F1 Testing 2014: Week 2 Bahrain

sunama said:
Dice, are you saying that teams are not (most of the time), looking for higher paying sponsors, or in McLaren's case a main title sponsor?

I think you work in F1, so you know a lot on this topic, so by all means enlighten us.

My way of thinking is that a big title sponsor is better than no sponsor. It makes sense to get the extra money. No team/company can afford to pass up extra money. The more money/income the better. At least that's what I'm thinking.

Personally, I think McLaren will have a main sponsor, in a few weeks time, for financial reasons.
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Alas I can say very little, Just that the wording of the McLaren bit is a little off.
 
I've got Sky, BBC and Autosport open but none of them have reported the tyres. F1 Technical thread suggested supersofts, but not seen anything definitive yet
 
Tenzo said:
So much misinformation going around on the web.

F1 Tech saying -

1.34.813 Hamilton on softs
1:34.263 Hamilton on supersofts

Waiting to see what Autosport says....
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softs :D
 
Who cares? The times are meaningless to us. You can't even compare the times to last year for a pace comparison because the tyres are a completely different design (not just harder), the engines will likely have a lower top speed, but more torque, the time of day is different, the temperature and wind probably different, track conditions different. Added to that, we've the usual caveat - we don't know the fuel loads - we know Magnussen did his time yesterday in a 5 lap stint (I haven't followed today's testing yet), but it's unlikely it was done with 5-laps worth of fuel - the big teams seldom ever do glory runs. Perhaps in the next week, but we'll still be clueless.

The fact the times are coming down so much and the fact that some teams seemingly without any specific problems have been 5 seconds off the pace ought to show you how pointless looking at times is.

What you should be looking for is reliability and trackside reports. Anything beyond that is pointless. A few years ago we had a Prost setting the times alight in testing... they didn't score a point in the season itself.
 
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this_is_gav said:
Who cares?
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Me and other Lewis fans.

The fact the times are coming down so much and the fact that some teams seemingly without any specific problems have been 5 seconds off the pace ought to show you how pointless looking at times is.
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Lewis is only 1.9 seconds off the pole lap(softs) and it's the only thing we have to go by.

What you should be looking for is reliability and trackside reports. Anything beyond that is pointless.
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Merc is doing ok thank you for asking :) you love the word "pointless" :)
 
this_is_gav said:
Who cares? The times are meaningless to us. You can't even compare the times to last year for a pace comparison because the tyres are a completely different design (not just harder), the engines will likely have a lower top speed, but more torque, the time of day is different, the temperature and wind probably different, track conditions different. Added to that, we've the usual caveat - we don't know the fuel loads - we know Magnussen did his time yesterday in a 5 lap stint (I haven't followed today's testing yet), but it's unlikely it was done with 5-laps worth of fuel - the big teams seldom ever do glory runs. Perhaps in the next week, but we'll still be clueless.

The fact the times are coming down so much and the fact that some teams seemingly without any specific problems have been 5 seconds off the pace ought to show you how pointless looking at times is.

What you should be looking for is reliability and trackside reports. Anything beyond that is pointless. A few years ago we had a Prost setting the times alight in testing... they didn't score a point in the season itself.
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This in a nutshell! Times are utterly meaningless in testing, I'd say final practice in melbourne is when I'll start taking times a little more seriously.
 
Bottas has done 55 laps with out setting a time? it's a bit of "in-out-in-out and shake it all about" :)
 
I forgot the most important point. No team has shown their Melbourne aero package yet (probably with the exception of Marussia, Caterham and, given their cash flow and late arrival, Lotus), so even assuming we did know the extent to which teams were pushing and fueling their cars, we couldn't make comparisons between them.

My only observations so far are that Mercedes look the least troubled and appear fast out of the blocks (judging lap consistency alone), that McLaren and Williams have perhaps made a step forwards on that same basis, that Ferrari don't appear to have shown their hand at all yet, that Sauber are having the most problems with the brake-by-wire system and that, shock horror, Renault are behind Mercedes and Ferrari.


deuse said:
you love the word "pointless" :)
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I do. Just for you I'll try to remember to change it to "without any defined point". Okely? ;)
 
1 Hamilton Mercedes 1m34.263s
2 Gutierrez Sauber 1m37.180s +2.917
3 Button McLaren 1m37.258s +2.995
4 Maldonado Lotus 1m39.642s +5.379
5 Perez Force India 1m40.339s +6.076
6 Ricciardo Red Bull 1m40.781s +6.518
7 Kvyat Toro Rosso 1m40.801s +6.538
8 Raikkonen Ferrari 1m41.336s +7.073
9 Ericsson Caterham 1m43.602s +9.339
10 Chilton Marussia 1m46.672s +12.409


I know it's POINTLESS posting the times, but I thought someone maybe interested :)
 
JRS said:
Horner really is a complete and utter ****....
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I'm not his biggest fan but I can't say anything he said that is insane in that. Renault were producing engines without Kers and leaving the Kers up to the team for the past three years. It's not insane to believe that had a different decision been made and Renault had been responsible for Kers, that would have helped significantly with experience when it comes to making the new engines which are now massively energy recovery based.

Merc/Ferrari didn't shy away from Kers and as such have a few years headstart on Renault in terms of research and development on such systems.

Now I think it's hugely Red Bull's fault that they have more issues than say Caterham and I think we can all point towards them favouring aero over cooling and taking that too far. But then Caterham won't be competitive, red Bull might be, it's much easier to make a slower car work solidly than to make a fast car be reliable.
 
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