Saturday practice

Shorter session, with everyone on track an awful lot. Everyone did between 20 and 29 laps, which implies an average of 11-12 cars on track at any time. Traffic WILL be a problem in Q1, perhaps even in Q2 and Q3. Anyway, times by team:

1. Renault - F. Alonso - 1:15.164
2. Brawn - J. Button - 1:15.233 - 0.069
3. McLaren-Kovaleinen-1:15.278-0.114
5. Ferrari - F. Massa - 1:15.293 - 0.129
8. Red Bull - S. Vettel - 1:15.722 - 0.558
9. Williams - Rosberg - 1:15.758 - 0.594
12. Force India- Sutil - 1:16.228 - 1.064
13.Toro Rosso-Bourdais-1:16.301-1.137
17. Toyota - T. Glock - 1:16.527 - 1.363
18. BMW - R. Kubica - 1:16.599 - 1.435

Too close to call, in other words. In Q1, it is worth everyone's while attempting as many laps as possible, to try and find a clear track - making it implausible that everyone else will succeed.

Luck will play a key role in qualifying, and since qualifying plays such a key role in the race, lcuk matters a lot here.

Saturday Practice

A seldom-well-reported session of 1 hour, a few hours before qualifying. Usually the quickest of the three free pratice sessions it usually features pretty much everyone trying their qualifying set-up. It will be interesting to see if performances this afternoon match those this morning.

As yesterday, I include a list of the top driver from each team, to demonstrate the best pace shown by each car so far this weekend.

Ferrari ... ... 0.000 (more than a second quicker than Rosberg yesterday)
Brawn . .. ... 0.497 (3 and 4, behind a Ferrari 1-2)
BMW ... ... .. 0.686 (although Heidfeld had difficulties and ended up last 2.904s behind Massa)
Toyota ... ... 0.703 (ran more laps than anyone else, 23 & 26 compared to 22 for Kimi)
McLaren ... 0.793 (ran only 15 & 16 laps, only Heidfeld (8) ran fewer)
Toro Rosso..0.871 (9th and 14th places will cheer them, probably)
Renault .. ... 0.946 (guess which one was faster, ahem)
Williams .. .. 1.041 (unusual for them not to lead in this session)
Red Bull .. .. 1.076 (holding their fire, presumably)
Force India..1.356 (still last, hopefully they'll find something soon, to get them into the fight)

One point to note, is that the gap from the Ferrari's to the rest of the field is huge, implying they were doing something different. Another is that Button, in third was less than 1s ahead of Nakajima in 18th, and only 0.469s ahead of Kovaleinen.