After the first three days of testing in Barcelona, it’s too early to conclude where the battles will be. As always, we need to be careful, but I think we have an idea of where we are going into the second test and the opening races that is the right time to give a better idea to where the grid is<\/p>\n
At the halfway stage, the feeling is that Ferrari are the leading team, but over the last few years between 2017-19, before the secret agreement in 2020 over something they were doing illegally with the power unit, then they dropped into the midfield. Also when we have seen them challenge for titles it has fizzled out in the second half of the season.<\/p>\n
While Ferrari looks good at this point as making the jump to join Mercedes and Red Bull, we are either being too over cautious because of what we have seen in the last few years where they looked good in testing it hasn\u2019t materialised into a challenge over a season.<\/p>\n
At the teams launch Mattia Binotto said the technical team had been \u201cbrave\u201d with the design, as they look to recapture former glories, so there was a great deal of satisfaction. Reports as we couldn\u2019t watch due to lack<\/p>\n
I think this is a big season for Ferrari, but I think it’s likely they have made a step forwards but is it enough to join the Mercedes\/Red Bull battle, which we expect. Mercedes as we kind of come to expect were underperforming, focusing on mileage, and we had the normal spin.<\/p>\n
Red Bull and Ferrari both showing more potential when lap times were averaged out, but that might have been because Mercedes was disguising some pace with either its fuel load or a lower engine mode.<\/p>\n
The hopes of the revolution the sport was hoping for, may not be as big as it was hoping. But it maybe not as big as we may have hyped or overstated, I think at this early phase of these regulations and season we may not see a 2009 type surprise. I think maybe that is very unlikely, given what we saw on track.<\/p>\n
One of the interesting trends to emerge is porpoising which is an effect of the move towards ground effect cars. What that does is move the car forward with it rising and falling. We have not seen this in F1 since the 1980s, basically, as they reach top speed, almost all the cars have been spotted bouncing up and down on their suspension.<\/p>\n
The best way to think of this is an upside-down aeroplane, few floors is one wing but instead of creating lift, it’s pushing the car into the track.<\/p>\n
As the car becomes fully loaded with immense levels of downforce it pushes down on its suspension, running the risk of the floor getting close or making contact with the track, which has the potential to stall the airflow underneath. The sudden loss of downforce due to the stalling floor results in the car lifting back up on its suspension, which in turn allows the floor to start working again and force the car back down.<\/p>\n
The teams are going to need to I think not to eliminate it, but manage the problem this season at least, over time it’s likely that they will find a solution in the long term. Possibly not this season, but going into 2023, that depends on how much with the cost cap and whether the teams want to divert resources away from developing the cars into correcting these problems.<\/p>\n
| <\/td>\n | Total Laps<\/td>\n | Fastest Lap<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Lap record<\/td>\n | 01:18.149 (M. Verstappen, Red Bull, 2021)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | |
| Mercedes<\/td>\n | 392<\/td>\n | 01:19.138 (L. Hamilton)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Red Bull<\/td>\n | 358<\/td>\n | 01:19.556 (S. Perez)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| McLaren<\/td>\n | 365<\/td>\n | 01:19.568 (L. Norris)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Ferrari<\/td>\n | 439<\/td>\n | 01:19.689 (C. Leclerc)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Aston Martin<\/td>\n | 295<\/td>\n | 01:19.824 (S. Vettel)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Alpha Tauri<\/td>\n | 308<\/td>\n | 01:19.918 (P. Gasly)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Williams<\/td>\n | 347<\/td>\n | 01:20.318 (A. Albon)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Alpine<\/td>\n | 264<\/td>\n | 01:21.242 (F. Alonso)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Haas<\/td>\n | 160<\/td>\n | 01:21.512 (N. Mazepin)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Alfa Romeo<\/td>\n | 175<\/td>\n | 01:21.885 (G, Zhou)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n Looking at the lap time and number of laps as well as the feeling I have from the things I have read is that Ferrari is looking very strong both in terms of mileage and lap times. Reliability at this phase of the change of regulations is slightly surprising, but we have had twelve seasons with restrictions on certain parts and we have seen them come down over the last year.<\/p>\n However, team principal Mattia Binotto has said the F1-75 will not feature a major upgrade in time for the second test. At the second test next week we believe Red Bull and Mercedes, will be bringing upgrades which could see the gap close or even become a deficit.<\/p>\n Exactly how close to last year’s lap times they are at the moment was impossible to judge at a cold first test in Barcelona where no one really showed their hand, and thus a more accurate picture will emerge in Bahrain. The speed is likely coming from the high-speed corners where the ground effect kicks in.<\/p>\n This has also, hopefully, helped to allow the cars to follow closer, but the \u00a0real test will come in race conditions when there are multiple cars in line and the DRS comes into play, but the early signs are positive. But the tow doesn\u2019t appear to be as powerful as the previous cars, this being based on some of the comments made by the drivers.<\/p>\n Listening and reading what the drivers have said about the cars, despite the challenges there has been positive feedback about these cars being enjoyable to drive, but they are still heavy.<\/p>\n Pierre Gasly said \u201cI must say, they are fun. In terms of performance is not so far from last year, so considering all the development that we’re going to see at the start of the season and over the next couple of months I think we will see pretty much similar performances.\u201d<\/p>\n Weight has been one of the big themes going into this regulation change as drivers are needing to change the way they drive the cars, so the opening races will be about learning what to expect in the races this. We saw some DRS trains, according to reports of those on the ground, but could it become too powerful.<\/p>\n George Russell believes the new cars don’t provide as powerful a tow as their predecessors, hinting that it might not be that easy to set up a pass after all.<\/p>\n Saying \u201cThe following has been improved. But the slipstream effect has been reduced quite substantially, I think. You obviously need that delta on the straight to be able to overtake because you can only really overtake at the end of the straight into the corner.<\/p>\n Verstappen said, \u201cI’ve been following a few cars, and it seems like it’s a little bit easier to stay behind. At least you don’t have this weird loss of downforce where suddenly you have a lot of understeer or massive oversteer.\u201d<\/p>\n Tyres not a talking point<\/h4>\nOne the things which I think surprised many of us is that despite the change in the design of the tyres, they weren\u2019t a talking point. But that doesn\u2019t mean in the warmer conditions in Bahrain when teams start to push the cars to explore the performance limits of the new cars.<\/p>\n But we don\u2019t know if that was because of the conditions it still winter in Europe, once we get to Bahrain conditions will be warmer. These tyres are again designed with the theme of these regulation changes to create closer racing, but will the cliff when tyres go past the grain phase can drivers continue to push?<\/p>\n My conclusion from testing\u2026 we look to be in a promising position but the hopes of a major shake up in the competitive order may not be what we expected<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the first three days of testing in Barcelona, it’s too early to conclude where the battles will be. As always, we need to be careful, but I think we have an idea of where we are going into the second test and the opening races that is the right time to give a better<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[51,261,335,417,674,1574,1973],"class_list":["post-10283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-editors-blog","tag-51","tag-behind-the-headlines","tag-bth","tag-circuit-de-barcelona-catalunya","tag-f1-testing","tag-pre-season-testing","tag-testing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |