F1 2013 Testing: Week 1 Jerez
- Thread starter Duke
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Caporegime
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You predicted precisely nothing at all. Lotus will be faster, how much faster, all cars will likely be faster than last year, Lotus will get closer to Ferrari, or beat the top three more often is a prediction, car faster than last year, means nothing.
The Mclaren will be generally strong, in what sense, it won't crumple much on impact, or they'll be in the top three teams, as expected, as they've been for donkeys years, as you expect of all the top three spending teams who spend vastly more than those below them. The Caterham with tiny budget will be disappointly slow compared to cars spending vastly more with better drivers, better engines, better parts, better testing, better staff.... no.. really?
Same goes for all the predictions.
This is what wound me up about "predictions" early in the thread, they are unspecific and based off nothing. Times people did means nothing, one team decides to go flat out, engine mode at max, with max fuel because last year the engine/gear was less efficient and they couldn't afford to max fuel at the beginning, suffered early in races and thats what needs most testing, while another team fixed something else and had most testing to do in another area.
Ferrari were the worst in qualifying and almost the best in race pace, with the two frequently being 5-7 seconds apart(for everyone), so Ferrari had the most to improve in balls out qualifying speed, and shock, horror, Ferrari went earliest with fastest runs on soft tyres.
In terms of debugging everyone needs to do the same stuff, but that doesn't mean different teams didn't prioritise, but where teams look to improve, and where they need to test for performance and power is different depending on what they've tried to improve. Red Bull had pace, needed reliability, Merc need a bit of everything, but definitely reliability, Ferrari needed nothing more than more out and out pace for qualifying, if they started every race 2-4 places higher up, ALonso would have won that title, but they were woeful in qualifying, Mclaren needed... reliability more than anything but it was more individual parts, suspension, fuel pumps and gear boxes than engines.
So what might you expect, Ferrari doing more fast as possible runs to test improvements they focused on quali pace, Mclaren to test gears/fuel pump, all around performance from probably all around improvements, Merc to go for reliability and do the most/longest runs, Red Bull to do a bit of everything.
In terms of reliability, fire/electrics issues on new cars are expected, but doing 150laps(give or take) twice is actually really impressive compared to cars/engines that Merc had fail repeatedly last year, early impressions are that is an improvement in reliability. A newly designed fuel pump that failed, to replace a failing fuel pump from last year, isn't the best sign for Mclaren.
This all ignoring, some cars not having kers running, some cars having other parts not working, some cars having huge parts to come before Aussie, while others cars don't.
Erm no they never.
Good grief, what's with the aggressive tone? I read my post back and can't see that I insulted your mother or anything... I stay out of the race threads generally because everybody gets so aggressive and petulant, but this thread had been pleasingly free of it up until now.
Of course I've "predicted" nothing, to make cast iron predictions based off the first test on a non-representative track would be daft. Besides - nothing spectacular has happened. I'm not saying that FI is going to wipe the floor with everyone based of Bianchi's time... Perhaps the fact that there's nothing groundbreaking about my general impression feelings of the test indicates that there's not going to be any groundbreaking movers or shakers up or down the field this year? There's certainly no Brawn-a-like story for 2013.
There's plenty of quite knowledgeable folk on these forums and watching the testing and discussing "what-if" is all part and parcel of enjoying following F1. To go and get "wound up" and start insulting people based on these discussions is daft!
Soldato
Great stuff, really like Gary Anderson's addition to the BBC team:
"On the face of it, the fastest lap times from the first pre-season Formula 1 test last week are meaningless - the cars are not in the order you would expect and some teams who you know will not be winning races were right up at the top.
But I have been analysing the sheets of all the lap times done by the drivers and I think I have a way of producing a list that reflects pretty well the true competitive order of the new cars.
That order has some big surprises in it - the quickest cars appear to be those of McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes, with Lotus not far behind. And Red Bull - the world champions for the last three years - look relatively slow. Let me explain how we get there.
Let's start with the list of fastest times overall from the four days of the test, which looked like this:"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/21417831
"On the face of it, the fastest lap times from the first pre-season Formula 1 test last week are meaningless - the cars are not in the order you would expect and some teams who you know will not be winning races were right up at the top.
But I have been analysing the sheets of all the lap times done by the drivers and I think I have a way of producing a list that reflects pretty well the true competitive order of the new cars.
That order has some big surprises in it - the quickest cars appear to be those of McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes, with Lotus not far behind. And Red Bull - the world champions for the last three years - look relatively slow. Let me explain how we get there.
Let's start with the list of fastest times overall from the four days of the test, which looked like this:"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/21417831
The 2010 RBR was very dominant.
The problem in 2010 was that Vettel never really got going until the last 4 races or so. And Alonso was so brilliant. Alonso in that RBR wouldve probably broken some records.
In 2011, the RBR was even further ahead of the pack and Vettel just happened to be in unbelievable form.
In 2010, 2011 and 2012, the RBR car has been the fastest car, averaged over the course of the season. Some say that the 2012 McLaren was faster, but in general, whether the rules change or are stable, from one year to the next, RBR consistently produce a car capable of winning the title.
I realise that people want to clutch at straws hoping that RBR mess up, but history has shown this is possible, but very unlikely.
With regards to this year's times, my gut tells me that McLaren may start Race1 with the fastest car. But as we saw last year, this does not mean that they will win the title or even get a top3 WDC finish.
Caporegime
Three results on the trot doesn't even reach statistical significance. Yes, RBR have done well but you're drastically overstating your case.
RBR have never looked like the outright fastest car in pre season testing.
I may not have read it correctly but did he account for tyres at all?
Not as far as I can tell.
Soldato
All this talk of who is fastest etc. from the first test is hypothetical.
We will know more in the next test but the last test will show where the teams are truly at.
We will know more in the next test but the last test will show where the teams are truly at.
Soldato
As I was reading from Mark, I think, we will know at Melbourne. Before then is just speculation really.
kd
Soldato
Yeah I mean there's a lot of speculation in the tests. It will be Melbourne where the gloves come off, and Q3 for that matter. That's when we see the magic engine mapping modes etc. come into force, ala Red Bull.
Soldato
Is that a new rule for 2013 Skeeter? 