Barcelona winter testing thread

Damning with faint praise or sandbagging?
We will have to stay tuned.

 

MB is changing their upgrade paradigm this year making the change to upgrade little things very race rather than large updates every few races. We will see how this goes and how much they follow through with it. I'm not expecting any team to go nuts for 2013 other than red bull.

Red Bull will develope RB9 a massive amount because the jig is up for the come 2014. Red Bull are the only big team not dedicating a massive amount of resources already to 2014 efforts.



And BTW, if F138 is not massively better than F2012 than Ferrari are hosed this year. I just can't see that being the case though. Fernando for whatever reason seems very tepid with regards to this car though.....

 

They dumped developing w03 after Monaco. No idea why. The car was stupidly fast in china and Monaco, which technically speaking should not be possible because those tracks are Ike and Tina different. If W04 is a big build up of that car then we will see good things from MB. The sole reason W03 was fastest at Monaco was due to that suspension system offering gobs more mechanical grip than any car on track. MB did that with inferior downforce to every top team mind you. That is a feat of strength.

 

In all honestly I have no idea who is fastest right now...

You're right though, FA isn't exactly shouting from the rooftops about this car, although I think some things get lost in translation w/ these guys.

 

Yet strangely Massa loves the car. PR? Alonso just put us at the corner of Main and Front st with his reaction so it's very odd prior chatter from Massa indeed.

I think Mclaren are sandbagging and are fastest. Followed by Red Bull, Ferrari, MB, Lotus.

 

we will see the pecking order after the second race of the season...

 

+1, but I dunno;

Clifford was actually pretty damn good come Brazil - Even Phil managed to pedal him round at a pretty good pace.

Translation of the last bit; "we realized it was **** early on!"

At least he's saying it's as good as the end of last year.

Cheers,
Ian

 

"This is why we watch."

However, and I said this last year, beyond *possibly* running high fuel none of 'em are sandbagging any longer - They just don't have the time to screw around playing those kinds of games.

For sure, some of 'em used to run underweight to lay down a "psyche em out" lap, but I don't think they even do that today - Weight distribution and tire loading are (among ) the keys IMO.

Cheers,
Ian

 

BTW, Fpiloto, where are you reading that they're all suffering from "huge deg"?

Only thing I've seen today is a Kimi quote;

They're also on the softest two compounds this week. It'll rubber in some before they're done.

Cheers,
Ian

 

F2012 did have its stuff together last year, but I believe we're seeing every other team making nice leaps in performance and if Ferrari have not made a similar leap then I suspect this might be a rough year for them.

Ferrari will always make their car competitive but it may not be the world-beater that it needs and was intended to be.


This, or Fernando has the best poker face ever.

 

In viewing the lap times, they plummet hugely for everyone after just a couple laps. It's the tire cliff of death out there.

Timing: 19 february, tuesday. Circuit de Catalunya (Barcelona), Spain.

 

Oh goody
Last year all over again

 

Seems the PR folk may have spoken to Fred

In other words, "gimme a car that's there or thereabouts, and I'll be fine."

Cheers,
Ian
F1 testing: Fernando Alonso sure 2013 Ferrari capable of title bid - F1 news - AUTOSPORT.com

 

I see what you're getting at, but I don't think it's *that* bad. I may have to change my opinion come Friday evening if things haven't improved though.....

Dunno how you voted, but my recent poll revealed overwhelming support for the way it went down last year; http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/f1/396544-7-winners-7-races-good-bad-f1.html

Cheers,
Ian

 

LOL I was thinking the same thing when I saw that article. From the time he gave his first interview to this new article, I imagine a phone call from a furious Italian whose name rhymes with 'Shmotezemolo' advising an about-face in his recent commentary is in immediate order.

I love PR lol.



Vettel being honest about RB9. Stated the car is basically RB8, but a 2013 version. I expect they and Ferrari have made similar small gains in performance as they were both very quick by the end of 2012. Mclaren is the revolution car I'm seeing out there, it's mighty looking but it may take a few races to get the reigns of it. And I still can't get how much AMGW04 has improved over W03.....

 

I sense a Darwin award for famous last words coming lol.

 

Brawn had them down to a skeleton crew by then. MB bought them as a bare bones team and it took them until late 2012 to have the team staffed again. Their development paradigm was certainly wrong though, large packages every few races is not the best solution.

True, but that is a massive step for F1. There hasn't been a fully integrated and communicative suspension system since the TC days. It's the future.

 

You could very well be correct.

Seems to me the new construction/compounds are just another curve ball they'll deal with as testing continues.

Cheers,
Ian

 

A few of my thoughts after a good nights sleep:-

1) We know there is a gaping hole under the nose of the F138 and it "seems" bigger than necessary to have the purpose of what has been speculated - boundary layer stuff already well discussed by people much smarter than me.

2) Comments from our two drivers after their first day in the car "another planet" by Felipe and from Nando "I share Felipe's opinion that the car is on another planet..." >>link here<<.

3) Next comments from each driver after their first drive. Felipe saying its hot in there and Nando making the point that his seat feet and pedals are the same as last year. I think we are yet to see the real purpose of the "ray mouth" and I'd again speculate that we are directing it somewhere via the DRS activator or feet so that the normal use of the feet (as per last year) will influence the flow. Thereby hoping to get around the current reg not allowing specific driver movements for aero influence.

4) Tire deg - perhaps too much being made of this. Everyone, especially the teams, are away the tires are all a few kilos heavier this year because they've added more rubber to each tire (they compensated by allowing the cars to be a little lighter to keep the same overall rate). So everyone knows the rubber is going to come off faster because there's more rubber on each tire.

5) Posted it earlier and will post it again, Nando's time was on a significantly longer run than the other front runner. 1 lap of fuel here is approx equal to 1 tenth. He banged in his best lap times at the start of long runs - very encouraging indeed.

6) Has the F138 exhausted all possible improvements - have we hit the ceiling too early? I really doubt this one. In fact quite the opposite, I think there is a lot to come and the team just doesn't want to show it. They have made two key points, firstly there are no wind tunnel correlation problems and second the car we have seen is not the car that will be racing.

 

You do of course raise a valid point. There is no way of knowing how much fuel a team is carrying. And for sure, teams try and mask their true pace. Having said that, it's also true that there are a number of tests that teams do have to run at some stage. They need to run tire deg tests for each of the compounds, they need to do long run tests and they need to do Q testing. There little point to doing multiple 4 and 5 lap runs and not doing q testing. Likewise when a team does a series of 15 odd lap runs its safe to assume they are doing long run tests.

Nando concentrated on long runs yesterday and, his times were competitive with those doing short runs. I did find that encouraging. I fully endorse you coming back after a few races and giving me a mighty blast of "I told you so...." if we end out not being competitive.

 

Their telemetry was working intermittently all day. Shame :/