F1 Testing 2015: Week 3 Barcelona (26th - 1st)

drunkenmaster said:
You read it a little wrong, they mean those are the two fastest times on medium tires. Though i think only one time was actually faster than Rosbergs, by 3/10ths, Hamilton's time is 10th fastest lap of the test.

Funnily enough from Merc they got the stat wrong as well, Rosberg did a 1:24.3 and a 1:24.5 on medium tires on Sunday, so it's actually the third quickest time on medium tires to be accurate :p

I think people need to not think about it as not trying for speed though. It is ominous speed, but they aren't hiding anything. You just have to move away from top times thinking. Adjusted for fuel, tire compound and tire wear, all three times are individually devastating compared to the rest of the field. Hell Hamilton's time I think blows the socks off everything because from what I recall most other times have been done later in the day with track temps not terrible. This was early morning in the cold and towards the end of a stint. I believe Rosberg's were on a higher temp track and I don't think his stint was nearly as long. not sure but the track may also be a little greener, no idea if it rained a meaningful amount between the tests or not.

Same as last year really, Williams were fastest but on softs, Merc were within 1/10th behind them but on the mediums. They were obviously a second or more ahead.

Some point last test there was that post about Riccy and Hamilton starting a race sim at the same time and Hamilton was averaging a second a lap faster almost, but I've later seen it stated that Hamilton was also on a slower compound(forget if it was softs vs mediums or mediums vs hards) so the real difference was maybe even bigger.

Merc have been showing their pace from day one of Jerez, you've just got to look past the absolute fastest times. They've done more laps than anyone else, they've driven while sick and in pain, they are anything but not really trying.
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In other words, it's going to be an utter yawn fest watching one team fight for the WCC and WDC again. It's going to be more fascinating to see who comes second in the WCC this year from my POV.
 
The way this is going on with Alonso, I don't think he will be back at all. It is all so cloak and dagger, which in F1 terms usually means something bad has happened.
 
smr said:
In other words, it's going to be an utter yawn fest watching one team fight for the WCC and WDC again. It's going to be more fascinating to see who comes second in the WCC this year from my POV.
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Or 19th and 20th... ;)

Interview with Ron says that they are leaving Alonso's return up to the doctor. Which is fair enough really, why risk him.
More interestingly, Ron conforms that there was "a period of unconsciousness"
 
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It is a bit strange now, with all these mixed messages...

Ron Dennis said today that Mclaren are trying not to conceal anything to the media or public....

He then goes onto say that Alonso is in "perfect physical health" - "no injuries whatsoever"

Yet I've heard in the last few minutes that he may not be ready to race in Australia.

Therefore they are completely contradicting themselves with conflicting statements. Puzzling.
 
smr said:
In other words, it's going to be an utter yawn fest watching one team fight for the WCC and WDC again. It's going to be more fascinating to see who comes second in the WCC this year from my POV.
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Meh, racing is racing, I don't care who wins the WDC or WCC. I watch individual races and the WDC/WCC are just a tally of the result, they aren't the races or the racing.

We had a LOT of great racing last year between Hamilton and Rosberg. We had a lot of other great racing, Alonso and Vettel, Alonso and Riccy. Compared to the previous 4-5 years it was a great year.

Good racing and good races is all I care about, if Hamilton got pole and won every race with no one within 15 seconds of him as so so often happened with Vettel that would be one thing, but when the two Merc drivers were fighting almost every race it was a very different situation.

Merc look to be miles ahead of the CURRENT fastest times but don't forget the current fastest times are Lotus, Sauber, TR on supersofts. Even Ferrari only used softs and were likely in significantly less glory run mode than those other teams. There is more speed there for the Ferrari, Red Bull have refinement of power delivery to bring in(as last year) it will improve their pace. Williams have like Merc made no serious attempt to show qualifying style pace.

I never really get the focus on titles. You sit there and watch say 20 races, call it 60 hours for the races and qualifying, up that a bit for practices. 60 hours of racing but it's only enjoyable if a table at the end of the year has certain numbers on it? I've never got the focus on titles/championships. 20 boring races, watching 60 hours of crap potentially but if the WCC is close it was worth it? For me I'd take 60 hours of good racing and don't give a crap about the WCC at all. Put it this way, if it was found out 5 hours after the last race of the season that Merc had traction control and had used it all year and were thrown out of the title, would the races have been any different?
 
smr said:
It is a bit strange now, with all these mixed messages...

Ron Dennis said today that Mclaren are trying not to conceal anything to the media or public....

He then goes onto say that Alonso is in "perfect physical health" - "no injuries whatsoever"

Yet I've heard in the last few minutes that he may not be ready to race in Australia.

