Nico Rosberg’s tyre failure and Marcus Ericsson’s crash severely disrupted Friday afternoon’s running at Spa-Francorchamps, but the weather remained hot and dry throughout letting drivers practice, when they could, with high fuel loads.

Unfortunately, the most laps anyone did consecutively was four – which doesn’t give a great insight into tyre degradation, however, the relative pace can still be seen. I have only included the drivers who submitted more than one competitive laptime with high fuel loads.

Mercedes and Ferrari lead the way in terms of pace, with the Williams duo close behind. The teammates at Ferrari and Toro Rosso used different compounds, allowing us to see their race pace difference. Whilst at the beginning of their respective stints, the difference between the compounds is similar to low fuel runs, the gap decreases for both teams to around 50-60% of this value as the driving style gradually adapts to make the tyres last.

Interestingly, there was a big variety between drivers and teams as to how much pace they could find going from the prime to the option as shown on the table:

Driver Tyre Compound Delta (seconds) Raikkonen 1.9 Rosberg 1.7 Hamilton 1.7 Vettel 1.6 Bottas 1.4 Ricciardo 1 Massa 0.8 Kvyat 0.7

It appears the Williams and Red Bull duo had, either trouble utilising the extra grip of the options or were more resourceful with the prime tyre.

For qualifying, if we apply the above average FP2 to Qualifying laptime multiplier for races with GP2/3 support, the teams are ranked like so for the grid:

Qualifying Rank Team Time 1 Mercedes 01:47.1 2 Williams 01:48.2 3 Ferrari 01:48.4 4 Red Bull 01:48.4 5 Force India 01:48.6 6 Lotus 01:48.9 7 Toro Rosso 01:49.0 8 Sauber 01:49.1 9 McLaren 01:50.4 10 Manor 01:53.6

For those new to my work, I’ve created a laptime simulator on Excel for one and two-stop races. It’s an ongoing project since pre-season, and I have plans to keep implementing more features in the future – such as a traffic/overtaking model.

Since the FP2 running was very limited, the tyre wear has been based on historical data and track characteristics. Degradation also varies from driver to driver based on recent historical data. We shall analyse the top eight contenders for the grand prix (My computer can’t handle any more than that, sorry!). Here are the forecasted laptimes and optimum race strategies for these drivers:

All drivers use a Option-Option-Prime strategy to complete the race in the fastest time. Nico has had the edge over Lewis this weekend. If the Brit has an answer, which is likely, he hasn’t shown it yet. It’s clear to see the Mercedes have a good half-a-second advantage over the others, which they may suppress to preserve their tyres, as they have done before. Despite Vettel’s competitive race pace on Fridays, the Ferrari tends to fall away from the Silver Arrows, and relatively to most other teams, come Sunday. This was particularly apparent in Austria, for example.

It should be a close race at the front, and also for the following positions. Ferrari suffers from a greater loss of pace going onto the prime as discussed earlier. Notice how Vettel gets theoretically overtaken by Massa in the final stint and Raikkonen falls back into the clutches of the Brazilian when everyone is on the prime.

Last year’s winner, Daniel Ricciardo, has the edge over his teammate and will be looking to secure a podium despite the low-downforce nature of the circuit.

The favourite for the third step of the podium, however, is Valtteri Bottas. The 14th place finisher in FP2 is expected to make the biggest gains of anyone, along with his teammate. He’ll need to hope for another troublesome day for Mercedes to place any higher.

Spa is, statistically speaking, Kimi Raikkonen’s strongest track and this is reflected in the forecast. He’ll be in a better position to help his teammate/friend Vettel if he wants or is ordered.

Felipe Massa is unique in having an option-prime-option strategy which is just fractionally slower than option-option-prime, so he could change to this strategy to give himself a better overtaking chance at the end of the race, and would be very pleased if gifted with a safety car.