F1 2013 Testing: Week 2 Barcelona

Mike306 said:
I've been too busy this week to follow the testing. :(

Can someone give me a quick summary of what has happened please. :)
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Hamilton got himself a dog called Roscoe.

Force India still can't decide if they want Mercedes or Ferrari engines next year.

All the top teams look like they are there or thereabouts, except for maybe Red Bull, hard to believe but that's what the data suggests.

Lotus look to have improved a little, Mercedes seem to have made the largest improvement from last year, short and long runs look promising, no one is getting carried away with their pace because it's Mercedes. :p

If I had to guess who the fastest team is right now, I'd say McLaren. Always known to run conservatively in testing but still making good times.

Ferrari looks much closer to leading pace, despite Alonso making his usual underdog comments.
 
23's means they are getting towards times/track conditions of yesterday, depends exactly which tyres he was on and probably going to be a short run.

With Button, seriously Hamilton would go out in P1, as would Alonso, both did it at the new track last year, and just hooked it up by the second lap, while everyone else was struggling and slowly bringing times down.

New car plus guy who isn't great at setting car up is going to be tough as a title contender. With the Brawn they had such an epic advantage, yet even though everyone else had to develop the cars stupidly fast and Button had an entire half a season to perfect his setup, he looked less competitive to guys with major new parts, massive changes, who could just get the car hooked up better.

Unless Mclaren have made a stonking car I just can't see it, Perez.... we'll see, new car, new team, new level of pace and no one really can guess how he'll adapt. I hope he'll be quick, but who knows at this point.


Looks like Hamilton is still on the mediums, and has done at least 5 laps so not a really short run and not a fast tyre, track getting close to where it was in the last couple days, anyone know the forecast, is it supposed to stay dry for the day or more rain coming. Hope we get a couple teams doing race sims to get a better idea of their pace on different fuel loads.

EDIT;- that run turned out to be 17-18 laps long, started off with two quick laps then between 26's and 27's for the rest at a steady pace with no serious drop off in speed in the final few laps.

For 17 laps that looks significantly faster than the seemingly final stints Grosjean/Webber did yesterday, by a decent amount, and that he could put in two really fast laps then still do a stint faster than they could on low fuel yesterday seems pretty damn impressive.
 
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1 Hamilton Mercedes 1m23.282s
2 Button McLaren 1m23.633s +0.351
3 Vergne Toro Rosso 1m24.071s +0.789
4 Gutierrez Sauber 1m25.239s +1.957
5 Bianchi Force India 1m25.732s +2.450
6 van der Garde Caterham 1m27.429s +4.147
7 Massa Ferrari 1m27.563s +4.281
8 Webber Red Bull 1m27.616s +4.334
9 Chilton Marussia 1m29.902s +6.620
10 Grosjean Lotus 1m34.800s +11.518
 
Raining again and red flag so basically lunch there now. Oh well, hopefully it won't rain for too long but likely a long time before its dried up and some fast runs are done if they can happen at all.

More I think about it the more impressed I am with that Hamilton 17 lap run, 2 1.23 laps, followed by a further 16 laps(inc the in lap), all of which were under 1.27. Yesterday when Grosjean went a bit too fast at a 1.27(with likely a lot more fuel) it seemed to hurt his tyres, dropped quickly and showed more speed loss over that length of laps than Hamilton did. Even for a last stint assuming he didn't have any extra fuel that is really good compared to RBR/Grosjean yesterday, really good.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Raining again and red flag so basically lunch there now. Oh well, hopefully it won't rain for too long but likely a long time before its dried up and some fast runs are done if they can happen at all.

More I think about it the more impressed I am with that Hamilton 17 lap run, 2 1.23 laps, followed by a further 16 laps(inc the in lap), all of which were under 1.27. Yesterday when Grosjean went a bit too fast at a 1.27(with likely a lot more fuel) it seemed to hurt his tyres, dropped quickly and showed more speed loss over that length of laps than Hamilton did. Even for a last stint assuming he didn't have any extra fuel that is really good compared to RBR/Grosjean yesterday, really good.
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Didn't Merc look good in preseason testing last year though?

Technically, no one seemed to think that the Merc looked anything special?

I don't think they have done much running on the soft tyres either have they?

Basically I am trying reeeally hard not to get my hopes up that this Merc could be competitive. It's just not that feasbile is it... or is it?
 
No. Realistically they are where they were before, 5th behind RBR, Ferrari, McLaren and Lotus. They have found some pace, but so has everyone around them.

What does seem to be coming back from people at the track is that Lotus are a lot closer to the top 3 than last year. 4 teams with a WDC in each all on level pegging would be brilliant.
 
Most people haven't done a lot of testing on the soft, and races will usually depend on mediums/harder stints and more of them. Really the conditions are what don't suit the softs, too cold and graining in the first few laps, by the time they are hot enough to be in the zone, they are already damaged, so most people are doing running mostly on mediums or hards. Lotus/RBR's race sims yesterday were all stints on mediums, not 100% sure on Williams(who were miles off in pace) but don't think they did any on softs.

