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

One day left of testing then. Just hoping that Mclaren see the end of the race now, that would be a win of sorts in itself.
 
From Autosport:

16:00 So Hamilton's first run on the soft tyres wasn't quite as dramatic as Rosberg's yesterday. But the numbers will make for pleasant reading in Brackley.

He's just started a second run.

16:01 Green in Sector 1, purple in Sector 2.

16:02 And purple overall. 1m23.022s, a soft tyre time 0.240 seconds faster than Massa and Raikkonen on the super-soft.​

That's just painful for the other teams. It doesn't look to me like there's been much of the anticipated catch-up at all.
 
Milkybk said:
Mercedes were always going to find more power and pace over the off season, which naturally would nullify any gains others made.
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Yep, I thought it was quite obvious even half way through 2014 that they would only be stronger in 2015, whilst the others would catch up, which I think they will. I think the performance gap will lessen by the end of 2015 though.
 
On the basis it's easier to chase than find new innovations, I presumed the other engines would close the gap. Maybe the stupid limits on development have prevented that our maybe Mercedes are just too good.
 
Hopefully Mclaren get some final mileage today. I've worked out they roughly 80-100 laps down on Red Bull from last year (excluding today ofc).
 
Skeeter said:
Its only 1 season. It took 5 years and another major rule shift for people to catch RBR.
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2010 was very close. I think there was 4 drivers that could have won the WDC.
2011 Hamilton's worst season. RB best
2012 Hamilton would have won it if it wasn't for the stupid mistakes by McLaren.
2013 It was rb again.


If Merc are at the front again at least they will let them race.

1 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m25.186s
2 Max Verstappen Toro Rosso 1m26.267s +1.081
3 Valtteri Bottas Williams 1m26.440s +1.254
4 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 1m26.587s +1.401
5 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1m26.638s +1.452
6 Felipe Nasr Sauber 1m27.353s +2.167
7 Sergio Perez Force India 1m28.016s +2.830
8 Pastor Maldonado Lotus 1m29.185s +3.999

Still no sign of the McLaren
 
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Duke said:
Hopefully Mclaren get some final mileage today. I've worked out they roughly 80-100 laps down on Red Bull from last year (excluding today ofc).
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It's the total Honda mileage that's got to be the main concern. There were 4 teams running Renault engines last year.
 
deuse said:
2010 was very close. I think there was 4 drivers that could have won the WDC.
2011 was there's and Hamilton's worst season. RB best
2012 Hamilton would have won it if it wasn't for the stupid mistakes by McLaren.
2013 It was rb again.

If Merc are at the front again at least they will let them race.

Still no sign of the McLaren
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While the RBR wasn't massively dominant every year it had two seasons where it showed Merc level dominance and the other seasons tended to have significant failures in basically the wrong races. IE Vettel would crash into Webber or someone else and have a couple of failures and it was at tracks where Alonso was then picking up big points as a result.

It also had something Merc didn't have, a top notch engine to go with top notch aero/packaging. That Renault lacked top speed and struggled in various tracks. However over a 4 year period RBR had multiple races, like 10+ a season probably where it could pull away from the grid at 1+ seconds a lap faster than the next non RBR car. There were times they didn't convert that into a win, that is luck as much as anything else. You can have a 20 second lead after 15 laps, cruise then a safety car comes in at the right time for everyone but you to pit and you lose loads of points in a race where your car was completely and utterly unmatched. Realistically Alonso didn't get close twice because the Ferrari was matching the RBR it was because Vettel made more mistakes AND the Ferrari engine was bullet proof in comparison to the Renault.

Ultimately when you nail the car at the start of a new regulations period while other cars might catch it's extremely unlikely another car will catch up then surpass you. If lets say these rough regulations stay in effect for 5 years Merc will likely win the first 2 or 3 titles then AT BEST, other cars might make the next 2-3 titles close, maybe even take some of them off Merc. But outside of Merc selling up and withdrawing funding, selling the team or randomly firing both drivers and bringing in two crap drivers that isn't going to happen.

If Merc had either great aero/package but weaker engine, or the reverse of that, there is a chance another car might nail both and go past them but Merc have nailed both.
 
Kenai said:
Epic sandbagging tbh, McLaren 1-2 at the opening race, you heard it here first!
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lol, how much would you bet on that though ;)


Not good they haven't even been out yet, approaching lunch so this morning is pretty much a write off for them now. Call it 100 mins or so to be ready to get straight out after lunch.

As Skeeter was getting at though and I've been saying for months there were two possibilities for this test.

Worst Case Mclaren would do a RBR screw it up AND have no other cars helping out bringing the engine up meaning both the engine is completely untested, unrefined and will likely face a lot of unreliability all season.

Best case Mclaren do a Mercedes in testing, get loads of data.... AND still have no other cars helping out bringing the engine up meaning both the engine is completely untested, unrefined and will likely face a lot of unreliability all season.

I didn't think they'd really match Mercedes because Merc put years into this car, Honda haven't, Honda have stated they changed to a split turbo design early 2014, so a max 1 year on this design specifically though obviously it's not from scratch but lots of key details need to change to work, it's why neither Renault nor Ferrari could do split turbo as SO much of the engine needs at least some changes, not necessarily in function but simple shape and location of inlets/outlets and the like. Even before that Honda were clearly not working as long as Merc were.

I didn't expect them to be RBR bad, and I'm surprised they are even worse given that ultimately Mclaren have seen these engines for a year AND they had a 2-3 month advantage on this stage of testing(due to testing this engine in November). But the point stands, best to worst case.... neither was going to be brilliant due to lack of other cars.
 
If McLaren fail to make the 107% rule in Melbourne they can always point out the latest Lotus recruit. Carmen Jorda failed to achieve it regularly in GP3 yet she was always allowed to race...
 
Just to pile on more misery to McLaren fans one sentence in this otherwise quite promising article stood out a lot: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/117868?_ga=1.256262287.580476054.1422641155

Kevin Magnussen said:
Whereas last year's car probably had more downforce, it was much more sharp, on the limit and unpredictable in a way
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Unless I am very much mistaken, he has just admitted that, in order to solve the peaky downforce issues, they have removed downforce from the car. To me that sounds like a very worrying admission considering how much every team talks about wanting to get more downforce with their next aero upgrade. (I may have completely the wrong end of the stick here, but it seemed like an odd admission to me)
 
Times:

1 Valtteri Bottas Williams 1m23.063s
2 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1m23.469s +0.406
3 Felipe Nasr Sauber 1m24.023s +0.960
4 Sergio Perez Force India 1m25.113s +2.050
5 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m25.186s +2.123
6 Max Verstappen Toro Rosso 1m26.267s +3.204
7 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 1m26.587s +3.524
8 Pastor Maldonado Lotus 1m28.272s +5.209

Laps:

Nasr - 72
Rosberg - 69
Perez - 54
Vettel - 52
Verstappen - 49
Bottas - 45
Maldonado - 35
Ricciardo - 10
Button - 2
 
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