F1 | Imola free practice, minimal gaps between the compounds at the end of Friday

A day full of ideas on the Imola track, theater of the next Made in Italy and Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. At the end of the first two hours of work on the banks of the "Santerno", the teams collected numerous data on the behavior of the tyres, discovering quite "small" differences between the C4, the "softer" compound brought to Emilia Romagna by Pirelli, and the C3 average.

More marked however with the harder C2, probably due to the "rising" temperatures that the Circus found in Italy. While waiting for tomorrow's free practice 3, the teams will try to find the best strategies for tomorrow's race, even if the most probable option, considering today's data, remains that of a single stop with soft-medium alternation ( or medium-soft for those who manage to pass the cut with the "yellow").

GP Imola, the report of the free practices

* 1st and 2nd place in both sessions for the two Mercedes drivers, with Valtteri Bottas ahead of Lewis Hamilton: for the Finnish driver, best time of the day in FP2 on P Zero Yellow medium.
Temperatures were slightly cooler than 2020 but similar between FP1 and FP2, with 15° ambient and 25° asphalt maximum.

* Although the Teams raced at Imola recently, in 2020 a single 90-minute free practice session was held on Saturday morning.

* So far the gap between P Zero White hard and P Zero Yellow medium is around 5 tenths per lap, while the P Zero Red soft compound is around 7 tenths per lap faster than the medium.

*The gap between the three compounds is different than initially estimated. The gap between hard and medium is smaller than expected because the hard compound, although it requires a longer warm-up, is able to perform well and guarantee a good level of grip. Between soft and medium the gap is greater because we expected lower asphalt temperatures and graining in general on C4, not just on long runs as actually occurred.

Mario Isola, Head of F1 and Car Racing at Pirelli

“The temperatures in Imola today were slightly lower than those of last November. Overall, the performance of the three compounds was positive. Graining only occurred during long runs on the C4 compound in both sessions. Imola is a medium severity circuit which does not impose large loads on the tyres, so with lower asphalt temperatures the warm-up takes longer, especially with hard and medium. In the afternoon, the track was in good condition despite there being few support races. Compared to what we had predicted, the gap between hard and medium is smaller, while that between medium and soft is larger, although there are differences between the various teams. This factor will obviously influence strategies."