Barcelona Testing 2018

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/vettel-mercedes-red-bull-long-run-pace-deceptive-1014263/

Some optimism. Vettel isn't that optimistic traditionally.

 

Hopefully he's on track with whatever the reason was for Mercedes to avoid the softest tires. Would like to find out more about the photos of Mercedes and their blistered tires from practice, although if it was a big deal I would have guessed we'd have seen more photos.

 

Not necessarily. It could be a big deal. I have wondered if they focused too much on the medium tire.

 

Either way, whatever issues they have they fix them quickly. By mid-season Merc is just freight-train. While other teams scratch their heads, they just keep tweaking and developing. They are the strong finishers in this new era.

 

F1 testing: Bullish Mercedes has soft-tyre doubts from Barcelona


https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/134760/bullish-mercedes-has-softtyre-doubts

 

Merc is very strong but don't forget that when Ferrari was strong last year Mercedes got all their toys banned....their fancy floor, the simple version of extra oil tank...imo those 2 misses contributed as much if not more to Ferrari's championship loss as to Vettel's frustrations and Ferrari's reliability....

 

From Autosport + below. Makes it hard to sort who is affected by blistering at the test or not with respect to Mercedes having an issue


--While it was Ferrari that ended testing as the winter world champion, thanks to Sebastian Vettel's unofficial record lap of Barcelona on the penultimate day, a closer look at the analysis and long-run performance indicated that Mercedes' claims of a big leap forward were well justified.

The team never bothered running with the hypersoft tyres and its long run form looked to be the best. Talk (from Red Bull) of Mercedes overheating its rears appeared to perhaps be more stirring the pot than based on reality, with the Silver Arrows not appearing to suffer any more than others.--

 

Unfortunately very true......
See the Poll of the major, so we all wish differently but the odds are against us.

Ciao
Oscar

 

Only racing will sort out what is true or not. No matter what is the truth, I am ready for race 1 in Australia!!

 

Aint that the truth!

 

Very true .

Bejeebus is dat yer man Eddie in yer pic?

 

Yes fun times paddock style with Eddie LOL. A very entertaining man That was at Hockenheim.

 

Agree, and he did his bit for F1 ,(not to mention the lower Formula's)


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Toro Rosso/Honda featurette on Formula1.com -

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/features/2018/3/feature--how-toro-rosso-and-honda-got-off-to-a-flying-start.html

 

Williams admitting there is no hope LOL - https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/134826/williams-explains-2018-car-limitations

Williams has admitted its 2018 Formula 1 car is struggling with corner entry and stability.

The Mercedes-powered FW41 is the first Williams designed from the start by chief technical officer Paddy Lowe, and marks a big change of concept from the team's previous cars.

But Lowe has admitted there are issues that need resolving after Barcelona testing.

"The limitation in the car at the moment is corner entry and stability," he explained.

"That is quite often the limitation in a car to be honest, but it's particularly exaggerated at the moment with what we're running.

"I think if we can unlock some progress there, we will find a lot more lap time than we've got at the moment - because some other aspects of the car are working really, really strongly through other phases of the corner."

Lowe said there was no single factor that was causing the problem, and that it was not totally unexpected for such issues to appear when a team takes a new development path.

"Mostly these things involve a strong aerodynamic element, but the solutions involve everything from suspension to tyres and everything else," he said. "It's always multi-dimensional.

"[There was] a large degree of change both in the team that delivered the car and the car itself.

"That can take a while to develop and optimise, and I think we can make a lot more progress within the season and even into next.

"It is still early in the potential I think is in the team."

 

The car is struggling allright...with the lack of talent that is behind the wheel!!!

 

That will not be a help in sorting this very nervous looking chassis.

 

So Paddy Lowe is chief engineer and was full on with the FW41 and now it is limited to corner entry and stability???? That car has potential, even Kubica somewhat exploited it and beat those two other drivers during testing and he did'nt "open her up." Paddy needs to get out of this outfit or Mercedes buys it out and makes heads roll.

 

I guess I don't understand what he means by having issues on "corner entry". Does he mean aero stability, which would be different than under/over steer?

 

Maybe lacking mechanical grip?

 

Maybe that's it.

 

It’s a nice way to say his drivers are crap

 

More on Mercedes and tires in the test - https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/134845/why-mercedes-avoided-urvivalonly-tyre-in-test

Mercedes avoided Pirelli's new hypersoft tyre in Formula 1 testing because it will just be a compound to "survive" on this season, according to team principal Toto Wolff.

Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas ended the two weeks at Barcelona more than a second off Sebastian Vettel's pace, but did not pursue one-lap performance and only moved away from soft or medium Pirellis to try the ultrasoft.

Wolff dismissed any suggestion of the lack of time on the softest tyres being a weakness, claiming it was better for Mercedes' test programme as a whole.

"We decided not to use the hypersoft because we felt it is a tyre that is usable for one lap only, and that in testing it is about collecting data and understanding set-ups," he said.

"The hypersoft is just an additional big step in grip from the ultrasoft.

"It will be a qualifying tyre, and we felt that we would rather concentrate on the development work than on single-lap.

"I think the hyper will be a qualifying tyre only, and you just need to hang onto it in the first couple of laps, and survive."

Wolff said that "every car" suffered blistering on the softer compounds in testing and reckoned that meant races they are used "can be exciting".

But he also suggested that Pirelli's estimates of big steps between each compound would not prove to be accurate.

"What we have seen is that the steps in performance and in grip between the tyre compounds was relatively small," he said.

"Between medium and soft, soft and supersoft, supersoft and ultrasoft you could see tiny steps, between a tenth or two, sometimes no step at all.

"With some teams, like Williams, there was no step at all."

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Pirelli's hypersoft appeared in Abu Dhabi in the post-season test last November, and Bottas said that offered sufficient opportunity to try the new-for-2018 compound.

He agreed with Wolff that the life of the tyres made it an irrelevant one to test on in Spain, claiming "they would only last one lap" on a high-energy circuit such as Barcelona.

"They are grippier, based on what we know, so I don't think there's a risk," Bottas continued.

"We decided to focus on the tyres that are most likely to be [used] on that type of track."

Vettel claimed after testing that Mercedes' decision to complete race simulations only using medium tyres, which is not allowed in races, made its impressive long-run pace misleading.

Bottas admitted that it was not entirely representative, saying: "We know that testing was good, especially our long-run performance felt good and consistent.

"But it's only one track, one [set of] conditions, one type of tyre."

He added: "I think we definitely need to be cautious, it was unique conditions.

"We know Melbourne will be different, Bahrain and China will be different.

"We can estimate pretty well but we need to prove in Melbourne that the car also works there."

 

Mercedes in the article appear to have an interesting 'perspective' on the new Pirelli compounds.

 

EXACTLY correct. It takes the driver's understanding of the situation and experience to help the engineers find and improve the system.