Even though teams and drivers arrived to rain in Brazil on Thursday morning, both free practice sessions at the Autodromo Carlos Pace turned out to be quite uneventful with the overhead grey clouds only releasing a few drops here and there during the second ninety minute session.
The two Scuderia Ferrari drivers jumped at the opportunity to rack up the laps of the 4.3 km circuit, working mostly in preparation for Sunday's penultimate round of the 2017 Formula One Championship season, which is supposed to be run in dry conditions.
โI think that in the end we ran more than what we expected as it didn't rain,โ said Sebastian Vettel, who covered 48 laps of the track. โIt was nice to be able to do a lot of laps today. We need to find the right balance and this should help us get the pace for the qualifying session and the race, but I still think it won't be easy to defeat our main competitors. We'll see where we get tomorrowโ.
Meanwhile, teammate Kimi Raikkonen completed three less laps and finished sixth overall for the dayโฆ
โIt's only a Friday, and as always, we keep trying different things to learn from them,โ he said. โThe tyres will play a key role here as usual, the performance will depend on how they work and how long they will last. I felt some vibrations at the beginning of my stint, but that's quite normal to have sometimes in the car: usually it comes from tyres and different sets. We don't know what the temperatures will be over the rest of the weekend, but we cannot change them anyway and it will be the same for everybodyโ.
The third and final practice session will start tomorrow at 11 am and there is a high chance of showers.
