The opening day of action at Interlagos brought exactly what was expected: a bumpy yet clean surface, close gaps between the frontrunners on one of the shortest laps of the year, slippery conditions as the track rubbered in, and weather that alternated between sunshine and clouds.

The short lap also meant that the performance gaps between the compounds were reasonably condensed, with all three tyres run today and assessed using different fuel loads. Valtteri Bottas was fastest for Mercedes by just 0.003 seconds in FP2 – the tightest session of the season – but there was little to choose between the three top teams and the battle seems equally close in the midfield.

MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF CAR RACING
“As usual, it was very close at Interlagos, meaning that just the smallest mistake or adjustment could result in quite a big difference. The same applies to the strategy too, which can make a real difference when everything else is so closely-matched. At the moment, it’s hard to make any predictions about the competitive order here, but the tyres are reacting as we expected them to. We’ve not seen any cases of excessive degradation – only some blistering that didn't affect performance – even though the lap times are nearly a second faster than their equivalents last year. Teams were using quite varied run plans during both sessions today, so it’s going to be interesting to see whether or not that translates into a few different strategies on Sunday.”

FREE PRACTICE 1 – TOP 3 TIMES
DRIVER 		TIME   	  COMPOUND
Verstappen 	1m09.011s SUPERSOFT NEW
Vettel 		1m09.060s SUPERSOFT NEW
Hamilton 	1m09.107s SUPERSOFT NEW

FREE PRACTICE 2 – TOP 3 TIMES
DRIVER 		TIME 	  COMPOUND
Bottas 		1m08.846s SUPERSOFT NEW
Hamilton 	1m08.849s SUPERSOFT NEW
Vettel 		1m08.919s SUPERSOFT NEW

FP1 - BEST TIME BY COMPOUND 
COMPOUND 	DRIVER 	   TIME
SUPERSOFT 	Verstappen 1m09.011s
SOFT 		Raikkonen  1m09.573s
MEDIUM 		Vandoorne  1m11.452s

FP2 - BEST TIME BY COMPOUND 
COMPOUND 	DRIVER 	   TIME
SUPERSOFT 	Bottas 	   1m08.846s
SOFT 		Hamilton   1m09.245s
MEDIUM 		Bottas 	   1m09.668s

MOST LAPS BY COMPOUND SO FAR
COMPOUND 	DRIVER 	   LAPS
SUPERSOFT 	Ocon 	   30
SOFT 		Sainz 	   35
MEDIUM 		Raikkonen  25

TYRE STATISTICS OF THE DAY
			MEDIUM	SOFT	SUPERSOFT
Kms driven* 		698 	1986 	3037
Sets used overall** 	11 	28 	44

* The above number gives the total amount of kilometres
driven in FP1 and FP2 today, all drivers combined.
** Per compound, all drivers combined.