F1 Testing week 1 @ Valencia

The 2009 Brawn was a freak though.

Indeed. It was either so good right off the drawing board that it survived having Merc running gear bodged into the back of it at the last minute and retained huge pace, or it was so well developed and had so much money spent on it (the prevailing opinion) that it survived having Merc running gear bodged into the back of it at the last minute and retained huge pace. The car that became the BGP001 was actually a bit of a lash-up, all told. From Andrew Benson's blog on the BBC F1 site:

So with three weeks to go before the season opener in Australia, the Brawn GP 001 finally hit the track - and it was true to its creators' predictions.

It was the fastest thing in the field by a mile, and Jenson Button went on to win six of the first seven races, the foundation for the championship he finally clinched on Sunday.

What is less well known, though, is that the car is, in the words of my source, "a botch job".

It was designed for a Honda engine, and it was not until December that the team knew they would be using a Mercedes. That necessitated some pretty crude changes.

"The chassis had the back six inches cut off to fit the engine in - the sort of thing you wouldn't normally do even with a test car," says my source. "And the gearbox was in the wrong place because the crank-centre height is different. There's a massive amount of compromise in the cars."
Those compromises introduced a significant performance deficit into the Brawn car, but it raced like that all year.

That is because the lead time on making a new chassis is several months, and at the time the team would have had to make the decision - in April - the car was dominating.

By the time it had dropped off the pace, and it was obvious the team needed the extra speed that would come with a bespoke chassis and improved weight distribution, it was too late to commission a new design.
 
The Brawn car showed what you can do with 18 months to build an F1 car to some brand new regulations with lots of money. They had easily 6, probably more like 12 months head start on the other top teams in throwing everything at next years car. The changes for the Merc back end only dented the already massive margin they built up. Imagine if hey had agreed the Merc deal at the same time as they scrapped the 08 car to focus on 09?

Notes on Testing: the Merc is dam ugly! and Ferrari seem to have borrowed Porsches car sized photocopier...
 
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The Brawn car showed what you can do with 18 months to build an F1 car to some brand new regulations with lots of money. They had easily 6, probably more like 12 months head start on the other top teams in throwing everything at next years car.

All true....but they then they had to fit an engine that it was never designed for and consequently had to chop a few inches out of a monocoque that they hadn't intended to chop up. Initially it looked like they'd get away with it. But then the RBR car came on strong, the McLaren improved a bunch, Ferrari woke up and decided they might like to actually get some points that year, and suddenly Brawn were left with a starting money special that had a turn of speed only when the stars aligned.

The first half of Brawn's '09 season is a testament to the amount of work (and money!) that went into the design of what initially was the '09 Honda. The second half of their season is a testament to just how good they were able to make it after the compromises necessary to get it to the grid that year.
 
The car that became the BGP001 was actually a bit of a lash-up, all told. From Andrew Benson's blog on the BBC F1 site:

This was the reason why I wrote BGP before they did a single lap on the test track that year.

Once it did its first test and immediately was fastest, to say that I was shocked was an understatement. I've watched F1 for around 20 years and never in my life have I seen that sort of thing happen.

The Brawn car showed what you can do with 18 months to build an F1 car to some brand new regulations with lots of money.

Yes and no.

The previous years had seen Honda "concentrate on next years car". I think they did this twice before and on each occasion, they produced a lemon.

Based on this past performance and the fact that they were going to compromise their design by fitting a completely different engine, statistically, it was even more likely they would produce a lemon. How wrong could I have been.

One can only imagine how fast the car would've gone had Honda stayed in F1 and ran the 2009 car with the Honda engine it was designed to be used with.
 
Massa.jpg


Whoops!!
 
Whoops. Nice one Ferrari, give Alonso a perfectly reliable car for two days and then hand Massa one that grenades itself almost immediately on the third day. One could almost think there was something suspicious going on there.
 
Are you dropping a hint there?

A hint, that he would like to have arguably the fastest driver in his team? Which team wouldn't?

At this time I can't see him leaving McLaren, though in the future...who knows.

Besides, RBR now seem to be churning out competitive cars and I'm sure that providing RBR continue to produce the fastest car on the grid, Vettel is more than capable of winning titles for RBR. The problem for Vettel is when he doesn't have (by far), the fastest car and is required to race.

As somebody on this forum stated, Vettel is a fantastic time trialist. Give him pole position and he can stay ahead of everybody, till the end of the race. His problem comes when he isn't leading and is forced to "race".
 
I agree I can't see Hamilton leaving McLaren after being with them for such a long time I am pretty sure that he gets treated well there

Though I wonder if another dog of a car would make him re-think
 
Thats the end of the first three day test. The next one is 10th - 13th February at Jerez.

Not strictly true. Whilst the majority of teams have finished the 3 day test, Team Lotus will be out testing tomorrow for 1 more day as they missed day 1.

Focus will be more performance related according to MG as they have yet to do anything other than background checks for the past 2 days.
 
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