Alfa Romeo became the surprise that caught the eye on a mixed up FridayThe performance of Alfa Romeo on their long-run simulations is a surprise, but the strong feedback from the drivers after the session suggests that some of it is rooted in reality rather than skewed by the tyre allocation limitations.after the session."That was the only compound we used. And yes, today they work well with our car. We'll find out tomorrow with the hard and the soft as well.
Having been surpassed by Williams of late in the battle for seventh in the constructors' standings, Alfa Romeo at this stage appears to stand a good chance of providing the British squad with a very real threat. Naturally, there will be some regression to the mean - but if the C43's drivers can make the most of that balance in qualifying, then Alfa will set itself up nicely on a circuit where overtaking is notably difficult to achieve.
While Mercedes did its medium tyre runs with a set it had already used in FP1, these had scarcely had the sheen taken off of them before the Perez-enforced red flag and subsequent onset of rain. Regardless, the tyres were not at their absolute peak of performance and this somewhat hindered its overall run plans.. “We were obviously on very different programmes to everybody else, as we only used one set of tyres throughout. It was a set of used tyres as well from FP1.