F1 Testing 2015: Week 1 Jerez

[DiCe!]

And we haven't blown anything up yet.....!

 

[Westyfield2]

FFS Lewis. Just get on and marry Nicole.

 

[Kimi]

Really intrigued by the Ferrari pace. What exactly is going on here?!

 

[Twirlywoos]

My God, do half of you read Glamour mags and follow Celebrity Gossip?

I couldn't give a **** about personal lives.

I can see Day 3 on ted's notebook now. Will watch it later tonight. Following news in this thread is similar to watching Jerry Springer.

 

[Nismo]

My God, do half of you read Glamour mags and follow Celebrity Gossip?

I couldn't give a **** about personal lives.

I can see Day 3 on ted's notebook now. Will watch it later tonight. Following news in this thread is similar to watching Jerry Springer.

There's like 3 posts about Hamilton, calm down

 

[deuse]

IT'S TESTING. It's supposed to break down now so they can find out what caused it and fix the problem permanently before Australia.

Sheesh.

Exactly. I remember that at this stage last season the Red Bull car was nothing short of a mobile bbq.

There's plenty of time to get it sorted.

And we haven't blown anything up yet.....!

Well it got to the pit exit...then stopped

 

[SS-89]

Really intrigued by the Ferrari pace. What exactly is going on here?!

No idea, not getting excited tbh as I fell into that trap last year. 1m 22 on the hards isn't a bad time though!

 

[deuse]

Hamilton - 52
Verstappen - 52
Raikkonen - 49
Grosjean - 42
Ericsson - 33
Massa - 27
Kvyat - 8
Button - 7

 

[DiCe!]

Where are you getting the lap counts from? Am I being blind?

 

[smr]

Be interesting to see what the Mclaren is actually capable of when they can turn the wick up a bit. Ferrari are looking strong pace wise, definitely a vast improvement to the car from last year. Lots of revised aero work from both Ferrari and Mclaren.

 

[smr]

1. Raikkonen, Ferrari, 1:22.537, 51 laps;
2. Verstappen, Toro Rosso, 1:22.817, 67 laps;
3. Ericsson, Sauber, 1:23.551, 46 laps;
4. Hamilton, Mercedes, 1:23.633, 52 laps;
5. Grosjean, Lotus, 1:23.802, 53 laps;
6. Massa, Williams, 1:24.101, 34 laps;
7. Kvyat, Red Bull, 1:25.590, 16 laps;
8. Button, McLaren, 1:27.872, 21 laps.

.. Sky News.

 

[KiNgPiN83]

Be interesting to see what the Mclaren is actually capable of when they can turn the wick up a bit. Ferrari are looking strong pace wise, definitely a vast improvement to the car from last year. Lots of revised aero work from both Ferrari and Mclaren.

I've read some stuff that suggests Ferrari have 'found' 80bhp over the winter!? So that's probably helped. Felipe Nasr apparently commented that the Mercedes engined cars he drove last year felt very similar to this years Ferrari. Obviously you have to take that with a pinch of salt but it bodes well for Ferrari. Not so much for Alonso...

 

[FrankJH]

I've read some stuff that suggests Ferrari have 'found' 80bhp over the winter!? So that's probably helped. Felipe Nasr apparently commented that the Mercedes engined cars he drove last year felt very similar to this years Ferrari. Obviously you have to take that with a pinch of salt but it bodes well for Ferrari. Not so much for Alonso...

Remember last winter the Ferrari looked good in testing........

 

[SS-89]

Remember last winter the Ferrari looked good in testing........

Whilst we topped the timing boards it looked an absolute handful to drive which ended up being the case throughout the season. I'm not reading too much into times but the car definitely appears more planted and there is smoother power delivery thus traction out of the corners.

13:04 EDD STRAW says the Ferrari looked really good turning into the chicane, so perhaps Raikkonen finally has the front-end feeling to the car that he craves.

It's a better car for sure, how much better in comparison to merc/williams etc is obviously a complete unknown.

Edit:



Hamilton and Massa still haven't set a time on the medium compound it seems. Interestingly verstappen set his time on the soft compound.

 

[deuse]

Where are you getting the lap counts from? Am I being blind?

http://live.autosport.com/commentary.php/id/816?_ga=1.204139096.958322712.1423034161


Can't wait till they get to a real track.

 

[Shimmy]

Where are you getting the lap counts from? Am I being blind?

Live lap count being updated automatically below, along with pit status.
http://www.f1today.net/en/live/2015/02/04/circuito-de-jerez

 

[drunkenmaster]

Ferrari didn't look good time wise, the only day they topped the time sheet was the first day with a 1:27 something, times dropped day two but they were only second fastest and while other teams(well most of the Merc teams) dropped into the 1:23's last year the Ferrari stayed at a 1:24.7 highest for the test.

The only reason Ferrari looked fast was they were the first to turn up their engines a bit, likely because frankly they've looked bullet proof engine/car wise for a while now. Ferrari seem to focus on reliability above performance with Alonso having records for races finished in a row kind of thing and not finishing a race this year being out of the norm. They weren't 'fast' at any test last year and the car had a lot of handling issues.

By this point last year Merc had already shown to be faster than everyone else, they had turned up their engines and well, went 1.5 seconds or so faster than the Ferrari on the third day(everyone slower on the last day).


Ferrari are certainly showing some real pace improvement on themselves last year, Merc aren't... but do seem to be doing more to hide their pace this year. Running slower tires and longer stints in general.


This year is also pretty unique because of the change in final date to stop engine development. The engines might not currently have all their updates on them. Merc could have say 20 tokens of reliability/lower weight type updates on it now and they plan to run the power updates next test and see if they need it or if they might want to hold some bits back. I got the impression from interviews with various people that they'll be comparing various engine specs, fully updated with everything they have now, a safe spec, one that leaves a lot of room for improvement, one that leaves only a few tokens spare just in case. SO it's possible Merc have say this extra 50bhp update and just haven't even tried it yet.

 

[englishpremier]

I don't the engine they will race with can have any tokens used on it otherwise it will have be homologated then that's it for the season.

Presumably if they want to use their tokens during the season they will have to start with last year's engine then bring in the 2015 engine later.

 

[this_is_gav]

I don't even know why people are looking at times.

Back in the 90s teams set times deliberately underweight as a means to attracting sponsors. Whether those sort of tactics are used now or not I've no idea, but it demonstrates how little we know about the configuration these cars are in. Engines modes (heck, even engine versions), fuel loads, tyres (we generally know the compound, but not their age), how hard they're pushing, etc and many more factors.

Mercedes sandbagged their way throughout testing last year, yet when they got to Melbourne they could have lapped the field at least once if they'd wanted to.

 

[smr]

I don't even know why people are looking at times.

Back in the 90s teams set times deliberately underweight as a means to attracting sponsors. Whether those sort of tactics are used now or not I've no idea, but it demonstrates how little we know about the configuration these cars are in. Engines modes (heck, even engine versions), fuel loads, tyres (we generally know the compound, but not their age), how hard they're pushing, etc and many more factors.

Mercedes sandbagged their way throughout testing last year, yet when they got to Melbourne they could have lapped the field at least once if they'd wanted to.

Sometimes times can be a good indicator , look at Brawn.

But yes they should largely be taken with a pinch of salt, reliability is what testing is fundamentally about.