The ones hyping it up were Ferrari fans! Autosport forum since testing has been full of people hyping up the Ferrari about finally beating Mercedes this year!
Poll: Australian Grand Prix 2017, Melbourne - Race 1/20
- Thread starter Shimmy
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A 1:26:00 is hardly amazing even for a poor engine. Last year with a poor engine in FP3 (FP2 was wet) Alonso pulled a 1:27:2,and button a 1:27:3, so 1.2 seconds means nothing, and is no reflection on how good Alonso is as a driver at all!
Bad car is bad with slow time. Oh and the 1:27:2 put them in 11th last year.
Caporegime
The official Formula1 website has Alonso's car for practice 2 listed as 'NULL'. That seems... prophetic.
Soldato
Why has Palmer only done 10 laps in total? Did he have problems?
He crashed out
Man of Honour
That rear fin and T bar on the Haas is so flexible it must be virtually useless.
Caporegime
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There is nothing impressive about it, not in the sense that a 1:26 isn't good, though it absolutely isn't, the problem is almost everyone behind him had problems.
First Alonso did that time very late, long after everyone else started doing long runs. Vandoorne's time was done not far off Alonso's earlier time and Vandoorne was 1/10th ahead of Alonso or so. He did a half second faster on another run another half hour later on a faster track. He wasn't meaningfully faster than Vandoorne at the same time on track. I think Alonso was the sole guy on track trying to do a fast lap that close to the end, which moved him unnaturally higher up the pecking order. Everyone could probably have gone half a second faster at that point.
Then we have comparing Mclaren to the rest... it doesn't look good. Palmer spun his car in the final corner and missed most of the session and Kmag's car was in the garage most of the session, but both their team mates were half a second up on Alonso's late late fast lap, a second up on Alonso's lap done at similar times, so there is no reason to think both wouldn't be 0.5-1 second ahead of the Mclaren's without issues. Massa's gearbox went and Ocon is way behind his team mate also.
Basically adjusting for issues and when the times were done, ALonso was slower than Vandoorne and the Mclaren's were slower than Ericsson's Sauber. The only two they looked like they might beat are Wehrlein and Stroll who both looked slow today. If Mclaren upped their engine at all at this point, they should be extremely worried. They also didn't do any significantly long runs so god knows how they'll do in a full race.
Last year Ham gained 2 seconds between Fp3 fastest time and pole. If most of the grid does that, well, we've got to see where Mclaren place once everyone is turned up basically.
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Soldato
Thanks, that was odd, back end went out of nowhere. I
Soldato
What was with Ferrari, they didn't seem to do many laps compared to Mercedes.
Soldato
McLaren would be as well just not bother this year, another ******* waste of time.
The only good thing that will come out of this, is Alonso's radio broadcasts rubbishing Honda.
The only good thing that will come out of this, is Alonso's radio broadcasts rubbishing Honda.
Caporegime
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There was a general feel amongst the whole thing that teams were apprehensive about doing much running with a 4 engine limit to consider for a long season. It sounded like Ferrari were potentially the most worried about this and they were stated to have said there is very little point running much in FP1 due to dusty track and temps.
Does that mean Ferrari have a particular fear their engine will struggle to make 5 races, maybe, or maybe they are just a bit unsure about a new update and want some feedback before pushing more and harder. Who the hell knows.
You suspect they still have at least a couple of seconds to come for Q3, so the question really remains, how far is each team turned down at this moment.
With 4 engines, more power, more time on throttle, we could see a season in which everyone runs the engine power gap between practice and qualifying is much larger than last year because they want to protect their engines more. Because ultimately we came into the weekend thinking a 1:20 or so for qualifying was more than a possibility. Tracks should be 3-5 seconds faster than last year so even 2 seconds faster than today would seem slow compared to the speed they were supposed to have.
Soldato
I was looking forward to this.
I'm not now.
I'm not now.
Let's wait and see what happens in the race? They won't be running the full engine modes due to concerns about longevity. Qualifying will be the acid test, but I also fear that some may not even run at full power then either.
No news of McLaren changing engines yet? I thought it a certainty!
Wait until qualifying. Practice isnt the be all and end all... Plus with the limit of 4 engines they are probably all turning them down. (I will admit practice is more representative than testing though.)