Seanspeed wrote: ↑10 Mar 2025, 12:43
LM10 wrote: ↑10 Mar 2025, 09:16
Seanspeed wrote: ↑10 Mar 2025, 01:55
Impressions from watching testing mainly. And while nothing is definitive and conditions were abnormal for Bahrain, it was very, very clear that at least over the test, Ferrari very much had a similar low-to-mid speed turn-in understeer that we saw most of last season. A strength that Mclaren gained after its Miami update that was a big part of where they gained advantage on us.
But we'll see. As always, we never really see all the gloves off til like Q2. I'm not optimistic we've got a
championship-capable car at all, but it doesn't mean it wont be a good car.
If you come to that conclusion simply by watching the car in testing through nothing more than your monitor at home - on top of not knowing what the team was even doing with the car’s setup and what not - I’m impressed.
But don’t be surprised seeing Ferrari winning races and fighting for the title later on. The picture will be clearer 3 races into the season.
Having said that, @f1361: What you’re saying does make absolute sense of course and I was also thinking of that. These cars are so on the edge that everything comes with a trade off. A big gap in such cold conditions should decrease once we get to usual higher temperatures which these cars are built to perform best at.
I think I've stated like on at least five different occasions now that I've not come to any
conclusions. I've been watching F1 for a long time and have thousands of hours doing sim racing, so it's not impossible for me to be able to point out when certain cars look more obviously better behaved than others. I cant know the whole testing program, but my observations were based on the whole test, not just some one off lap or whatever. The pattern was consistent. Does it mean everything? No, but it would also be silly to dismiss it as meaningless.
The entire paddock also seems to agree that Mclaren clearly have the best car. Again, does this mean everything? No, but ignoring this when all signs are so obviously pointing to that doesn't make sense. I dont know how I could reasonably dismiss all this without coming to the conclusion that I'm just deluding myself.
The whole point is, though, that’s it’s not so clear. What do people base their pecking order on? Norris’ long run stint on day 2, right? If that’s it then you don’t need any other analysis at all.
Considering Ferrari has had a lower PU mode and more fuel on board pretty much throughout whole testing, the picture gets a bit less clear. Also count in that Ferrari have changed their car much more than McLaren have. We can almost call it a concept change on the SF-25.
You know what’s the easiest way to tell that McLaren pretty surely won’t have such a big lead on the rest? The fact that it’s the last year of these regulations and every single tenth is really hard to gain - especially by not changing the concept.
So in conclusion if we need to answer the question which team looks the fastest simply by the numbers we’ve seen in testing, yes, it’s McLaren.
Even if McLaren is comfortably ahead in the first races, the picture will be a different one after 3-4 races.
