F1 Testing 2017: Week 1 Barcelona (27th - 2nd)

Wow!

And, yes, confirmation from Mercedes that Bottas is on a race simulation - on the second day of testing with a brand new car! That's some feat.

Oh dear oh dear :(

Members of the Spanish media, who have been hanging around the McLaren garage, are reporting that Stoffel Vandoorne will not be out on the track again today.

He completed 29 laps before the team announced they needed to change the car's engine.
 
Yeah full race sim on 2nd day shows just how far ahead Merc are, but at least Ferrari look promising so far.

I heard McLaren hope to get back on track within 30 mins.
 
If f1today is right then Hamilton done his fast lap on SS. Where as Kimi done is top lap on Softs :eek:
Game on.

The fastest times mean nothing. Hamilton did a stint supposedly which started with a 1:21.7 then only went below 1:23 after 14 laps and did 19 laps in that stint.

That reads as a final stint of the race sim, meaning that 1:21.7 is potentially end of the race pace, with the fastest lap in last year's race being a 1:26 from a Toro Rosso, that doesn't sound wrong tbh, 4-5 seconds faster. Now think qualifying last year was a 1:22(bang on), with fastest lap of a 1:26.xxx. A little odd because the Merc's weren't in it, Vettel's fastest was a 1:27.8 and Kvyat did his lap with a fairly late final pitstop. So merc's on a normal pitstop would probably be at or a little ahead of Kvyat's time.

In other words I think qualifying times for Barcelona, if Hamilton is pulling high 1:21's on the second day or testing in a final stint race sim.... will be doing a 1:18.xxx in Q3.

So 1:20.xxx is nowhere yet. If Ferrari are pushing, it's bad, Merc definitely aren't.

In testing race sims give the best idea, they will be far closer to real pace than any one lap pace will be right now.
 
As usual testing is testing don't place too much stock in timings. We simply don't know what states of tune engines are in, fuel loads etc.

On the face of it I don't expect much to have changed but hell it would be great if in Q3 melbourne we legitimately have 3 manufacturers fighting it out for pole...my head says it will likely be merc again which hurts as a Ferrari fan.
 
Aren't Ferrari always quick during testing?

Yup, well, ish. Everyone just has their rhythm, Merc like to go big laps, long runs asap then bring up speed later. Ferrari tend to do the reverse and are very late with long runs. Red Bull closer to Merc's plans(though depends on their engine running). It's always struck me as odd precisely because Merc's advantage is in long run and that is what is most important yet Ferrari never seem to place their focus there. One of those, if they are doing it, shouldn't we be doing it situations imo.

Williams... they aren't running because after a spin they lost a winglet on the front wing? That appears to be the explanation, so quite aside from the fact they don't have a spare little winglet. Surely they can get a fair amount of data from simply running the engine, get some data off the rear wing, get some data off the other side of the car(if it's only one side of the wing that is damaged).

Coming to testing with one wing sound mental at this point. Even if you knock up a really basic spare wing. If that is really all the damage there is I can't believe they are just throwing away an afternoon of testing.
 
No, it really really was. Over 16 laps or something you'd end up what, 1 second or so faster total... to see 17 seconds of deg that means he was going 15+ seconds slower by the end of a 16 lap stint, meaning he just didn't get he was doing slow laps at the end of the stint and jumped to massive tire deg.

I thought he was saying 17 seconds lost to degradation over the stint? Not 17 seconds slower at the end? That is stupid.
 
He did say that, 17.65 seconds of fuel-adjusted degredation over the whole stint. For clarification:

Looking at Bottas's previous run on softs, which included 16 timed laps, it doesn't look like tyre degradation is particularly under control. Taking his first laptime, a 1m23.4s, then factoring in fuel-load reduction on each subsequent lap, you can work out what the tyre degradation is. After 16 flying laps, he's a total 17.45s slower than he would be with the tyre degradation removed. So that's just under 1.1s per lap lost on average. Some of that could be in set-up or the way he's driving, but that doesn't come close to low-degradation to my mind.


Gary Anderson
 
Much colder and much more windy today - headwind down the main straight.

Mercedes super-impressive once again - the only team not to use DRS on their laps (planning to back out front again?). The noise the car makes coming down the straight is like no other car - the sound is like a vibrating, pulsing thrum - all aero sound. No long lens today so only a few wide pictures - last night for us tonight so we're going out out :)

DSC_0993 by Greg Kingston, on Flickr

DSC_0956 by Greg Kingston, on Flickr

DSC_0917 by Greg Kingston, on Flickr

DSC_0871 by Greg Kingston, on Flickr
 
McLaren must be a laughing stock now. It can't all be down to Honda as they still weren't a front running in 2014, nor 2013 when they had a Mercedes engine (obviously under different rules)

They have been a laughing stock for years, paired with Honda a double helping of suck. Honda should stick to lawnmower engines. They even make the wrong engine choices on their biggest selling road car.
 
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