutil | Force India-Mercedes | 1’19.373 | 1.246 | 12 | 64 | 12 |
12 | 7 | Felipe Massa | Ferrari | 1’19.511 | 1.384 | 14 | 77 | 21 |
13 | 12 | Vitaly Petrov | Renault | 1’19.549 | 1.422 | 24 | 93 | 24 |
14 | 6 | Mark Webber | Red Bull-Renault | 1’19.609 | 1.482 | 15 | 65 | 26 |
15 | 23 | Kamui Kobayashi | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’20.186 | 2.059 | 20 | 62 | 33 |
16 | 16 | Sebastien Buemi | Toro Rosso-Ferrari | 1’20.320 | 2.193 | 26 | 91 | 27 |
17 | 22 | Pedro de la Rosa | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’20.584 | 2.457 | 20 | 90 | 21 |
18 | 17 | Jaime Alguersuari | Toro Rosso-Ferrari | 1’20.823 | 2.696 | 25 | 88 | 28 |
19 | 19 | Heikki Kovalainen | Lotus-Cosworth | 1’21.869 | 3.742 | 19 | 73 | 24 |
20 | 20 | Karun Chandhok | HRT-Cosworth | 1’21.977 | 3.850 | 27 | 92 | 27 |
21 | 18 | Jarno Trulli | Lotus-Cosworth | 1’22.543 | 4.416 | 9 | 48 | 12 |
22 | 21 | Bruno Senna | HRT-Cosworth | 1’22.701 | 4.574 | 17 | 62 | 28 |
23 | 24 | Timo Glock | Virgin-Cosworth | 1’22.713 | 4.586 | 12 | 67 | 20 |
24 | 25 | Lucas di Grassi | Virgin-Cosworth | No time |
Marc Connell
11th June 2010, 18:05
actually looking at those times, HRT have cought up a lot. Running with lotus now ? yeah its not the race but thats still worth a well done.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
11th June 2010, 18:08
They did set their best times right at the end but even so I think they’ve made progress. They had good straight-line speed in Shanghai, though, so I thought they might go well here. It’s not as if they have an excess of downforce, after all. Could be a good battle at the back this weekend!
Marc Connell
11th June 2010, 18:10
i hope they do a 2009 mclaren, run first half of the season with no downforce then 2nd half they become unstoppable. Quite a few tracks will suit them
Alistair
11th June 2010, 19:01
You say that trimming down-force might help the cars overtake, make them harder to pass, and reduce fuel consumption. I understand the first two. Would you explain how trimming down-force reduces fuel consumption? I would have thought that this would increase fuel-consumption, as it would increase top-speed. Moreover, wouldn’t trimming down-force increase tyre wear on a track that’s hard on the tyres?
Joey-Poey
11th June 2010, 19:14
Less drag = less the engine has to work to reach those higher speeds.
Damon
11th June 2010, 18:08
Is the “Lap” column the same as a typical “Laps [completed]” column?
And what is the “At time” column?
Adrian
11th June 2010, 18:15
I think the “Lap” column is what lap out of their practise laps they set their fastest lap on, “At time” is how far into the session and the final “Laps” column shows the total number of laps they completed…I think. Keith am I right?
Phanatic
11th June 2010, 18:22
Its still hard to figure out how one can set a lap at the 93rd minute, I would assume it can’t exceed 92 considering the duration of a lap.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
11th June 2010, 18:27
It’s rounded up
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
11th June 2010, 18:24
Dead right :-)
US_Peter
11th June 2010, 18:17
“McLaren may think they can find more lap time by trading off their straight line speed advantage for more downforce, making them quicker in the corners yet still reasonably competitive on the straights.”
I expect that’s probably the case. They can remove downforce from their car by activating the F-duct as other teams can by changing to lower downforce wings. This could give them a huge advantage since they don’t need to compromise downforce in the turns in order to have good straight line speed. Anyone without an effective F-duct will have to pick a compromise.
Alistair
11th June 2010, 18:51
Also, maybe McLaren have one eye on the weather. If the race and or qualifying are wet (which is likely) they’ll need lots of down-force. The F-duct also allows them, as you say, to keep good straight-line speed: all-in-all, a good invention; which, like most good inventions in F1, has been quickly banned!
DaveW
11th June 2010, 18:28
I see RBR did not even pack their F-duct for the trip. Talk about bringing a knife to a gun fight.
BasCB (@bascb)
11th June 2010, 18:41
Probably a case of rather brining an excellent throwing knife to it than a backfiring or jamming gun.
Adrian Newey commented on the Red Bull system last race and said they have checked the theory/windtunnel with real running and now have to work on making it work reliably.
BasCB (@bascb)
11th June 2010, 18:35
Looks like Renault are a serious contender here. Pedrov did a nice run of constantly fast laps in the end.
Is it possible McLaren were not using the F-duct all the time or is the slower speed also from running with more fuel.
Red Bull have probably not shown what they are made off. But Vettel was running hard to get closer to the front in the last minutes, so maybe he was not too heavy on fuel there.
Alistair
11th June 2010, 19:09
Renault have good traction out of the many slow(ish) corners, as we saw in Monaco. And Renault, despite the protestations of Horner, seem to have a pretty powerful engine, as we saw in Malaysia: Petrov was pretty much as quick as Lewis on the main-straight. So they may well be reasonably competitive here. What caught my eye were the performances of the Mercedes. If they can get themselves ahead of Red Bull in qualifying, that would be great; and not completely out of the realms of possibility. Regardless, I think that this will most likely be another McLaren 1-2, come rain or shine.
JUGNU
11th June 2010, 18:47
Well done Bruno Senna. I hope he gets a good car next year. Want Senna name to be fighting in the top 5.
tombo
11th June 2010, 18:56
why is webber often so much slower on the straights than vettel?
we saw a huge differential at china in the race; also vettel was frequently quicker on the straight at turkey. i’m thinking it could be that webber runs more rear wing in order to tailor the balance to his liking; he’s heavier than vettel so will have less ballast to move around to achieve this.
or maybe he prefers more rear grip.
what this does to the lap time is hard to quantify – the extra 6kph vettel gets at the end of the straights is probably worth no more than a tenth of a second per lap (if the straight is 500m long, they’re probably only travelling at that top speed for 100m at most; montreal has 3 straights where they’re looking 300kph+) – but webber will have greater stability under braking and more grip in the corners.
Alistair
11th June 2010, 19:03
One wonders whether they have equal machinery, as well as equal status in the team…
Ral
11th June 2010, 20:55
6kph higher top-speed at the end of 500m, assuming linear acceleration, means 3kph higher _average_ speed over these 500m. That is worth quite a bit of time.
Also assuming they are not bouncing off the limiter in top gear (which would seem wasteful, but I’m certainly open to correction on that), they will never travel at top speed for extended times, or indeed even reach top speed.
wasiF1
12th June 2010, 2:34
I think may be the Mclaren know that anyway they will be faster on the straight then their rivals so they decided to have more downforce which will help them to exit the corner well & let them have a good traction out of the corner.Similarly may be alongside the low downforce setup I think the torque of the Renault engine is helping the team & Red Bull to have a traction out off the corners.
johnno
12th June 2010, 14:14
you could tell renault were running much thinner rear wing than the others