Race pace is more important than qualifying, Alonso's car sucked balls in quali last year yet almost won the title. The main issue the Merc has had for a couple years is getting the tyres to last more than outright pace, I hope they've worked on that more than anything else. I mean these cars can do 1.21's probably quite easily, yet their race pace sims are in the 1.28-1.32's so far, its not really about car pace, its about how fast you can go without killing the tyres that will be key again this season. The Merc wasn't particularly slow last year, it just couldn't maintain any speed as it destroyed tyres before anyone else. I think Sauber was a fairly slow car in outright pace last year, but by god could it make a set of tyres last.

There also isn't a single reason Merc being competitive isn't feasable, Alonso/Hamilton are huge advantages for any team they are on, and you need to look up spending.

Brawn killed spending and let half the team go so the team has had little in season development or money, I think they were spending closer to 200mil while Mclaren were over 300mil and Ferrari were at 400mil, Red Bull I can't remember, around Mclaren levels IIRC. That was a couple years ago, before that Merc spent even less and most of the rest spent more. But over the past 2 years Merc have been spending more each season and Mclaren, Ferrari, Red Bull spending less year on year as team spending is being brought under control, and Merc have been hiring back up to full staff levels and have only been there for a year or so.

Essentially if you hire a brand new staff today and put spending at the same level as Mclaren, you won't see a good car for a few years, Merc are probably at the point where they've had key staff in place for a year + now, have increased spending over the past few years, and conversely the top teams are coming back down to earth with their spending, so Merc are converging in the middle with the top teams in terms of spending, staff levels, and now, driver quality. The spending Merc did in the past couple years, a lot of it won't really be visible in the results for a while, and its not out of the world to think it should start happening this and next season.
 
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Skeeter said:
No. Realistically they are where they were before, 5th behind RBR, Ferrari, McLaren and Lotus. They have found some pace, but so has everyone around them.

What does seem to be coming back from people at the track is that Lotus are a lot closer to the top 3 than last year. 4 teams with a WDC in each all on level pegging would be brilliant.
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It seems young Lewis agrees with you...

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/105674

Edit for those who have no access:

Lewis Hamilton believes rivals are wrong to suspect that he and Mercedes will be frontrunners in the 2013 Formula 1 season.

Despite some other top drivers suggesting it would be wrong to discount Hamilton as a title threat despite his move to the hitherto troubled Mercedes team, Hamilton is standing by his belief that he is unlikely to even win a race this season.

Asked by AUTOSPORT whether his scepticism meant he rated his victory chances as impossible or merely unlikely, Hamilton replied: "It doesn't mean it's impossible, but I think people are talking us up at the moment.

"[Sebastian] Vettel and maybe Fernando [Alonso] were saying I'm maybe going to be competing for the world championship, but I really don't see that happening at the moment.

"Of course that's our goal but you've got to remember the car was over a second off, sometimes two seconds off, last year and we've not caught a second up.

"And other teams will have put a second on over the winter. So we've not gained three seconds, that's a fact.

"Hopefully by the end of the year, that's our goal, but definitely not at the beginning."

Hamilton believes Mercedes' W04 currently holds a respectable position just behind the absolute frontrunners.

"It's a work in progress. We have stuff to add to it, stuff to work on, things that are better than what I have experienced, things that are not as good," he said.

"Downforce is not great but we have some updates. It's probably not fast enough to be the quickest but it's not slow, that's for sure."

He also remains adamant that Mercedes will thrive in the long term as recent changes take effect.

"I don't think there should be a reason not to succeed," Hamilton said.

"I think sometimes people lose their way and it takes a group of people to try and put the train back on its tracks. We've got lots of great people here who I think have been doing that and we're now rolling in the right direction."
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Interesting little factoid.

@adamcooperf1 said:
#F1 With @LewisHamilton top in Barcelona today that makes 8 different drivers quickest on 8 days of testing so far, for what it's worth
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@adamcooperf1 said:
#F1 That's 2x McLaren, 2 x Ferrari, 2x Lotus, 2x Mercedes... And a Red Bull has yet to top the times this year
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Shimmy = Ted? :p Great factoid.


Hamilton stays on top

Code: 
[b]Pos  Driver                Team            Time       Gap      Laps[/b]
 1.  Lewis Hamilton        Mercedes        1m23.282s            52
 2.  Jenson Button         McLaren         1m23.633s  +0.351    70
 3.  Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso      1m24.071s  +0.789    80
 4.  Jules Bianchi         Force India     1m25.732s  +2.450    96
 5.  Esteban Gutierrez     Sauber          1m26.239s  +1.957    61
 6.  Giedo van der Garde   Caterham        1m27.429s  +4.147    50
 7.  Felipe Massa          Ferrari         1m27.563s  +4.281    80
 8.  Mark Webber           Red Bull        1m27.616s  +4.334    64
 9.  Max Chilton           Marussia        1m29.902s  +6.620    51
10.  Romain Grosjean       Lotus           1m34.800s  +11.518   41
11.  Valtteri Bottas       Williams        no time              23
12.  Pastor Maldonado      Williams        no time              13

Final test next week which runs into the weekend, making it a bit easier to follow.
 
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