Bottom post of the previous page:
Impressive number of laps logged by everyone so far. Including McLaren.
I haven't cared about testing for 15 years, top teams are sandbagging, giving the impression that the mid-grid teams are faster than they really are, C'mon, a McLaren topped the timesheets for heaven's sake.DoubleFart wrote: ↑6 years ago I'm finding it so hard to actually care. Testing means nothing, and is particularly pointless in these conditions.
So what messages did the lap times tell us during the gaps between the rain and snow of Barcelona testing, week one of two? Well, the pattern looks broadly familiar but with a few twists of particular intrigue. The fastest three are Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull, with the Merc showing an advantage in single-lap pace, but trailing slightly over a stint. The new McLaren has yet to show any pace, Stoffel Vandoorne’s headline lap times being flattered by a very big tyre compound advantage.
Wednesday was snowed-off, Monday only a few were setting fast times either through run programmes or the state of the track with its much smoother new surface. The really significant numbers were seen on Tuesday and Thursday. Once its surface dried, the track temperature got up to as high as 13/14deg C even though the ambient was never anywhere close to that. It was enough to allow the tyres to work – with a lot of preparation and effort on the part of the driver – but just the slightest backing off could take them back out of their temperature window.
The following analysis is based on trawling through the laps of every car on every day and some assumptions around that. The most significant of these is what lap time difference there was between the various tyre compounds in use. In these temperatures, the normal offset between them did not really apply. Most teams did most of their running on either the medium or the soft compound – and the consensus seemed to be that there was virtually nothing between them in terms of performance. If you were going to do very long runs, the medium would perhaps be slightly faster by the time you’d got down to low fuel levels. Whereas for shorter runs, with lower starting weights, the soft possibly had a slight edge. The Mercedes seemed to prefer the medium while Ferrari and Red Bull concentrated on the soft. There was a big performance boost – of around 1.3sec – from there to the super-soft favoured by Haas, Fernando Alonso and Toro Rosso. The hyper-soft – used only by Vandoorne – was significantly faster even than that. By perhaps a further 0.6sec, according to at least one team engineer.
The second assumption is about fuel levels. For the purposes of comparison we’ve assumed the cars were fuelled only for the stint length they ran but we have no way of knowing such was the case or whether there were significant differences between teams on this policy. We have made an educated guess of a fuel use of 1.5kg per lap, with each kg of weight costing 0.035sec.
As for tyre degradation, it was very low generally on the new surface. But actually, apart from a couple of outliers, there was relatively little spread between the age of the tyres when drivers did their fastest laps. It was slightly higher for the top three teams (between eight and 12 laps) than the rest (between four and eight). The outliers were Sauber and Toro Rosso, who did their best times at the end of very long runs and therefore with tyres perhaps 0.5sec or so slower than most of the rest.
We’ve adjusted for all those variables and come up with the numbers below. So, with the proviso that there are many assumptions and approximations – and that some teams will have more performance to bolt on for Melbourne than others – here’s the rough approximate order of one-lap pace:
Mercedes (total 306 laps). Up until the final day the Mercedes W09 didn’t look decisively faster than either the Ferrari or Red Bull. It was always very quick in sectors one and two - which emphasise aero efficiency – but was consistently slower than its two rivals in the slow final sector. But whether through a set-up change that kept the rear tyres from getting too hot or through Lewis Hamilton finding a better groove there than had Valtteri Bottas, it was competitively quick even in its weakest sector on Thursday. By our reckoning Hamilton’s best lap – fuel and tyre adjusted – was around 0.3sec clear of Vettel’s Ferrari. But that was only on a single lap basis. On the long runs, Hamilton’s best would have had him 2.4sec behind Vettel at the end of a nine-lap stint. Although super-quick over a single lap, we’ve yet to see the Merc complete as good a long run as either Ferrari or Red Bull. Just a different run programme or indicative of an actual trait? That could be the single most important question of the off-season.
