While all the media threshing in front of the Japanese Grand Prix of Formula 1 was on Red Bull, it was her sister racing teams that attracted attention after Friday training when she became the closest challenger in McLaren.
A superb Tower of the Isack Hadjar recruit during one of the short gusts of activity of the gentle type put it in third more quickly on the time sheets – 0.404 behind the pacesetter Oscar Piastri.
But that was far from being the case with a simple wonder of a flash-in-the-pan touch, because Hadjar’s teammate Liam Lawson found himself the fastest, four hundredths further.
It was a striking comparison of the place where the duo of Red Bull found itself. Max Verstappen finished the afternoon in the eighth, with the teammate Yuki Tsunoda in 18 yearsth.
But appearances can sometimes be misleading in F1 and, although it is certainly an encouraging day for racing bulls to bring your car into a beautiful installation window, it was just as aware that there was no reason to get too fucked with the results.
To start, the final position of the ranking has flattered a delicate day a lot – especially given the proximity of things behind McLaren.
Hadjar’s laptop of a 1m28.518 may have put the third fastest, but a tenth of a second covered it and Charles Leclerc in seventh place.
Fine margins were at stake a day of weather conditions in mind and a stop session where certain drivers have maximized their fast towers and others did not do so. The multiple red flags meant that we only had a small snare of the place where things are.
If the session had been uninterrupted over its entire length (less than half of the FP2 planned for one hour took place in green flag conditions), there is a high probability that things would have shaken differently.
Admittedly, the boss of the Laurent Mekies team kept his feet on the ground for about a day when things seemed much more impressive by taking a look at the time leaves than he thought.
“I don’t think we should read today today,” he said. “There were four red flags, so we are not too excited by the classification.”
There were also other factors that played racing bulls in the hands.
The difficult conditions caused by the gusts of the winds, with a rear wind in turn 1, meant that cars which are more nervous on the edge let their drivers show a little more caution than those who enjoy a more comfortable environment.
A friendly car
Based on the observations of VCARB02 on the right track so far this year, it seems that it is a fairly benign car that helps give more confidence to its drivers to put things right.
It came after a winter when the team worked hard to overcome the inconsistencies of last season – where the team was a little too high down.
Speaking in China, Tsunoda had openly talked about the way the characteristics of the racing bulls were such this year that she allowed her drivers to attack more.
“It has a strong frontal, but also the balance of the area is much more together compared to last year,” he said.
“Last year was a little more difficult with rear instability. The people of the factory took a huge step to adjust it and it is as in the whole that it is a better car.”
Support this car feature with a configuration approach that the team has specifically adapted around recruits, so is not too on board even if it sacrifices a little bit of overall performance, then everything contributes to a platform that allows its young people to shine in the right circumstances.
And this is particularly true on days as Friday when, on a track that requires a great commitment, others had to restore things a little because the wind found them.
The strongest platform that Hadjar and Lawson have below meant that they probably lost a little less compared to the others.
There is no feeling in racing bulls that what was seen on Friday will take place automatically in the rest of the Japan weekend.
Mekies is very aware that completely different conditions tomorrow, in particular with the direction of wind switching, will probably reset things – even if it was a positive start.
“It looks like a rather boring element, but tomorrow, it is expected that the wind will have 180 degrees, so in the exact opposite direction,” he said.
“This can mean that a lot of changes are necessary on the configuration to give an optimal balance, and this is something on which we will work during the night and that we must take into consideration. But the important thing is that we have the reference base for our car. ”
