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| British GP 8th - 11th June 2006 - Friday Free Practice 1.2 Report |
Length:
5.141 km |
| Silverstone finally came alive this afternoon as a thrilling and hard fought second practice session saw every driver set a time.
It was not to be a day for the giants of F1, however, but for a 'giant killer'. Fresh from a superb test session at Barcelona last week, where he emerged second only to Michael Schumacher, Robert Kubica stood out as a definite future F1 star with a performance of stunning proportions. Increasingly impressive all season on Fridays, Kubica came to the fore this afternoon with a performance that not only gave him fastest time of the session, but saw him control it from the from the front in style. His final time was almost one and a quarter seconds faster than the second placed man, Giancarlo Fisichella. In fact, Kubica was already fastest by half a second when, in the last five minutes, a few of the 'heavy hitters' came out to challenge his time. Not only did they fail, but the young Pole calmly came out and took another half second off his time, putting it beyond reach. Unquestionably, this was Robert Kubica's day. The rest may well have been taking things a little easy, but second placed man Giancarlo Fisichella seemed to have to fight for his time, while Alexander Wurz just missed second place by six one-thousandths of a second. The fact that Anthony Davidson, a further one hundreth back in fourth, and Wurz were so far away from their usual Friday sparring-partner Kubica's time merely adds credence to the BMW drivers performance. Jarno Trulli confirmed Toyota's 'b' spec car has pace with a close fifth position, ahead of Felipe Massa in the fastest of the Ferrari's, while Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher took seventh and eighth. Mark Webber, ninth for Williams, often looked stunning in the middle sector, but compromised in the first and last, while Nico Rosberg placed 19th, albeit less than a second away from his team leader. Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button placed tenth and 17th for Honda, the team struggling to find ultimate pace here today, with Ralf Schumacher 11th in the second of the Toyota's. Fastest Red Bull was Robert Doornbos in 12th, with Christian Klien and David Coulthard in 23rd and 25th positions,while Tiago Monteiro finished 13th in the once again impressive Midland M16. That the other two, of Christijan Albers and Giorgio Mondini, finished in 15th and 16th confirms the car has improved considerably of late. Jacques Villeneuve and Nick Heidfeld kept their BMW-Saubers relatively lap-free this afternoon, allowing the star Kubica to do all the work and take the glory, and 18th and 20th can not be a true indicator of their potential this weekend. Mclaren kept theirs to an even lower level, with Juan Pablo Montoya (14th) and Kimi Raikkonen (21st) completing 14 laps between them. Tonio Liuzzi, Scott Speed and Neel Jani took 22nd, 24th and 26th for Toro Rosso, and the back three places were occupied by the three (yes, three) Super Aguri runners of Takuma Sato, Frank Montagny and new boy Sakon Yamamoto. So, a very fast pace set by Robert Kubica signals there is speed to come from the BMW-Sauber pair, while it is interesting to note that Fisichella, in second place, only completed three laps in total. |
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