Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber finished Friday in India on top of the times, but like everyone else the Red Bull drivers struggled to keep the soft option tyre alive for more than a few laps in FP2.
Drivers suffered blistering on a track that inevitably was very green at the start of the day, and Vettel says that things might be better on Saturday.
“Obviously the soft tyre isn’t lasting very long,” said Vettel. “It’s Friday, the track is rubbering in, and it’s improving usually for Saturday. Plus we didn’t use this compound for a long time.
“On Sunday it could be a short stint on the option tyres, but as I said usually things improve and you learn to deal with the tyre and fine tune the set-up. Nevertheless I don’t think you will do a lot of laps on Sunday.”
Asked about the prospects for a one-stop race Webber said: “Obviously FP2 is generally different to the race. It can then open a window on the other compound in terms of going pretty long, so the one-stop can come into play. Who knows until the race day, really. We have to go with the pack, the pace, which hopefully is us, and then we can control the race from there.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Bit of surprise from Pirelli – I loved the expression on Newey’s face, asking Pirelli engineers what is going. It was sure that front left was going to be a limiting factor, but that much…
BTW, just two occasions of the word ‘Obviously’ this time – drivers are improving.