F1 Talk: What did we Learn from the First pre-season test?

Its that time of the year again, the time when teams go testing around a little track in Spain; doing lap after lap after lap and from this everyone gets very excited and tries to work out some kind of pecking order.

First things first, its still early days and its still hard to tell who has got the pace. Laptimes were all done on different days with different conditions, we have no idea how much fuel each car was carrying, we don’t know how far their engine was turned up and the drivers will still not be pushing at their maximum.

There are so many factors to consider.

Testing is basically an elongated Friday from a normal Grand Prix weekend. Even after FP1 from a race weekend its still unclear to find a pecking order so to call it from pre-season testing is even harder.

The reliability of today’s cars are phenomenal with only Haas looking like they have problems. The new Red Bull-Honda relationship has started off well with no reported breakdowns from either Red Bull or Toro Rosso.

So why is testing is so hard to read.  Say, Team A is going to 80% potential, Team B is going to 75% potential, Team C is going to 60% potential. The faster the car (the top teams) the more chance that the potential % will be lower. If you compare this to the midfield teams who may be going at 90% and you can see why things look so close if you just looked at the laptimes.

You only have to look at a Grand Prix weekend. The slower teams can sometimes go slower in qualifying than they did in FP3 (due to track conditions) whereas this never happens to the front runners because they have been saving so much time in their pocket.

That said I will give my point of view of how each time is doing.

Ferrari

The balance, the raw pace, and the mood in the team is very positive and there is nothing negative to report. Best case scenario they have a bit of a gap, worst case scenario they are equal fastest team.

Mercedes

The “diva” might be back as the world champions look like they are struggling with balance (aero balance) and it seems likely that they are going to have a harder time than last year. It wouldn’t surprise me if the car is equal in raw pace to Ferrari but it might be a situation where they are harder on their tyres in order to do it and they might have a narrower operating window – something we have seen in recent years.

Red Bull

The team say that this is their best winter test ever and they are sort of going below the radar in a way. But, if you look at their long run pace then; it is consistently strong. Little has gone wrong so far and it remains to be seen what will happen when it’s turned up to 100%, and that will probably be a big question mark in these first few months of the season.

Renault

It looks like Renault have closed the gap to the front three but the gap was so big last year that this wouldn’t be a surprise to me. It’s a question of how much they have closed in. It will be interesting to see if they have any reliability problems during the second week of testing.

As for the rest of the midfield.  It’s really hard to trust their times or get a read on it.  Traffic plays such a big role during these races that these poor cars rarely even get a chance to show what they can do, and are often forced into one stops where they are just waiting for pitstops. Everyone knows it, so during the first few corners everyone takes big risks and it’s easy to get caught up in it and then you never even got a chance to race. The pecking order is unclear as they are all closely matched. Anyway, here’s my take.

Alfa Romeo

It’s too easy to be so far back, and then to release a new car and ‘appear’ to be so much closer. It’s easy to appear that way, but in reality it’s really hard to accomplish.

Toro Rosso

A similar situation to Alfa Romeo but I believe that in terms of positions gained on other teams’ Toro Rosso has made the biggest step forward. A good sign for Red Bull as well. But, Toro Rosso often do well at this time of the year and drop away as the season progresses so it wouldn’t be a surprise if they start the year off as 5th/6th best team and score points early on.

McLaren

McLaren were very good in winter testing last year but then went downhill from round six onwards. Again, its so hard to call the midfield but McLaren are still way off the front and will just be hoping that the philosophy of the car is better than last year so they can put upgrades on the car and make them work.

Haas

The worst reliability of all but there have been signs of pace. After such a good season, its only inevitable that there will be some kind of setback. To me, it looks like Alfa Romeo and Haas have swapped places. But, it is still early days.

Racing Point

Have the team gone backwards? Someone has to and Racing Point are struggling for outright speed and their long run pace isn’t shining either. So often they punch above their weight but it might be time for a reality check as the car looks like it just lacks pure grip – similar to McLaren last year.

Williams

After the last few years, who could have thought that they could find a way to actually make things worse. Missing the first two days of testing is far from ideal. Unfortunately, they are set to be right at the back of the grid which is a massive shame for Robert Kubica fans as the Pole will not want to go out of F1 at the back. As of now, they may even struggle to score points.

I don’t think the order will change too much and the list above is what I think is the pecking order. I could be wrong but because so much these days is dependent on dynos, test rigs, and computers simulations; I don’t believe a lot is going to change in the next week or two.

Even the aero upgrades for Melbourne will be more about customizing the car to the track and will gain tenths rather than a whole second.  The fact that these cars were so fast and reliable in the first few days and the fact that there are only eight days of testing compared to a lot more in the past shows this.

It’s more just about gaining further understanding of the car (for future development in the next 3 months) and learning more about how the car reacts to different setup changes. Williams need the second test the most and Mercedes to an extent. Things will appear to change on the timesheets but I don’t think it will change that much in reality.

It’s scary how advanced these teams and cars are these days, that they can produce new designs so quickly and how little testing they need to hit the ground running.

Every year everyone hopes that the gap at the front will be close and we will be able to see a good fight. But it’s only 19 days until the first race and how often does the pecking order change from year to year anyway? Testing is for the teams to understand their own car and to learn, for us we will have to wait until Melbourne to see if what they have learnt is good enough to elevate them up the order or if they have been bettered by their rivals