2024 Pre-Season Testing - Bahrain International Circuit, Feb 21 - 23

[dialtone]

If the new Ferrari is over 1 second faster than the end of season one, they'll win the championship. Jake Dennis, RB's sim driver, said as much.

Nah, that’s a done deal for RB unless the new concept doesn’t work.

It's not a done deal for RB. The sim driver said the rival teams would need 1 second over the winter. If the Ferrari rumor is true, they are in a fantastic position.

I don’t think they’re going to win but the SF-23 didn’t receive any real updates for performance since Japan, so that an august development, and even before then it was mostly floor related work due to stability. Even that included, in Suzuka the front was very weak still and Ferrari was losing the whole lap in S1. If they manage to fix that instability, fix the weak frontend and add a bit of performance they should be close like in Vegas or Abu Dabhi but still behind.

[Xyz22]

Expecting this testing session to be similar to last year with RB dominating with minimal effort like MB in 2020.

[DGP123]

Expecting this testing session to be similar to last year with RB dominating with minimal effort like MB in 2020.

Your in for a shock

[franbatista123]

Expecting this testing session to be similar to last year with RB dominating with minimal effort like MB in 2020.

I'd say it's more likely that it will be like 2019, where Mercedes was "dominant" but there were many occasions where other top teams could bring the fight and even win. If RB is completely dominant again these regs will have been a massive failure.

Edit: wait you meant the testing session, read it as the season oops.

[AR3-GP]

I don't think any team will be going out of their way to show how fast they are during this test. Teams will be wanting to establish development direction for 2024 and 2025 so it would just be mule work.

[f1isgood]

I personally think none of the top 5 teams will find 1s a lap growth either in race trim or qualifying trim. I think these cars have lots of limitations with their suspensions, and very rigid mechanical platform and are 50 kilos overweight compared to previous era cars, which puts a ceiling on how fast they can go. If 10 kilos is 3 tenths, then their ceilings must be invariably 1.5s lower than the previous generation of cars (2017-2021).

Of course these cars have strengths like downforce in high speed corners and better straight line speed but over a lap in a reasonably variant track, I don't think any of these teams have 1s or more to gain. But I could be completely wrong in any case.

[AR3-GP]

I personally think none of the top 5 teams will find 1s a lap growth either in race trim or qualifying trim. I think these cars have lots of limitations with their suspensions, and very rigid mechanical platform and are 50 kilos overweight compared to previous era cars, which puts a ceiling on how fast they can go. If 10 kilos is 3 tenths, then their ceilings must be invariably 1.5s lower than the previous generation of cars (2017-2021).

Of course these cars have strengths like downforce in high speed corners and better straight line speed but over a lap in a reasonably variant track, I don't think any of these teams have 1s or more to gain. But I could be completely wrong in any case.

Aston found over a second at the beginning of last year.

[CouncilorIrissa]

Expecting this testing session to be similar to last year with RB dominating with minimal effort like MB in 2020.

I'd say it's more likely that it will be like 2019, where Mercedes was "dominant" but there were many occasions where other top teams could bring the fight and even win. If RB is completely dominant again these regs will have been a massive failure.

Edit: wait you meant the testing session, read it as the season oops.

This ruleset has been a failure for a year now.
FIA killed this ruleset 6 months in by deciding to raise the floor edges and diffuser throat. They also failed to prevent teams from implementing solutions that produce dirty air, such as front wing vanes like the ones on the late W13 and SF23. And now they gave the green light to Mercedes' front wing that mimics what teams were doing before 2022.

Absolutely spineless from them.

[f1isgood]

I personally think none of the top 5 teams will find 1s a lap growth either in race trim or qualifying trim. I think these cars have lots of limitations with their suspensions, and very rigid mechanical platform and are 50 kilos overweight compared to previous era cars, which puts a ceiling on how fast they can go. If 10 kilos is 3 tenths, then their ceilings must be invariably 1.5s lower than the previous generation of cars (2017-2021).

Of course these cars have strengths like downforce in high speed corners and better straight line speed but over a lap in a reasonably variant track, I don't think any of these teams have 1s or more to gain. But I could be completely wrong in any case.

Aston found over a second at the beginning of last year.

They were around 2s from Ferrari at the beginning of 2022 and ended the season around 1s behind. Of course when your initial car is very bad, you will seemingly gain a lot. Since last year things have stabilized, and I don't think teams in the top 5 (McLaren, RB, Ferrari, Merc and Aston) will gain 1s a lap.

