The second free practice session of the GP of Abu Dhabi, the last race of the 2019 Formula One season, gave a glimpse of a challenge for the weekend that seems to lead to a new very close Ferrari-Mercedes duel. Valtteri Bottas in fact finished in first place both sessions this Friday, but the Finn has a new engine and will start from the bottom of the grid. So going to analyze the others we find Hamilton ahead of Leclerc for only 76 thousandths! So is the battle tight?
In the result yes, but the performance of the two cars are very different! Let’s look at the telemetry results with regard to their speeds to understand something more.
Comparison of the speed measurements between Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton on their best lap in the FP2s of the Abu Dhabi GP: Charles and the SF90 super in the first sector.
In the first 1200 meters of track the Ferrari number 16 literally flies. Charles arrives with 5 km/h more speed at the first braking and brings between 3 and 5 throughout the mixed section from turn 3 to turn 5. In just 17 seconds of lap the Monegasque driver gains 3 tenths of a second over his British rival.
The progression of the red car doesn’t stop: in fact, the middle entral sector, with its two long straights, shows all the advantage of the Ferrari Power Unit and the better efficiency of the red car compared to the competition. In fact, the speed gap is all to the advantage of Leclerc and opens much above 250 km/h. The top speed will then be 324 for Charles against the 321 of Hamilton, but the graph shows well how the SF90 has as a very strong feature to be able to accelerate and get to high speeds before the rivals. In the middle sector Leclerc gains another 283 thousandths, taking 591 thousandths of a second ahead of Hamilton.
But all the good things seen up to now are cancelled and even overturned with the third sector. Despite the fact that the curves are not particularly technical Ferrari suffers from so much understeer and setup problems, and Charles can no longer find rhythm and grip. Each curve is to the advantage of Mercedes up to 6 and even 8 km / h. With a disadvantage of this kind, Ferrari can not recover and the new six times world champion gains 667 thousandths of a second in this sector, closing the lap ahead, even if not much compared to Charles Leclerc.
The key will be to improve the weak points
If Red Bull seems a little slower than what we saw in the last races, Ferrari and Mercedes certainly seem to be on par at least in qualifying, albeit with these marked differences. The teams will work to close the gap in the weak points while keeping alive the strengths. Those who do the best work will get pole position and a privileged position for Sunday’s race.
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