Another good day at the circuit today. Much better weather - sun all day - but there were some longer gaps where there were no cars at all on the circuit.
JB was super smooth again all morning, very stable driving with no dramas. Lewis was Lewis - more aggressive and more corrections mid corner. The McLaren seems better in the slower corners - JB was getting the power down a couple of car lengths earlier than everyone else.
Magnusson drove very much like Lewis - more ragged than JB but he looked like he was quick.
I'm not sure what caused Alonso to stop, but it looked like it could simply have been fuel as he got running again pretty quickly. He also did some nice, small power slides at the end of the day for the home fans. There were thousands in today to see him - the queues were up to 90 minutes by mid-morning.
Torro Rosso, RBR and Caterham were really struggling. The turbo was highly irregular when off the throttle, and the power delivery on throttle was unpredictable. Torro Rosso in particular had big problems, and on some gear changes the engine would almost seize, locking the rear wheels.
There were some glimpses of what might be the cars running on full power, just on some sections of the track but never for long. The most noticeable thing I picked up today was the sound. Often the cars are virtually silent when driving towards you, but sometimes you can hear them (yes, they ARE that quiet). But also sometimes the sound varies enormously when they're driving away from you and the exhaust faces you, yet the speed is not too different. I can only put this down to the teams running different fuel flow maps, testing for the new fuel rate limits. With only a small difference in speed, a couple of times Lewis' car was very quiet and then the next lap bellowed out far louder. I think this must be the fuelling.
On one occasion in particular the engine really roared, on the penultimate corner. Still nowhere near the volume of a V8, but perhaps indicating that there's still quite a bit more for these engines to give.
All my decent photos are on my camera and I can't process them until I get back at the weekend when I'll post a few here. I'm not going to bother with returning to the circuit tomorrow, as the weather is a bit ropey, and going to Gibraltar instead. Hope it is another good day though
thats pretty bad
