Melbourne Practice

2009 season has finally started today with a lot of questions and concerns in mind. Despite these two sessions were only practice sessions, we have surprisingly three teams which are the subject of diffuser protests at the top of the standings. They are closely followed by Red Bull, Ferrari and Renault while BMW and McLaren were near the bottom. As you know practice is only for setup the car and evaluate different options. So, Let’s try to analyze which teams are really fast and which teams are not.

Ferrari seemed better in the first practice whereas they had some difficulties in the second one. They are very consistent over the long runs and Massa was running in low and medium 27′s in one of his ten lap stints. Thinking that most of the fastest times of their rivals have been set during the short stints Ferrari is now in a strong position for the race. As far as race fuel loads concerned, they have a very solid car with the prime tires from the beginning. But their problems started to rise when they opted to softer tires. They were almost without grip and missing brake points at every corner. This is mostly because of the graining at their rear tires. Also as I realized Massa was pressing KERS button a couple of times during a lap. So, they are probably using KERS not just once, but a couple of times during a lap which is logical for the circuits like Melbourne with mpre than one circuits.