‘Driving on ice’: Vegas code RB must crack; McLaren’s ‘shocking’ race prediction — Talking Pts

“It’s super low grip — I feel like I could drive a road car quicker than we drive at the minute.”

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Lando Norris’s sentiments after a slippery, dusty and grimy first day of practice at the Las Vegas Grand Prix were shared throughout the paddock.

Las Vegas is a unique event. The key sessions — FP2, qualifying and the race — are held at 10:00pm local time, when the ambient temperature has dipped below 15°C. Without sunlight, the track temperature drops just as low, which is way out of the usual working range of the tyres.

Combined with the dust and grit sheathing the circuit after its daytime use as public roads, grip was ludicrously low.

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Track evolution was therefore high, with F1 cars effectively vacuuming clean the circuit and laying down rubber over two hours of practice, but there’s simply no overcoming the night-time desert chill.

Mercedes wouldn’t have it any other way.

MERCEDES SWEEPS PRACTICE BUT HAMILTON CAUTIOUS OF TRUE POTENTIAL

Lewis Hamilton clean swept Thursday practice, topping both sessions. Teammate George Russell was second and third respectively.

There was some good fortune in his FP2 performance in particular, with Alex Albon’s fuel-related stoppage suspending the session just as several other frontrunners were completing their qualifying simulations.

But there’s also no doubt Mercedes was in good form on the first day of track action — much more so than it’s been at any other recent race, even if the team’s not totally sure why.

“That’s the first time that I’ve actually had a day like that I think this year,” Hamilton said. “The car’s been feeling pretty good in FP1; FP2 less so, so we’ve got some work to do overnight … but I’m really enjoying driving the track.

“I think we’ll see whether the car is still the same tomorrow.”

That last line was tellingly cautious. While this might be the most comprehensively strong first day Mercedes has had in a while, it’s far from the first time the W15 has flattered in practice and flopped in qualifying.

You need to think back only to the United States Grand Prix in Austin last month, when Hamilton looked like a sprint qualifying pole contender on Friday only to be eliminated 19th in grand prix qualifying and finish the race in the gravel.

“I think the perception of us losing performance is maybe not quite fair,” Russell argued. “I think it’s more of a function of our competitors not using their high power. They might be running a bit more fuel than us on a Friday.

“Historically they’ve been sandbagging a little bit more, and when they take it off, they go into their normal position.

“For sure there’s a possibility that’ll happen again tomorrow, but the gap we showed this morning and this evening has been pretty substantial.”

Russell is right to sound at least a little buoyant.

Comparing Hamilton and Lando Norris’s telemetry — Norris being second in FP2 and being equipped with the same Mercedes engine — shows no obvious sign of the common sandbagging techniques.

Both cars are equally fast down the straights, suggesting similar power modes and weights. If anything, the McLaren is quicker on the power, though this seems to be mostly down to its more powerful DRS.

Mercedes’s challenge now is to hone its race pace, which Hamilton suggested was poor, without ruining its single-lap speed.

It’s easier said than done with perhaps the peakiest car in pit lane, with Russell having described it ahead of the weekend as having an extremely narrow operating window to explain the team’s erratic form this season.

And it’ll be harder still with grip levels constantly changing as the circuit flips between public road and racing circuit day by day.

WOLFF DEFENDS HAMILTON ‘COGNITIVE SHARPNESS’ COMMENTS

It was a good day for Hamilton in particular after his “cognitive sharpness” has come into question.

Quotes from Mercedes boss Toto Wolff in the authorised behind-the-scenes book Inside Mercedes F1 came to light this week ahead of the tome’s launch in which the Austrian described Hamilton’s decision to quit the team for Ferrari as having done him a favour.

“We’re in a sport where cognitive sharpness is extremely important, and I believe everyone has a shelf life,” Wolff said, explaining why he offered Hamilton only a short-term contract at his last deal.

Wolff said ahead of the weekend that his comments had been “taken a little bit out of context”, insisting he meant that all people are susceptible to losing their sharpness as they age, despite the commentary being in the context of Hamilton’s departure.

The team boss expanded on his explanation in a press conference on Thursday between practice sessions, saying he’d cleared the air with Hamilton.

“What I said is that everybody has a shelf life and you don’t want to go from great to good, and that doesn’t exclude the drivers,” he said. “It’s still something that I stand by. I’m asking myself this question all the time. I do it for the organisation and for everybody around.

“A sentence that then happen to be made public on a weekend particularly where he hasn’t been satisfied about his driving and about the car — one plus one then makes it look bad.

“Lewis and I speak, and we’ve always done so.

“One rule that we’ve established very early in our relationship is that we talk immediately and say, ‘Why did you say that?’ or ‘What did you mean?’ and that is what we have done.

“That was one sentence in a book, and there were 99 sentences around the Brazil weekend and quotes in some interviews that I’ve given about Lewis where I clearly remark that he’s the greatest driver of all time and that if we are able to give him a quick car, he’s going to be able to win, he’s able to fight for a championship, but we have failed in doing so.”

Speaking ahead of the weekend, Hamilton said he hadn’t read Wolff’s comments, though he responded defiantly all the same.

“Just me being here, standing tall — I feel strong. Honestly, I feel like I’m in the best place I’ve been all year mentally. Considering how bad the last race was, I think that says enough.

