Free practice 1 and 2 at the Gilles Villeneuve circuit in Montreal raised more questions than answers ahead of the 53rd Canadian Grand Prix.
The main reason was the changing weather conditions which saw rapid changes from sunshine to rain and even hail.
There was about thirty minutes at the start of the second free practice session where it was possible to run regularly on dry weather tires, but before and after that the rain got in the way of the drivers …and Pirelli.
In these conditions the manufacturer admits that it has learned very little on the new Montreal track, which has been completely resurfaced for this year.
“It is very difficult to draw conclusions from Friday, which saw alternating sunshine and showers,” comments Simone Berra, Chief Engineer of Pirelli F1.
“The track conditions were never optimal, as evidenced by the lap times on slicks that were way off, around four seconds in fact, from the average simulation times received from the teams before this trip to North America.”
“So there remain two main unknowns, namely how the tires will adapt to the new track surface, and so far we have seen very low levels of grip, so it makes sense to expect a marked improvement in whether the cars can run consistently on a dry track, and secondly the level of graining.”
“We were able to gather a little more robust data on the transition point from intermediate tires to slicks, confirmed at around 112% of a dry lap time.”
“It is clear that the weather uncertainty for the rest of the weekend will be a major issue: Météo France currently announces an 80% probability of rain for qualifying, while this figure is lower for the race, but we know that The situation can change quickly here.”
