RUS v SAI
Well this was unexpected, great lap from Russell, in particular his S2 was very strong, especially compared to friday practice.
* Sainz did not nail the last corners of the warm up lap, while Russell spent almost the totality of the main straight to T1 in 8th, Sainz switched to 8th only 30% through the straight. Top speed here is in favor of RUS by 1kph, but the speed trace, top speed aside, is a bit more in favor of RUS than 1kph.
* Both are way slower than the top speed on Friday which was 6kph faster.
* The big difference in T4, where on Friday Ham damaged his floor, is reduced to just 5kph. Critically rather than being slower on the Ferrari, it's the Merc that became faster, Ferrari has about the same speed as in FP2 through there.
* I think the lower track temperatures, without a practice session before to nail setup better, made it so that Ferrari was having difficulty bringing tires up to temperature.
* Up to here though, Ferrari was marginally ahead, in T11 is where SAI just couldn't nail the exit and lost a bunch of speed and with it the pole position.
* Ultimately I think the lower DF setup allowed Merc's tires to get in temperature and stay in temperature which allowed them to take T4 and T11 much faster than during Free Practice.
* Great job by RUS.
* Peculiarity in S3 is that Russell really likes early apex, he was doing that in Austria when he lost control, here it really helped him with traction.
RUS v LEC
* Leclerc had a better main straight performance than SAI, switching to 8th 50m ahead of his team mate, and his top speed trace benefited.
* Sadly Leclerc wasn't as strong in T1, he had a bit of an oversteer in his first attempt there, so he kept it chill in the second attempt, but that caused his to lose a lot of time.
* LEC T2 was decent but the exit wasn't as good, traction wise RUS had a better exit out of it. So between T1 and T2 LEC lost 0.153 just there.
* The rest of the lap from LEC is however better than Sainz's by an amount that would have allowed SAI to be on pole
* Once again in T11 Ferrari just couldn't nail that corner today, probably lack of front tire temperature again, LEC's T11 is even worse than SAI.
RUS v NOR
* Similar to the others, RUS really managed the better main straight. Given the early apexes I have to assume that it's thanks to that.
* Lando loses the totality of his S1 time in T1, as the rest is identical.
* Also loses the totality of his S2 time in T11 where he must have made an error.
* Without those 2 minor problems Lando could have even been further up I dare say.
Everybody else pretty far, Ham had a DRS issue on the main straight and aborted the lap right away.
Surprising result of course, but Mercs is a great team and they are bound to get stuff right. I think tire temps also played a real role in allowing the Mercs to be aggressive in T4 and T11 that had been a weakness in friday practice.
For tomorrow's race I don't know really... Frankly the ambient temperature is critical, if it rains it's even more complicated. Given the big difference in performance in T4 and T11, that's definitely going to change how the front tires degrade. I would question people thinking that Ferrari will be 1s ahead per lap like in practice, conditions are different. Ferrari should be faster because it should manage tires better, but they'll be slower to heat them up, kind of the opposite of silverstone, and it's hard to pass here. I have no clue how the race will go.