2022 Winter Testing Part 2: Bahrain International Circuit 10-12th March

[AeroDynamic]

There's a distinction between wanting more and motivation? Having not a title makes a driver desperate and that's a good thing? You did claim that NOT having title might give an edge when battling someone who does have one.

It's rubbish. Just like it was rubbish saying Hamilton has an edge over Verstappen laat year because of his titles. If anything having a good car/team motivates or driving circles around your team mate. Having zero, one or seven titles doesn't change a thing in that.

Feel free to disagree, I'll leave it at that.

You keep moving the goalposts so your shot looks like it went in.


Desperation is good if it translates to hunger and absolute pushing on the maximum around the tedious and arduous efforts outside of the race track while avoiding the potential pitfalls it can bring.

and yes Hamilton did have an edge last year where if he raced like Verstappen does at The age of 23, he would've got torpedoed off track a number of times if he was uncompromising and unyielding like a desperate whipper snapper. Instead, he actually outfoxed him in those sorts of moments multiple times apart from Monza which would've meant allowing Max through to push him off wide. Max took a risk in Silverstone and easily that would've been one of the places he lost the championship if he wasn't given a handful of points by Masi across the season.

Having no success yet, tell that to Honda who threw the kitchen sink at it and got a drivers title. I guess you don't acknowledge the room for complacency increases as you achieve something and go on to achieve it again and again.

[NtsParadize]

I'm really disappointed by the laptimes so far. They don't seem much faster than the 2014 cars and they behave like boats on the slow corners.

Why the hell should we care about laptimes?
What we need is racing, instead of a funding contest.

The two are not mutual exclusive. Also, I don't think we'll see much "racing" when the drivers will just understeer into each other.

[LM10]

Equally Mercedes' concept was not a big surprise either - not for Ferrari at least as they told that they considered it as well, but then abandoned it and went for their current concept.

Do you have a quote or link to that?

I'm sorry for the late reply.

My source was this tweet:




In the meantime Binotto has told something along the same lines in his last interview:

During the study phase of your car, was the Mercedes solution something you analyzed and discarded?

Binotto: "[…]We took our time to range over these concepts to find the best compromise, and for what we know and based on our tests, the one we have chosen is the best solution."

[Just_a_fan]

During the study phase of your car, was the Mercedes solution something you analyzed and discarded?

Binotto: "[…]We took our time to range over these concepts to find the best compromise, and for what we know and based on our tests, the one we have chosen is the best solution."

And doubtless each team will have done similar. I'm sure Mercedes will say they looked at big sidepods and thought their approach better, and Red Bull likewise with their approach.

No team will say "we looked at that and it was great so we did something else entirely". Well, not these days anyway.

[LM10]

During the study phase of your car, was the Mercedes solution something you analyzed and discarded?

Binotto: "[…]We took our time to range over these concepts to find the best compromise, and for what we know and based on our tests, the one we have chosen is the best solution."

And doubtless each team will have done similar. I'm sure Mercedes will say they looked at big sidepods and thought their approach better, and Red Bull likewise with their approach.

No team will say "we looked at that and it was great so we did something else entirely". Well, not these days anyway.

Absolutely agree. That's why I don't pay much attention to the claims that a certain concept surprised or even shocked the competition as they surely had thought about it at some point.

[dren]

During the study phase of your car, was the Mercedes solution something you analyzed and discarded?

Binotto: "[…]We took our time to range over these concepts to find the best compromise, and for what we know and based on our tests, the one we have chosen is the best solution."

And doubtless each team will have done similar. I'm sure Mercedes will say they looked at big sidepods and thought their approach better, and Red Bull likewise with their approach.

No team will say "we looked at that and it was great so we did something else entirely". Well, not these days anyway.

Perhaps. I'd like to think teams would spend a little time fretting out each design path, but it seems like Mercedes just continued with what they were doing over the last few years.

[Just_a_fan]

And doubtless each team will have done similar. I'm sure Mercedes will say they looked at big sidepods and thought their approach better, and Red Bull likewise with their approach.

No team will say "we looked at that and it was great so we did something else entirely". Well, not these days anyway.

Perhaps. I'd like to think teams would spend a little time fretting out each design path, but it seems like Mercedes just continued with what they were doing over the last few years.

It could be that Mercedes have looked at a number of concepts and decided that this one has the most potential, even if it's possibly the one that needs most work to get it working to full potential. They may also believe, correctly or otherwise, that the fact that the cars will be run with little rake means the new cars are closer to the old ones for them than for, say, Red Bull. Perhaps that has driven their decision. I'd be amazed if they hadn't at least looked at the possibility of a high sidepod, even if they didn't do much detail work with it.

Or they may just be having a Kimi moment "Leave us alone, we know what we're doing!".

[Artur Craft]

I don't believe Michael was hungry enough to adapt to all the new things when he came back.

