LEC v NOR FP2:
* This is a good lap from Norris.
* One peculiar aspect of this lap is Ferrari's braking, Norris braking in the lap is very similar to what VER does, but Ferrari brakes a lot harder than them. Perhaps Leclerc can let more speed through during braking.
* Speed curve looks better as well for the MCL, might mean less downforce on MCL.
* Engine wise, usually Mercs have higher RPM than Ferrari and RedBull even at same engine mode. They look a little higher even here but I'm not sure MCL is doing glory runs.
* Only one thing that could be there is lower fuel load, but honestly it looks like a good lap.
* S2 NOR pays basically 0.5s, probably not helped by the lower DF
LEC v VER FP2:
* Looks like same engine mode between RBR and FER this time around, RPM in 8th gear look the same.
* VER a bit slower than he should be upshifting so some margin there
* I would wager that compared to FP1, RBR added some downforce, yes Ferrari may have upped the engine a bit, but it's hard to gain a lot of kph above 300, and top speed now is just 1kph apart, actually in favor of LEC, so there's 5kph difference between now and FP1.
* RBR improved their S2 dramatically, going from losing 0.4 to losing just 0.2, but now instead of gaining 0.168 in S1 they lost 0.08s there, largely thanks to a much better T2 from LEC without any loss in the straights. S3 still virtually identical.
* Even with these changes, Ferrari remains faster in the corners of S2 and T4 and T11 Ferrari is faster by 6kph and 5kph respectively. VER complained about vibrations in those 2 corners as well.
* T6-7 look much improved on VER compared to FP1, although the whole section T5-6-7 looks very different between LEC and VER, they either have a very different approach here or VER can improve a bit on the straight from T5 to T6, but in the telemetry he looks to struggle to put down the accelerator, having to lift slightly at the exit of T5.
* Cars look closer than they were in FP1 for sure.
RUS v NOR FP2
* RUS had struggle through T1 during the session somehow, losing a bunch of time, also had to brake mid main straight for some reason. Also T2 is a big loss of time, has to brake earlier than NOR and harder. Maybe not too confident on the brakes.
* T4 seems to be another struggle for RUS (and HAM left track 2 or 3 times in T4). Norris is 16kph faster through there. It's possible NOR is lighter on fuel than RUS as well, but it just seems that Merc is more of a handful on fast corners.
LEC v RUS
* Well the difference in T4 is massive here and also decently sized in T11.
* 0.7s loss in S2 mostly in the high speed corners points to this car still being tough to adjust to both slow and high speed, they can only pick one.
race sim from the top FP2 drivers
* HAM could only do one meaningful lap in race sim, I think he kept going off in T4 or maybe traffic or something.
* RUS didn't look particularly good on the medium, although good tire degradation the pace was slow. He also had the younger medium tire of the lot here at 8 laps.
* ALO with some serious tire degradation slightly faster than Merc in the race sim, but in the long run that tire degradation will make them lose places.
* PER and VER had similar tire degradation but their pace was sort of slow with an average pace of 1.24.7 and 1.24.4. It's a bit unusual seeing them in the middle of the pack because normally they are much better in race sim, I wouldn't worry too much honestly, they aren't 1s back, they also have similar tire deg as Ferrari although going a bit slower favors degradation a bit, over so few laps it's not that significant the difference.
* NOR and RIC going with the soft, NOR has to cool the tire every other lap to keep temperatures in check and he's going through some degradation. RIC must have been in traffic. Overall though they aren't too shabby here either. They should be happy about their package.
* Ferrari looks to be top of the class, doesn't look like today they are playing the same engine down mode as they did in FP2 in France, the 2 cars look to have tried 2 different ways of going in the race (fast first vs slow first) to see how the tire behaves wrt degradation and it looks in line with what RBR has.
IMHO Ferrari is stronger but it's not 1s/lap stronger.
but wouldn't mind a good weekend for AM
