Abu Dhabi: Alonso deprived of FP2, Räikkönen 7th with Ferrari
Victim of an electrical problem with his F14-T, Fernando Alonso's test day ended shortly after the start of the second free practice session. For Räikkönen, everything is going well overall.
Racing his last Grand Prix for Scuderia Ferrari, the bearded Alonso was deprived of valuable track time during FP2 when an electrical problem caused his F1 to stop, thus depriving him of the most important practice session of the weekend.
The Spaniard was obviously disappointed at the end of the day: « It was really a shame to miss the opportunity to take part in the second free practice session, as it’s the only chance to get an idea of how things will go this weekend. »
Repatriated quite quickly to the pits, the work to be done was too significant to continue the program: « In my second lap, the car just stopped unexpectedly, and although the marshals did their best to bring the car back to the pits soon enough to return to the track, the work took the mechanics longer than expected. »
Then he explains the particular context of this race at sunset: During the first session, we managed to complete our program, and the car behaved as expected, but the temperature, much hotter than it will be in qualifying and during the race, means that the data collected is not so reliable. For the same reason, tomorrow’s third session will not be so useful, and this means that the first lap corresponding to the qualifying and race conditions, at night in the evening, will be the first lap of Q1. We will not be so well prepared, but anyway, we will do our best as usual.
For his part, Kimi Räikkönen found his Ferrari somewhat nervous partly due to the high temperatures, but following the second session and under milder temperatures, the Finn concluded that it was a day that had produced positive results.