On his last year(2012), he improved up to the point of driving better than Rosberg, by that season. But he said in an interview that he didn´t believe Mercedes could build a quick car, after 3 years of dogs, so he decided to jump from the ship. Losing motivation because your car is slow and you have no confidence in your team is quite normal. Losing motivation because you just won a WDC is not, however. But in Hamilton´s case, I doubt he even likes being on the grid, he´s just here as long as he has championship winning cars. Once doesn´t, he´ll f*ck off to the world of celebrities :Hollywood, Grammy and whatnot

Just to put 2007 into perspective, it would be like RedBull signing Oscar Piastri this season and ditching Perez. Then come the end of the year Piastri finishes higher than Max in the championship. Would that happen ? If it did, how good would Piastri need to be ?

That would not be the same thing at all. Hamilton was already testing thousands of kms with the Mclaren back in mid 2006, while Alonso only drove the car much later. But, because testing was sort of unlimited back then, they all(including both) did record miles/kms of testing in that particular year.

The bottom line is, when Hamilton, the "rookie" debuted he knew the car like the back of his hand, even more than Alonso, the "seasoned champion". Piastri knows nothing of these cars while Max already has a couple hundred kms on his Red Bull

[NathanOlder]

I don't believe Michael was hungry enough to adapt to all the new things when he came back.

On his last year(2012), he improved up to the point of driving better than Rosberg, by that season. But he said in an interview that he didn´t believe Mercedes could build a quick car, after 3 years of dogs, so he decided to jump from the ship. Losing motivation because your car is slow and you have no confidence in your team is quite normal. Losing motivation because you just won a WDC is not, however. But in Hamilton´s case, I doubt he even likes being on the grid, he´s just here as long as he has championship winning cars. Once doesn´t, he´ll f*ck off to the world of celebrities :Hollywood, Grammy and whatnot

Just to put 2007 into perspective, it would be like RedBull signing Oscar Piastri this season and ditching Perez. Then come the end of the year Piastri finishes higher than Max in the championship. Would that happen ? If it did, how good would Piastri need to be ?

That would not be the same thing at all. Hamilton was already testing thousands of kms with the Mclaren back in mid 2006, while Alonso only drove the car much later. But, because testing was sort of unlimited back then, they all(including both) did record miles/kms of testing in that particular year.

The bottom line is, when Hamilton, the "rookie" debuted he knew the car like the back of his hand, even more than Alonso, the "seasoned champion". Piastri knows nothing of these cars while Max already has a couple hundred kms on his Red Bull

Indeed Lewis did get to drive an F1 car in 2006, but it was infact Alonso who drove the MP4-22 first and it was Alonso who in total had over 500km's more testing in the Mp4-22 over Hamilton. The car was launched in January 2007 so no one was testing it in 2006. So the rookie had less miles in the Mp4-22 than the double world champion. So that is very impressive indeed.

[AeroDynamic]

the reality is, 2 more seasons together and Hamilton was only going to get better at Formula 1 not worse. I think he would've stayed ahead of Alonso and made it tougher for him.

The Lando's, Max's etc didn't have lots of pre season test, but after 2 seasons against decent team mates, they still didn't look like Rookie Hamilton did against Alonso.

'losing motivation' is not black and white. Its not nil or 100. If you are desperate, you'll go to all lengths and fire in all cylinders. Nobody in their right mind keeps up that intensity every year. You want to 'relax' as max puts it. I don't expect a WDC winner to tail off noticeably after winning, but it won't be intense or desperate as it was before..

[chrisc90]

How do they get away with front wings moving so much? I thought there was rulings brought in last year to combat this sort of thing?

[Artur Craft]

Indeed Lewis did get to drive an F1 car in 2006, but it was infact Alonso who drove the MP4-22 first and it was Alonso who in total had over 500km's more testing in the Mp4-22 over Hamilton. The car was launched in January 2007 so no one was testing it in 2006. So the rookie had less miles in the Mp4-22 than the double world champion. So that is very impressive indeed.

Obviously, Hamilton tested, on 2006, with the 2006 Mclaren. But, if you look at both, the aero is some sort of evolution(the chassis might have had some copying from the Ferrari, you know, spygate...). So, he already had a basic idea of how the Mclaren cars behaved. Alonso drove a totally different, massively understeery, Renault car. I was surprised at the time at how well he was doing in that oversteery Mclaren.

Anyway, we don´t have tens of thousands of testings anymore, like Rosberg and Hamilton had in 2006/2007, so I don´t think it would be a good idea to shove Piastri into any car, right now. If Ricciardo is not fit to race in a couple of days and Oscar fills in, I´m afraid he could be demolished by Norris...

[mzso]

We will see 100% who was running light in testing, or who had the PU turned up. We have lap times, sector times and Speed trap data to compare with the cars all likely to be almost identical to 1 week earlier. So we will get a real good look at who was 'sandbagging' and/or who was on some glory runs.

Unless there's rain, or a sandstorm.

[shamyakovic]

How do they get away with front wings moving so much? I thought there was rulings brought in last year to combat this sort of thing?

There is nothing brought for the front wing, it was for the rear wing.
There are similar reports of front wing flex on all cars.

[mzso]

How do they get away with front wings moving so much? I thought there was rulings brought in last year to combat this sort of thing?

They targetet Red Bull and rear wings after Mercedes complained, but did nothing of the front wings which Marko complained about. Not a good look for the FIA...