[f1isgood]

This ruleset has been a failure for a year now.
FIA killed this ruleset 6 months in by deciding to raise the floor edges and diffuser throat. They also failed to prevent teams from implementing solutions that produce dirty air, such as front wing vanes like the ones on the late W13 and SF23. And now they gave the green light to Mercedes' front wing that mimics what teams were doing before 2022.

Absolutely spineless from them.

The late 2022 W13 wing never ran on their car if I recall correctly. And yes, the FIA is indeed spineless, and killed the Ferrari concept. Ferrari also never got their concept well enough to mitigate the porpoising or adapt their car to a technical directive in any case. You can't have a concept that can be broken by a technical directive in hindsight. And RB had the superior car and concept from the get go. But they were only fighting with Ferrari because they were 20 kilograms overweight, and once they got rid of that, they were very quick, especially in the races.

[mendis]

I personally think none of the top 5 teams will find 1s a lap growth either in race trim or qualifying trim. I think these cars have lots of limitations with their suspensions, and very rigid mechanical platform and are 50 kilos overweight compared to previous era cars, which puts a ceiling on how fast they can go. If 10 kilos is 3 tenths, then their ceilings must be invariably 1.5s lower than the previous generation of cars (2017-2021).

Of course these cars have strengths like downforce in high speed corners and better straight line speed but over a lap in a reasonably variant track, I don't think any of these teams have 1s or more to gain. But I could be completely wrong in any case.

That is still slower than the 2020 cars! There is a comparison of W11 and RB19 with Spa laps, where the RB19 looks lethargic through high speed corners compared to W11, while it was faster on straight line. I don't think the current generation cars can match the previous generation cars in any type of corner.

[CouncilorIrissa]

This ruleset has been a failure for a year now.
FIA killed this ruleset 6 months in by deciding to raise the floor edges and diffuser throat. They also failed to prevent teams from implementing solutions that produce dirty air, such as front wing vanes like the ones on the late W13 and SF23. And now they gave the green light to Mercedes' front wing that mimics what teams were doing before 2022.

Absolutely spineless from them.

The late 2022 W13 wing never ran on their car if I recall correctly. And yes, the FIA is indeed spineless, and killed the Ferrari concept. Ferrari also never got their concept well enough to mitigate the porpoising or adapt their car to a technical directive in any case. You can't have a concept that can be broken by a technical directive in hindsight. And RB had the superior car and concept from the get go. But they were only fighting with Ferrari because they were 20 kilograms overweight, and once they got rid of that, they were very quick, especially in the races.

In his 2021 interviews, Brawn implied that they would ban teams attempts to get around the regulations intention.
They never did, not against the big teams. The most they could stomach is banning AM's armchair RW BS.
That's it.

[Xyz22]

I don't think any team will be going out of their way to show how fast they are during this test. Teams will be wanting to establish development direction for 2024 and 2025 so it would just be mule work.

Doesn't really matter. Last year, it was crystal clear that RB was in another league. I expect the same this time.

[mendis]

I personally think none of the top 5 teams will find 1s a lap growth either in race trim or qualifying trim. I think these cars have lots of limitations with their suspensions, and very rigid mechanical platform and are 50 kilos overweight compared to previous era cars, which puts a ceiling on how fast they can go. If 10 kilos is 3 tenths, then their ceilings must be invariably 1.5s lower than the previous generation of cars (2017-2021).

Of course these cars have strengths like downforce in high speed corners and better straight line speed but over a lap in a reasonably variant track, I don't think any of these teams have 1s or more to gain. But I could be completely wrong in any case.

Aston found over a second at the beginning of last year.

Aston started 2022 with around 2.5 seconds behind Red Bull in Bahrain and ended the season with 1.1 second behind in Abu Dhabi.
Both circuits have similar lap times to be considered for this exercise.
Aston had already slashed 1.4 second in 2022 itself.
Then they started 2023 in Bahrain with 0.6 second behind, which means they slashed another half a second over the winter.
Looking at just 2023 pace is misleading because they came with a really bad car to start 2022. A concept that was conceived early 2021, but that was stopped by late 2021. Their B spec (green bull) made a lot of gains.

You can expect one second gain from 23 BAH to 24 BAH, which is a 12 month development. That's the kind of standard that would be possible in these regulations, cost cap and performance penalty (restricted aero time). Only bad concepts can make bigger gains, like may be a Haas in 2024. Or a revolutionary new concept, if that works!

[CouncilorIrissa]

In hindsight, Toto made the right decision of never allowing Newey near a good engine back in early turbo era. Can't beat the guy on equal footing.