“I’ve been around this game for a long time. There’s been so many things said about me, there’s been so many microaggressions — I’m not saying from my boss, because he’s been supportive over all these years and we’ve achieved a lot together; I mean in general within the media.

“Nothing can take me down. I’m still here. I’m still fighting and I’m going to continue to push.

“I’ve got a team that I genuinely still love. Even though I am leaving, I want to make sure that I give them the best I can in these next races.”

He concluded pointedly: “If they provide a car that wants to stay on track, then hopefully we’ll have a better result.”

McLAREN AND FERRARI SIZE UP DIFFERING APPROACHES

A strong weekend for Mercedes would be good news for McLaren. The constructors championship leader wouldn’t mind a weekend on which presumed race favourite Ferrari is less able to score big points.

After one day of practice, the balance of power between the two title rivals is unclear.

McLaren was most consistently challenging near the top of the time sheet, and Norris was only 0.011 seconds slower than Hamilton in FP2.

“I think the low fuel stuff’s been okay,” Norris summed. “The high fuel was shocking.

“At least we can focus more on the high fuel than the low fuel for now, but qualifying well and qualifying at the front will always help everything else. There are plenty of things to look into tonight.”

Oscar Piastri appeared to fare worse, ending the day eighth and 0.962 seconds slower than his teammate, but the Australian had his qualifying simulation run disrupted, meaning he was never able to show his hand.

“When the red flag came out I was on a lap that was a fair bit better than the lap I did,” he said. “If you don’t get the lap here, then you quickly lose a lot of time with the track evolving so much.

“I think the pace is there or thereabouts. I just need to make sure I leave it out on the track.”

Intriguingly F1’s analysis of the long-run simulations contradicts Norris’s assessment.

Estimated race pace

1. McLaren: fastest

2. Ferrari: +0.03 seconds

3. Red Bull Racing: +0.23 seconds

4. Mercedes: +0.41 seconds

5. Haas: +0.89 seconds

6. Williams: +1.15 seconds

7. RB: +1.16 seconds

8. Alpine: +1.16 seconds

9. Sauber: +1.46 seconds

10. Aston Martin: +1.5 seconds

the situation was almost the exact opposite at Ferrari.

The car was so-so over a single lap, with Carlos Sainz quickest in FP2 but 0.28 seconds off the pace.

“It’s a very fine line between having the tyres ready and not ready in sector 1,” he said. “From then on it can snowball into a very good lap or a very bad lap.”

Leclerc said his pre-ace prophecy that Ferrari’s improved tyre wear compared to last year would count against it in the unusually cold conditions,

“What we expected kind of happened. “We are struggling a little bit to put temperature in the tyres.

“I think the Mercedes looks very, very strong — they’ve been a bit more aggressive on tyres all year long, so they are very strong for now.

“We’ve got to try and find something to try and turn the situation around.”

But Leclerc also expressed high confidence in Ferrari’s race pace, once the rubber had got itself up to temperature over several laps.

“All in all I think we are very strong in race pace, a bit less strong in quali,” he said. “It’s been a bit the story of our season, but it’s better that way than the opposite.

“I think we have some ideas of what to do to try and improve that, but then it’s a compromise of how good you want to be in the race compared to qualifying. We need to find the right compromise.”

But Leclerc also suggested the team might be wise to be conservative with any changes given how last year’s race unfolded.

“I just hope that overtaking will be as easy as last year,” he said. “If it is, it’s better to be in our position.

“We are still trying to have the best of both worlds and improve on qualifying, because for now we’re a bit far, but I’m confident we can be stronger tomorrow.”

But both teams are still looking ahead to Mercedes as the chief challenger for qualifying.

“If I would have to say something, Mercedes has been very strong all day,” Sainz said.

Piastri added: “Mercedes looked very quick today — very, very quick.”

WHERE’S RED BULL RACING?

Notably absent from all these forecasts is Red Bull Racing, which suffered most in the slippery conditions.

Max Verstappen was a frequent visitor to the run-off zones during both sessions, and though neither he nor teammate Sergio Pérez was able to set a representative hot lap due to the red flag, the sectors they managed to string together before the session was suspended didn’t look competitive.

“I think we struggled a lot with making the tyres work over one lap especially,” Verstappen said. “Long run I think started off a bit more competitive, but even there I think we need to finetune a few things.

“But the one-lap pace is quite far off.”

The telemetry tells the tale.

Though Verstappen loses time down all straights relative to Hamilton, that’s likely due to running a lower power mode, as is standard practice for Red Bull Racing.

But the biggest losses by far are through every corner. He loses around 0.9 seconds alone just getting around the Sphere.

“Of course it’s quite unique conditions around here — it’s very cold — but at the end of the day it’s the same for everyone, so we need to try and understand what we are doing wrong at the moment,” he said.

“For me it just feels massively tyre related. The balance of the car is not even wrong I think, it’s just we have no grip. It’s like driving on ice at the moment.”

Pérez, who attributed some of his struggles to experimenting with too little rear downforce in a bid to improve straight-line speed, said the team might find profit by simply focusing on race pace.

“[Race pace] was promising, so hopefully tomorrow we can do another step and keep going in that direction,” he said.