+0.3sec
Ferrari and Red Bull
Red Bull (total 207 laps) and Ferrari (total 298 laps). Vettel was The Man on Tuesday, and actually went slightly faster on Thursday, but not by enough to prevent being shaded by Hamilton. However, his best long run had him averaging 1m 20.9sec over nine laps, which was an exceptional pace and the best long run anyone put together all week.
Red Bull didn’t get the cleanest of runs after Daniel Ricciardo had headed the times on Monday. Max Verstappen suffered technical problems on both Tuesday and Thursday but he was quick when he ran. One very long run he made on Tuesday of 23 laps looks especially interesting: taking out the obviously slow laps (for either traffic or perhaps trying to keep the tyres alive), he averaged just 0.2sec slower than Vettel’s much shorter best run on Thursday.
+0.6sec
Renault (total 273 laps). The RS18 looked best of the rest after the big three by a very useful margin, though uniquely it did its fastest time on the Monday – in the hands of Nico Hülkenberg.
+0.5s
Williams-Mercedes (total 275 laps). Robert Kubica reported the FW41 to be a “powerful performer” in some respects but had some initial balance issues that needed further work. Lance Stroll was well into the car’s groove on Thursday afternoon and managed to string together a sequence of laps that seem to place the car initially towards the upper midfield.
+0.5s
Haas and McLaren
Haas-Ferrari (total 187 laps) & McLaren-Renault (total 249 laps). This is a respectable pace for Haas, a worrying one for McLaren. Kevin Magnussen found the Haas to respond well to the super-soft tyre but even accounting for that tyre’s supposed 1.3sec advantage over the soft most others were using, the new VF18 looks promising – though Roman Grosjean continues to struggle with front locking.
At McLaren the headline numbers looked good, with Stoffel Vandoorne second quickest on Thursday – but that was using the hyper-soft, a much quicker tyre than anyone else. He remained on this compound throughout his running and taking account of its performance boost puts the McLaren around 2sec off the Red Bull. However it’s believed to have been running in compromised form, possibly related to a problem with exhaust temperatures that brought a premature end to its Tuesday. If the engine was being run rich to control exhaust temperatures, it would cost significant performance. Fernando Alonso spent most of his time on the super-soft but wasn’t particularly fast either. A lot of question marks surround the MCL33 at the moment, but hopefully it will show its true potential if it can run in uncompromised form next week.
+0.3sec
Force India-Mercedes (total 166 laps). Even compared to the other teams, Force India was spending a lot of its time aero mapping and we probably haven’t seen a representative lap from it yet. The team says it will be concentrating on performance testing next week.
+0.4sec
Toro Rosso-Honda (total 322 laps). The Honda ran very reliably throughout the four days, actually completing more laps than any other team, but as yet not very quickly.
+ 0.3sec
Sauber-Ferrari (total 282 laps). The Alfa-liveried car has yet to go as well as it looks.
Gary Anderson wrote:This has been the most difficult pre-season Formula 1 test to read anything into that I've ever known, mainly thanks to the usually cold, often wet and sometimes snowy conditions that have hit the resurfaced Barcelona circuit.
But you can always learn something from what happens on track, so despite those problems on top of the usual question marks over fuel loads, run plans, tyre choices and how hard drivers are pushing I've attempted to produce a car ranking that at least will give a pointer to how the season is shaping up.
We'll learn a lot more at next week's second test, so none of this can be taken as gospel. But by looking at the fastest lap times set by each team, adjusting it for what we know about fuel load based on how many laps were completed on the run that they did their fastest lap on and what the teams have tended to run with in recent years, and then putting in an adjustment factor for the tyre compound being used, you can extrapolate what time might have been possible at the start of that run with lower fuel.
We don't have clear data on the delta between the tyre compounds for here, so this is based on taking the known steps between the compounds based on the Abu Dhabi test late last year adjusted for the difference in lap time and track characteristics.
