F1 testing week 3 Catalunya

Day 4 times

Code: 
[b]Pos  Driver        Team                   Time               Laps[/b]
 1.  Massa         Ferrari                1m22.625s           121
 2.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault       1m23.442s  + 0.817   69
 3.  Buemi         Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1m23.550s  + 0.925   90
 4.  Heidfeld      Renault                1m23.657s  + 1.032   95
 5.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes       1m24.003s  + 1.378  107
 6.  Maldonado     Williams-Cosworth      1m24.057s  + 1.432  121
 7.  Sutil         Force India-Mercedes   1m24.177s  + 1.552   64
 8.  Perez         Sauber-Ferrari         1m24.515s  + 1.890   74
 9.  D'Ambrosio    Virgin-Cosworth        1m26.501s  + 3.876   50
10.  Schumacher    Mercedes               1m27.079s  + 4.454  114
11.  Trulli        Lotus-Renault          1m29.992s  + 7.367   18


Next test is at the same track on 8th March.
 
pingwing said:
What happened to Merc today?? Second bottom with over 100 laps on the board isnt good...
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They didn't do any qualifying runs on super softs is what it should tell you.

Rosberg did a 23.1 the day before.

It's seems like their race pace or perhaps tyre control they're looking to improve most on.
 
Torro Rosso look like they may have a reasonable car, unless they are running on fumes

I think Alger-thingy did a good job last year for a young driver, I think he might do alright this year
 
If you believe what they say...

And I don't.

At the end of the day track time is limited. All teams know this. I can't believe that a team would prefer that their car sit in a garage, idle, rather than be circulating around on the track, gathering data.

The fact remains that the McLaren has had more problems than the RBR or Ferrari.

From what I can see (and bear in mind this is a very early stage), McLaren may have the 3rd or 4th fastest car. The opening GPs (on a dry track), are likely to be headed up by the Ferrari or the RBR car.
 
sunama said:
If you believe what they say...

And I don't.

At the end of the day track time is limited. All teams know this. I can't believe that a team would prefer that their car sit in a garage, idle, rather than be circulating around on the track, gathering data.

The fact remains that the McLaren has had more problems than the RBR or Ferrari.

From what I can see (and bear in mind this is a very early stage), McLaren may have the 3rd or 4th fastest car. The opening GPs (on a dry track), are likely to be headed up by the Ferrari or the RBR car.
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We'll never know until the end of the season, but you can see Mclarens way of thinking. Once they know the car and how parts will work with it, they *should* be able to put on new parts at every GP and have aggressive development during the season. As oppose to just putting some new parts on now and getting just those bits perfect and not knowing if new bits later will work.
 
They also used the same techniques last year.

For the first 2/3rds of the season, they seemed to move forward, faster than everybody else. After that, they just...stopped. Almost as if they gave up (which I'm sure wasn't the case).

Also, don't Force India have one of the most advanced CFL systems in Formula One? If this is the case, then it doesn't quite seem to be working for them.

My belief is that there is no substitute for track time. The data collected during testing, practise, qualifying and races cannot be accurately modelled.
 
sunama said:
They also used the same techniques last year.

For the first 2/3rds of the season, they seemed to move forward, faster than everybody else. After that, they just...stopped. Almost as if they gave up (which I'm sure wasn't the case).

Also, don't Force India have one of the most advanced CFL systems in Formula One? If this is the case, then it doesn't quite seem to be working for them.

My belief is that there is no substitute for track time. The data collected during testing, practise, qualifying and races cannot be accurately modelled.
Click to expand...

The further you are behind the easier it is to make larger gains. I wouldn't say Mclaren develop their car quicker than anyone else really.
 
englishpremier said:
The further you are behind the easier it is to make larger gains.
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In theory, this is correct. But in practise, as we saw with the new teams...the slowest cars made little progress forward.



englishpremier said:
I wouldn't say Mclaren develop their car quicker than anyone else really.
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McLaren on the other hand started the season with a car that was much slower than the Ferrari and RBR cars. Button only won due to rain...on a dry track, the RBR/Ferrari cars were untouchable.

As the season progressed, they reached a point (in mid-season), where they won races on a dry track, broke RBR's stranglehold on pole position (Canada) and secured 2 x 1-2 finishes mid season.

I would say that the above demonstrates progress beyond that of any other car on the track.

Similarly, in 2009, McLaren started the season with a midfield car. By the end of the season, they were competing for races wins. Once again, this demonstrates an above average ability of McLaren to develop their cars faster than any other team on the grid, in-season.
 
I would argue the law of diminishing returns. Plus one cannot compare the resources of Mclaren to slowest cars.

McLaren made larger strides forward than Ferrari or Red Bull because for the latter their cars were much closer to 'perfect'

Ferrari also competed for wins in 2009 despite a midfield car. In fact Ferrari abandoned development of the car, yet finished very close to McLaren on points
 
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Sorry, I thought that link was called "Some insight into McLarens Testing" and not "Graph of test mileage for all teams". Really should sort this monitor out.

Looking at those figures it makes the McLaren situation look better. They have done half the mileage of Red Bull and Ferrari.
 
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