WHAT WE'VE LEARNED
* A typical Friday in England was characterised by wet and dry weather in the two free practice sessions around the rapid Silverstone circuit. The weather was a talking point, with few drivers making the most of the wet FP1 session but more coming out in the afternoon, with Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz setting the fastest time of the day (1m28.942s) on the P Zero Red soft tyre: after a very close session where the top five drivers were covered by less than half a second.
* Only the Cinturato Green Intermediate and P Zero Red soft tyres were run in FP1, leaving only the FP2 session for the teams to properly try out the slick tyres taken to round 10 of this year’s championship
* There’s currently an estimated gap of between 1.0 and 1.2 seconds between the soft and medium tyre, with a similar estimated gap between the medium and hard (although there’s not a huge amount of data to fall back on). This gap is largely dependent on weather conditions, with cooler temperatures favouring the softer compounds.

MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF CAR RACING
“When will we have a Friday that allows two free practice sessions to take place exactly as they should? I’m sorry that the spectators, who are always amazing here, didn’t get the chance to see so many laps in FP1, but one consolation is the fact that the track, which was wet at the beginning of the session, gradually dried out lap by lap, allowing the drivers to experience the crossover point – which could be very useful information for the rest of the weekend. At Silverstone the weather will be a determining factor, with the performance gaps between the compounds – and therefore the strategy – being quite dependent on track temperature.”