Adjust fastest lap times (normalised for soft compound tyre)
1 Red Bull 1m18.129s
2 Mercedes 1m18.383s
3 Ferrari 1m19.123s
4 Renault 1m19.373s
5 McLaren 1m19.425s
6 Haas 1m20.367s
7 Toro Rosso 1m20.418s
8 Williams 1m20.792s
9 Force India 1m21.341s
10 Sauber 1m21.771s
1 RED BULL - Fast but messy
Red Bull has had, in some ways, a bit of a torrid time in the first test. Apart from day one, which was pretty sweet and rosy with the car looking good, there were too many problems.
Since Monday, Red Bull has been digging holes for itself. It has spent a lot of time playing around with the vertical bargeboards on the front edge of the sidepods. I'm not sure if they were falling off or the team wasn't happy with them, but there's clearly something going on there.
Red Bull has been digging holes for itself. It's been very messy
Also, Max Verstappen never had a great run with fuel leaks on one day and an off on Thursday. So it's been very messy.
But I'm still hopeful that the adjusted pace reflects the fact Red Bull can latch onto the current top two, as if you look at modified lap times it's right up there with Mercedes.
As Red Bull's engine supplier Renault still looks to be a bit behind, it might not be quite enough - but the car does look very good when it's working.
2 MERCEDES - Sticking to its guns
There's no reason to believe Mercedes has lost its way or done anything other than build on its 2017 car. It's an evolution that seems to be working well.
It did have the tendency for the rear to give up when the driver pushed a little bit above the limit of the car, but that is not unusual. What is interesting is to watch the car when the tyres are still warming up as the drivers seems to have more hassle with oversteer in particular.
Looking at the attitude of the car on the straight on the run into the braking zone for Turn 1, the rear ride height is significantly lower than cars such as the Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren. This is because Mercedes has not gone down the high-rake path, even though it has slightly increased that this year.
Based on the start of the test, you'd say Mercedes had more problems than Ferrari but by Thursday that had changed. By effectively optimising all the little bits from last year, it looks like the team is confident the avenue it has chosen still has potential.
3 FERRARI - Fading over the week
Given that the final day of the test was effectively day three, I was very surprised not to see a better Ferrari on track than we did earlier in the week. On Monday, I felt it had made up ground because the car looked very good, but it looks like the only car not to have significantly improved.
On the first day, the car looked very stable and the drivers were comfortable, but when they tried to go quicker later on the rear end was really giving up on corner entry and I'm surprise Ferrari hasn't managed to get on top of that.
Ferrari is running relatively high rake, and I'm surprised that the rear ride height is still pretty high at the end of the straight under load. For straightline speed, you want the rear as low as possible and the high-rake is there to give a strong front end for corner entry. As the rear was stepping out from time to time on corner entry, Ferrari might just have too strong a front end.
Perhaps Ferrari is focusing too much on this high-rake set-up to get the aerodynamic advantage and has forgotten about the mechanical platform, but I suppose that's what testing is all about.
Overall, the Ferrari still looks strong but not as strong as perhaps it did on day one. And the adjusted time gap to the front is maybe a concern.
4 RENAULT - Topping the midfield
I'd say that the works Renault team is just ahead of McLaren, but it's pretty close. The car looked decent on track and having finished last season with the fourth-fastest car there's nothing to suggest it has lost out from there over the winter.
It certainly looked better at the end of the test than at the start, and seemed to allow the drivers to turn in with confidence and carry speed into the corner.
Based on what we've seen so far, there's nothing to suggest Renault has leaped up to be in the area of Red Bull, but it could easily be at the front of the midfield.
5 McLAREN - Making progress
You would expect McLaren to be close to the Renault team, and visually the car did look very good on track. The only problem is that it was often running on softer tyres than the other cars, and you can't change the visual impression of the car on track to compensate for that.
Over the years, McLaren has probably had a less productive development hit rate than a team like Red Bull and we will be able to see this year what level its chassis is really at.
6 HAAS - Hiding its weaknesses?
You'd have to say that Haas appears to have done a fairly strong job, even though the car does look like one that's lacking in overall downforce because when the driver starts pushing, it moves around at the rear a lot.
