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Although Hamilton and Leclerc’s higher fuel runs left Ferrari as the quickest team for race pace on average, and by some margin (0.379s), there is a caveat to this. Each driver only put three representative laps on the board, Leclerc on the soft and Hamilton on the medium, which limits the insight into the wear pattern of both compounds and how this would impact their lap times over longer stints.

A team who did complete longer stints however is Williams. Alex Albon completed five laps on the C4 hard tyre while Carlos Sainz logged the longest medium stint of any driver in the field at nine laps. Together, it put Williams’ long-run pace as incredibly strong and arguably more stable and consistent as a result of the compounds used.

In fact, their average was just 0.001s slower than Red Bull’s – who are sitting much higher in the team ranking than we’ve come to expect from their joint race pace so far this year. And that’s owing to a stronger Friday from Tsunoda, albeit only over four medium tyre laps, but even so it put his own average 0.137s off Verstappen’s on the C6 soft.

Interestingly, Verstappen’s four lap long run on that softest compound did not demonstrate the significant lap time loss as the stint developed that was seen from Piastri, who completed just one lap more than Verstappen also on the C6.

Piastri’s lap times over his long-run practice began in the 1:45s yet quickly rose to the 1:47s, leaving him and McLaren adrift of the pace in a big way – exacerbated by the lack of a long-run from Norris after his “costly” smack into the wall at turn 4 ended his session early.

That’s left McLaren strangely not far away from Haas based on this data, who had a strong Friday with Bearman in P5 and Ocon P8 over a single lap, but long-run pace that’s left them leading the midfield. Both drivers logged runs on the C5, medium tyre and they were incredibly evenly matched (0.042s between their averages).

It leaves them in a group with Mercedes and Sauber, all of whom are within a second of the pace set by Ferrari. While this may seem like a weak performance for Mercedes, and it is somewhat, it is likely down to their sole use of the C6. Antonelli completed one more lap than Russell, and while the intra-team times were very close, comparing their average to their usual competition in Red Bull, Ferrari or McLaren indicates that they need to find more, which could come on the medium tyre.

Sauber were running a lower drag, yet also lower efficiency, setup over Friday’s sessions which gave them strength in straight line speed, especially for Bortoleto who ranked P3 through the speed trap at 328km/h, but left them lacking in sector 2. That said, Bortoleto was also strong on the hard tyre, albeit only over three laps, but it’s his performance that’s pulling the team’s average up given that, at a driver-level, Hulkenberg ranked 15th.

From this midfield group there’s a larger delta to the current back markers, led by Racing Bulls who sit 1.210s adrift of Ferrari’s pace. On Hadjar’s side particularly it was a tougher Friday. He said “it didn’t feel great out there” and that he’d been “struggling to find the limits of the car”, but even so, there was an element of consistency to his five laps on the soft – more so than was seen from other soft tyre runners.

Unfortunately as we’ve come to expect, Alpine and Aston Martin were between four and seven tenths back from Racing Bulls’ pace and almost two seconds back from Ferrari, in Aston Martin’s case. Based on their performance in Hungary, a higher downforce circuit, Aston Martin were always likely to struggle at a higher speed, lower drag venue like this and the information from the drivers as to why is lacking. Alonso simply said they need to improve their balance between downforce and drag, while Stroll said their day focused on “collecting information”.

It’s a similar story at Alpine, who knew this track would not suit them coming in, but Gasly and Colapinto both emphasised that their days were focusing on narrowing in a setup that will maximise their chances.