Therefore they are completely contradicting themselves with conflicting statements. Puzzling.
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It is very odd, the whole "we haven't asked him about the crash" thing is really very strange as well. Surely the doctors would ask him about what happened just to find out if he could remember or not, it would be part of diagnosing him by checking his condition. So doctors can ask but they won't ask him for some reason days later when he's perfectly fine?


The Japanese are pretty much known for their less than honest PR, where they will say everything is fine regardless of how bad things really are... then Mclaren, who behave pretty similarly. Overly corporate, overly whitewashed media relations, not overly truthful or upfront about anything.

Regardless of if Alonso is perfectly fine or dying of something horrific I think we'd get the same kind of messages from Mclaren/Honda.
 
The_Abyss said:
And that's McLaren done early yet again. Hydraulic leak, necessitating a change of engine.
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Honda tweet "awesome running today, learned a lot, found the problem, will deliver re-engineered part of the re-engineered part we re-engineered three times last week... but we've totally fixed it"....

tomorrow Ted tweets "that part Honda promised they fixed broke again"


:p


Mclaren are having more and more issues. Not having more teams is killing them. When lets say their seal went in the first day last test, maybe another team would have run into that problem in Jerez and it would be re-engineered(like 4 times) before Barca. So they would run more in Barca and either Mclaren or the other team might run into this problem then, which would be fixed before now, etc. Effectively more teams lets you run into more problems quicker and fix multiple problems in parallel. They'll have how many engineers at the Honda factory, but they are being given one problem at a time to fix and no new data till said thing is fixed and put in the car. Renault had serious issues last year but 4 freaking teams running, which meant the guys back at the labs were fixing more things quicker simply because the problems were being found quicker.

It's already ruined testing for them but I can't see how it won't continue to be a problem all year.
 
SS-89 said:
Rumours going around (Gazetta) that Alonso has retrograde Amnesia and is unable to remember parts of his pre-race life...If true (insert large pinch of salt) that is some whack he must have taken.

Mercedes looking ominous, not sure what Ferrari are doing, second lowest amount of laps and we are supposed to be doing race simulations.
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Ron has confirmed that he has retrograde amnesia and it's apparently normal in his situation.

But we don't actually know the situation and no one has talked to Alonso about it from the team according to Ron, so all you have is the telemetry that is telling that everything was normal in the car. Drivers can pick up more than telemetry can.
 
Flibster said:
Ron has confirmed that he has retrograde amnesia and it's apparently normal in his situation.

But we don't actually know the situation and no one has talked to Alonso about it from the team according to Ron, so all you have is the telemetry that is telling that everything was normal in the car. Drivers can pick up more than telemetry can.
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Hopefully he's fine long term and will just require a period of rest.

Massa and Williams turning up the wick.
 
Definitely an interesting lap that certainly indicates they are a ways ahead of Lotus, TR, Sauber... but I think we all expected that. Massa seems to have gone out, done a fast lap on mediums then 10 mins later he's posting a fast time on softs. For comparison between tires they would likely keep everything the same between runs, given the time it couldn't be a high fuel/longer stint run, max of what 3-4 timed laps before in so the time is likely somewhat representative of what they are capable of.

Given Hamilton's lap came towards the end of a stint I would think Merc still have a lot of headroom there.

I'm less interested in ultimate pace because Merc had too big an advantage and too good a team to screw that up in one year. Race pace is more interesting, I really nope Ferrari/Renault got their energy storage sorted out and are able to maintain higher pace/better efficiency otherwise they'll suck this year to.
 
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Crikey, poor McLaren, they really are screwed arent they.

- Car has repeated failures of a seal, so much so that they ditch it to go with last years version - which fails after 7 laps.

- Mega-bucks 'best-driver-on-grid' crashes on somewhat un-clear cicumstances, and even though he is 'medically fine' remains in hospital for a third day and can't remember much. Will he remember what all the switches do? (*edit* it appears he his 'recuperating at home now', at least that's some progress).

- ...mega-bucks driver who may not even make it to Australia (not that it will make much difference).

At this rate I can't see them even making it through the 107% qualiying rule :(

I was feeling a bit optimistic before today, too.
 
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Kulealshi said:
Massa was quite unfortunate last year with a load of first lap shenanigans, Bottas may be better again this year but Massa is no slouch.
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Apart from the reckless, banzai 'passing move' in Canada of course. If he'd stop doing that, he may have a chance...but no 'I sense a podium- banzaaaaaiiiii'
That was the sort of move I don't even attempt on a computer game for heavens sake!
 
robbiemc said:
Apart from the reckless, banzai 'passing move' in Canada of course. If he'd stop doing that, he may have a chance...but no 'I sense a podium- banzaaaaaiiiii'
That was the sort of move I don't even attempt on a computer game for heavens sake!
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That's rather unfair. In the FIAs view it was Perez's fault, while I like a lot of people think neither were to blame.

Massa wasn't able to beat Bottas simply through being a bit disappointing.
 
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