F1 Testing 2016: Week 2 Barcelona (1st - 4th)

Are there any articles about exactly what the team can do to the car from the pit-lane and how much the driver would know?

It's one of the things that niggles me, especially after the end of the season last year. Did Lewis really switch off after winning the championship? Or did Mercedes influence some consolation wins for their German driver? It fills me with distrust that teams might be able to make changes that are imperceptible to the driver.

Team cannot send any commands or instructions to the car from the pits. Any settings within the car would need to be made by the driver, or things the driver couldn't change (tyres, fuel, etc).
 

Not sure the first was actually a failure, he was wheeled back up the pitlane and was back out and running in 10-15 minutes, this one appears to be the gearbox going pop.

Which begs the question of how many miles had the gearbox done, was it the same one used for all testing so far or newly fitted fairly recently...
 
Really?
Everywhere seems to think it's the first mechanical failure for the W07.

What's the betting that Mercedes have only used the one gearbox and engine across both tests up to this point. IIRC they did that last year.

I think it was earlier this test Hamilton pulled up just after exiting the pits and shut off the car, think it was close enough to the pits that there wasn't a red flag and the car was just wheeled up pit lane, happened to a few others as well. But he was back out in 10-15 minutes so whatever it was it wasn't a major failed part.

And I recall similar, iirc it was 5 or 6 days into testing and they had the engine go, lots of 'oh look they're not bulletproof' to which Merc responded by saying it was the only engine used so far... So not beyond the realms of possibility that this was the first/only gearbox used and finally died now, giving them a point of failure to check/fix far beyond what the gearboxes are required to do...
 
They will have purposely taken the engine to failure, it's probably dine like 7 race distances or more.

It's valuable data to take I to failure.
 
They will have purposely taken the engine to failure, it's probably dine like 7 race distances or more.

It's valuable data to take I to failure.

Last I knew there is no data to be had from destroying an engine - once you've confirmed parameters it should be relatively easy to replicate on the dyno. The engineers hate it when you let an engine pop when you know it's on the verge of failure, as they much prefer to analyse the engine before much of it is scattered down the track.

Still, I suppose we see very few uncontained failures now, so perhaps that's less of an issue now, and of course it depends on which part of the PU has failed.

Anyway, it was the transmission that was the cause this time and it doesn't look like it required a gearbox change as Rosberg is meant to be out soon.
 
You can't say fir sure what and when it will pop.
Taking it to failure, means you know exactly what failed and how.
Lots of data to be gleamed and they did it last year as well.p
 
Why is day 3 of ted notebook requiring sign in :mad: never had to sign in before fir teds notebook, hope this isn't the start of everything going behind a paywall.
 
*Honda RA300 pic*
Performed about the same as todays current standard to!

What, winning it's debut race? ;)

If you apply the modern points scheme, that car actually scored 41 points. In 4 race entries. McLaren's 2015 challenger scored just 27 in considerably more entries. So no, not quite the same standard!
 
You can't say fir sure what and when it will pop.
Taking it to failure, means you know exactly what failed and how.
Lots of data to be gleamed and they did it last year as well.p

Not all of the time, no, but how often do you here "sorry, we'll have to retire the car, box this lap"? It must have been in double figures just for Honda last season. :p

Brundle used to say it loads of times in the V10 and V8 eras that if the engine is smoking and slowing that the engineers hate it if you don't stop, as they can't analyse it when half the bits are in the hedge.
 
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But it's short of scattering debris down the track, such as Vettel's so graphically did in darkness of Korea whenever it was (2010?).

It's before the engine has literally exploded and expired though - think Sato at Monaco which resulted in Fisichella upside down.
 
I don't get what your point is.

Taking something to point if failure is extremely useful, when did that ever mean you then had to keep running it passed the point of failure to complete destruction.
 
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