The teams prepared for the Grand Prix of Europe in Valencia with the usual two
free practice sessions on Friday, where they got to sample the P Zero White medium tyre and P Zero Yellow soft tyre for the first time at the toughest street circuit of the year.

At the end of the second free practice session, the top 15 cars were covered by less than a second, highlighting the closeness of the competition this year. Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel set the quickest time of the day, 1m39.334s, on the P Zero Yellow soft tyre – 0.131s ahead of Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg. The top five cars were all from different teams, with fractions of a second once more separating the leading runners.

Weather conditions were comparatively cool for this time of year, with free practice two starting in ambient temperatures of 24 degrees centigrade and strong but variable winds. For race day, conditions are expected to be much warmer, as they were last season.

The teams used the medium tyre exclusively in the morning, before moving onto test the soft tyre as well in the afternoon. As usual, the free practice sessions focussed on assessing the wear characteristics of both tyres with different temperatures and fuel loads: information that will be vital when it comes to calculating race strategy, as overtaking in Valencia is as difficult as it is in Monaco.

Williams driver Pastor Maldonado, the winner of the Spanish Grand Prix in May, was the quickest driver in free practice one thanks to a time of 1m40.890s set early in the session on the medium tyre. The benchmark was raised by Vettel in the afternoon (who was second-fastest in the first session) as the track evolved, using the faster tyre.

There were no tyre issues at all throughout both sessions, although the variable winds affected aerodynamics and occasionally cars locked up under braking, flat-spotting their tyres.

Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery commented: “From what we can see initially, the time difference between the two tyre compounds is in the region of 0.3-0.5s, and this only emphasises how close the times were in the first two sessions. As usual, free practice is all about the teams collecting data relating to the performance of their car-tyre package compared to that of their rivals, under every set of circumstances possible. It’s very hard to overtake in Valencia, so effective strategy will be key and the sessions this morning were vital to gathering the information to base this on. We’re expecting both weather and track conditions to change over the course of the weekend, as the circuit is constantly evolving. However, conditions this afternoon were a bit more representative, so maybe this was a better reflection of what we will see in the grand prix. Valencia is the most demanding street circuit of the year in terms of energy through the tyre, so the drivers will have to look after the soft compound in particular. This has shown a lot of speed so far, but as there is not an enormous performance gap between the compounds many teams could choose to base their race strategy on the medium.”

Pirelli numbers of the day:

Sets used overall:
Soft 24
Medium 50
Intermediates 0
Wet 0
Highest number of laps per compound:
Soft 23
Medium 27
Intermediate 0
Wet 0
Longest runs per compound:
Soft 18 (Rosberg)
Medium 15 (Alonso)
Intermediate 0
Wet 0

Pirelli fact of the day:
Pirelli launched the Cinturato P7 Blue road car tyre in Valencia as the Grand Prix of Europe got underway. This is the first tyre to go on sale that has been given a top ‘AA’ rating by the new European tyre label, for superior wet braking and decreased rolling resistance. As one of the new tyre’s most impressive attributes is its performance in the wet, it has been called ‘Blue’ as this is the colour of Pirelli’s Formula One rain tyre. The Cinturato P7 Blue is the latest member of a family of Pirelli road car tyres that directly benefit from Formula One technology