2021 F1 Testing

Stroll 2 - Vettel 0 again today so for 2 days. Stroll faster. Yes its testing...............

 

Right. So maybe the question of whether the low-rake or the high-take cars would be more affected by the floor cut-out is being answered. Also, Mercs were really comfortable on the old tires, maybe not so much on the new ones.

Early days yet but for sure the Merc doesn’t look like it’s on rails. Hopefully the the string of championships will be ended this year, probs by Max.

 

Comment on the Autosport live feed earlier today went something like “Vettel misses turn-in, goes wide.., but no spin!” Ha-ha.

 

Ouch lol. Its testing. Tomorrow if good weather/conditions should show a bit more of how Vettel is adapting.

 

Bottas in the Mercedes appearing more sorted now. P2 @ +.047 from P1

 

So far for top time - 8min left for Day 2--

Today = Bottas, Mercedes, 1m30.289s

Friday Day 1 Test time best = 1:30.674

 

Looks clever, unfortunately for the others.

There’s limited lateral diffusion at the center but instead there’s an aggress ramp angle closed in by fences at the sides so even if they get a stall in the center part of the diffuser (intentionally or not) there’s less of a chance the lateral channels will be affected.

Might be worth a few hours of limited wind tunnel time for other teams to investigate.

 

Stroller schooling Seb.

 

LONG RUNS FOR CARLOS, QUALIFYING SIMULATION FOR CHARLES
Image Unavailable, Please Login

Sakhir 13 March 2021
The second day of the only 2021 pre-season test session saw Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz working on slightly different programmes to one another at the wheel of the SF21. Between them, the Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow drivers completed 129 laps today, equivalent to 698,1 kilometres. It means that over the two days so far, they have done 244 laps (1,321 km).

Morning. As planned, Carlos was the first to drive, going out at 10 local (8 CET), to tackle a programme aimed at evaluating the Pirelli tyres over a long distance. The Spaniard did a series of quite long runs, using both the C2 and C3 compounds. Sainz did 56 laps, the quickest in a time of 1’33”072.

Afternoon. After the lunch break it was Charles’ turn to get to work and in the early afternoon, he too did some long runs on the C2 and C3 tyres. In the final part of the session, the Monegasque did a series of runs aimed partly at a qualifying simulation with various tyre compounds. By the end, Charles best time of 1’30”886 was set on the C5 compound, completing a total of 73 laps.

Programme. The action continues tomorrow at Sakhir’s Bahrain International Circuit with the third and final day of testing. Charles will be first out in the SF21 from 10am local time (8 CET) with Carlos taking over for the afternoon.

Laurent Mekies Racing Director

"Another very busy day of testing in Bahrain, with almost 700 kilometres covered during the eight hours of track time. The weather was much better than yesterday, although the wind was still a feature, especially in the first part of the day. We worked a lot on management of the Pirelli tyres over long runs and we got plenty of data which we will now analyse carefully. In the final hour, we also began to look at how the SF21 went in terms of outright performance and here too, we gathered a lot of useful information.
These three days are vitally important and we are taking a methodical approach, because the work we do now will be the key to how we get on during the season. Therefore the most important thing is to complete the planned programme and that’s what we have done so far. As for the competition, we can start thinking about that in two weeks time, in qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix."

 

I highlighted the “partly” in the description of their qualifying simulations because I found it odd when Leclerc set a purple S1 near the end he lost like 0.5 sec in the S2 without any obvious mistake.

Also I read where GIO was 324 in the speed trap versus 312 for Ferrari so hopefully a bit of sandbagging going on.

 

On sky italia Charles said the are very happy with the long run pace.
This will give me enough courage for the last day of testing before the usual and painful wake up call in Q3 for the first race.

 

Well, whatever happens in two weeks, I think we can at least expect it to not be nearly as painful as last year even though it will still be painful if they’re not right at the front.

 

Not true at all...


Verzonden vanaf mijn iPhone met FerrariChat

 

Vettel on prototype tires and Stroll on C5. It’s the same proto tire they ran last season during one one of the practices. It’s way slower

 

Seb is just a development driver. Gonna be fed to the wolves with race strategy.

 

+1

 

Carlos talks about doing low-fuel runs and race sim tomorrow:

 

Mercedes suddenly looking solid again.

Well, a brief moment of joy was as good as any I suppose.

On to 2022

 

The prototypes are like regular C3, I think. The only difference is that those were built at a different factory: Pirelli is just checking that the built quality (or lack of) is the same at both factories.

 

You are correct https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/single-seaters/f1/2021-f1-testing-tyres-why-pirelli-has-brought-a-prototype-to-bahrain

 

Vettel 10 laps (proto tyres, gearbox issue)
Stroll 71 laps (C5 tyres, no gearbox issue)

 

Day 3 about to start.

Image Unavailable, Please Login