The thing confusing the judgement of where Haas stands is that it was also often on softer tyre compounds, and that could be helping camouflage some weaknesses.
I don't think Haas is going to be challenging for fourth in the championship, but it at least looks to have a consistent car to build from and should be able to take chances of points finishes.
It's probably the least sophisticated car on the grid, but that's not necessarily a problem if everything works and the team can understand how to get the best out of it.
7 TORO ROSSO - Way ahead of expectations
I would like to congratulate Toro Rosso for what it has done, along with Honda. The two parties have worked really hard to be able to get the package put together, and after the headbanging Honda has had from McLaren in the past few years it must be refreshing to work with a small team willing to do stuff.
James Key is content with how the relationship is in building up and the engine has, as far as I know, run reliably. So that's very different to what we saw last year.
After the headbanging Honda has had from McLaren, it must be refreshing to work with a small team willing to do stuff
On day one, the front end was washing out very badly but it seems to have solved this. The car didn't set any stunning lap times but it is in the mix and the important thing is to have a solid package that both team and engine supplier can work from.
It's not easy to change engine suppliers with short notice, and it was probably 10 times harder for Toro Rosso to change to Honda than it was for McLaren to adapt to Renault. So this is a good starting point for the season ahead.
8 WILLIAMS - Needs more time
The car does look a little nervous on track, certainly more so than the other midfield cars. It looks very stiff and jumps around a lot whereas some other cars look more docile, when it does step out it goes quickly.
But I am very impressed with the direction Williams has taken and the step in terms of detail and sophistication, which make it a combination of Ferrari and Mercedes philosophy.
The downside is that it could take a while to understand that complexity and get the most out of the package. What is crucial is that all these parts work together properly and there's still some work to be done on that.
So in the second test, Williams needs to dot the i's and cross the t's and get things working. A lot will depend on the design team and the engineers given the inexperienced driver line-up.
9 FORCE INDIA - Too soon to judge
Force India is putting all its eggs in the basket of upgrades to be introduced in the second test and, more significantly, the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. What we saw in the first test was a release car to get all the systems working and the mechanical platform sorted. The aero package will be revised a lot, so let's see what happens next week.
The drivers seemed to have a lot of trouble getting the tyres switched on, but that could just be down to downforce levels and solved with the upgrades.
Force India is a great team but it needs to do a lot of work to develop this package and get the best out of it to have a chance of defending fourth place in the constructors' championship. The team could do a better job than last year and still slip to seventh given the competition. So I want to see more pace in the next test.
10 SAUBER - Propping the field up
Sorry to say it, but Sauber still appears to be where it was last season - at the back. The car just doesn't look like it has got the grip level when the drivers push on.
Sauber has followed the Ferrari-style concept and there's no reason with a technical relationship that Ferrari can't give it some direction here and there. Perhaps Sauber has been a bit stubborn about taking advantage of that.
The car is a lot more complex, so maybe it will take time to understand it. But right now there's no reason to put Sauber anything other than at the back.
Gary Anderson has pointed out that McLaren are pushing the limits on the cooling of their car. He has also made a cutting remark regarding 'no Honda to pass blame onto now.... their own doing and no one to blame but themselves.' I think there was a lot more of this last year conveniently swept away by the McLaren honchos to divert any fault away.we suffered a power shutdown during Stoff’s last run, meaning we lost data. The team are investigating, but we’ll be back out as soon as we can.
McLaren are pushing the limits on cooling. From the picture above we can see they have added an extra three slots to the one that they were forced to cut into the bodywork last week. There are two brown-ish marks are on both sides of the bodywork so there is something very close to that part of the engine cover - probably the exhausts or turbo and that is of major concern. The exhaust temperatures on these cars runs at around 400-800 degrees centigrade and are wrapped in heat proof insulation. If the temperature cannot be controlled anything near them is vulnerable. To finish first, first you have to finish - so these random reliability problems that McLaren seems to have carried over from the Honda days are of major concern, and now they have no-one but themselves to point the finger at.