Mark Hughes (ITV) on current testing form

speedy_sam · Mar 9, 2009

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This weeks Jerez test was the first opportunity to see all the major players run their 2009 cars together at the same venue.

While gauging underlying performance is always difficult, itv.com/f1s expert analyst Mark Hughes has been looking beyond the headline times at long-run pace, consistency and tyre usage.

As he explains, the best indications are that the field is extremely close, with Ferrari having the initial advantage but well within reach of whichever team produces the most fruitful upgrades between now and Melbourne.

After one of the most radical shake-ups of the technical regulations in the sports history and a much broader design diversity than recent years, remarkably the signs from testing so far are that the performance of the cars is closer than ever.

A note of caution is in order: It is impossible to be definitive when analysing test times, given the huge number of variables.

First we must generally ignore the headline lists, where the quickest time recorded by each driver during the day is simply listed in descending order; these can be widely distorted by one driver doing a qualifying-spec run as the others are concentrating on something else.

This happened last Sunday at Jerez where Sebastian Vettels Red Bull went 1.3s quicker than anyone else in what remained by far the fastest time of the week.

Most teams spend most of their time running with a fuel load that would be representative for a race stint, at around 40kg. This will cost over 1s in lap time.

But the pattern is further complicated by different teams choosing different fuel levels as their baseline for comparison.

For some it may be 40kg, for others 25kg, someone else may even go for 50kg.

So even the teams never quite know what they are comparing when looking at themselves in relation to their rivals.

The waters are muddied yet further by varying track conditions.

Cool morning air lets the engines work better, but is not so good for generating a grippy track surface.

A bit of sun and a good layer of rubber from earlier running can make the track much faster after a couple of hours.

A shower of rain that wipes the rubber away can mean that even though the track dries again its never as fast as in that earlier ideal window and these differences tend to be way bigger than those in performance between the cars.

Then there are the different tyre specifications.

But given all of those provisos, looking at the last few weeks of testing in Jerez and Bahrain, a few themes do seem to be developing.

At Bahrain there seemed to be only around 0.2s blanketing the Ferrari, Toyota and BMW, generally in that order.

As those three teams then joined the others in Jerez, it was clear that Ferrari was still in very good shape, that Red Bull and Williams were in the Toyota/BMW ballpark and that Renault seemed to slot somewhere in between, slightly slower than Ferrari, slightly faster than Toyota et al.

McLaren? Thats the big question.

During the previous Jerez test when Ferrari was still in Bahrain McLaren looked the strongest of the Spanish runners.

But it was using its 2008 rear wing, which gives more downforce than the pukka 09 component. Exactly why this was, no one was saying.

When the 09 wing finally went on during the this weeks Tuesday test, the cars times were somewhere in the region of the big cluster group Toyota, BMW, Red Bull, Williams but definitely a few tenths adrift of Ferrari and Renault.

The following day Lewis Hamilton was spending a lot of time back-to-backing the two rear wings. It looked less like a routine programme than a problem-nailing exercise.

Within the general competitive shape of the sessions, certain characteristics seemed to emerge.

In the cooler conditions of Jerez, the Ferrari seemed to take a while to get its tyres up to temperature repeating a pattern thats been seen for some years now.

The Renault seemed better able to instantly access its performance, but over a longer stint the Ferrari looked very strong.

The BMW was another with a slightly disparate performance pattern, many of its runs unremarkable before a sudden step change of pace, much as in last years pre-season tests.

Every one of these teams has a further evolution of bodywork to go ready for Melbourne and its quite feasible that these will totally change the competitive order yet again.

With apparently so little between the cars, finding a tenth of a second more than your rival could vault you from sixth to first. Melbourne is going to be more fascinating than ever.
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Mark Hughes (ITV) on current testing form

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