tarzoon wrote:
Still, all the competitors are doing exactly the same thing and they have over one second lead.
Not even Brawn knows what they are doing. He said at the moment everything is going to plan, Mercedes were not looking at speed for this test. KERS evaluation and adjustable rear wing as well as suspension tweaking were all priorities.
Having studied their times and all the press releases, You can see the first 2 days were pretty troublsome for Merc. Integrating KERS was the main issue, as well as a Hydraulic and fuel problem for the W02 in those sessions.
Getting a time with those things going on is not really possible, nor will you learn much flying round doing a 1:13.1 but not sorting your cars KERS or learning to use the ARW.
The final day saw Mercedes do longer stints, with the team focusing on getting mileage on the car. The major plus point for Mercedes was the consistency shown from the car during these phases.
And there is a final point not to read too much into the times. Mercedes/Brawn/Honda have had an inherent problem understanding tyres. There was definatly a back to back comparsion going on with the W01 in certain areas with relation to this. The mistakes of the W01 need to be eradicated and to this end, I think Mercedes have come away satisifed.
Brawn has spoke of more updates/changes to be added to the car before it is deemed fully race worthy. All the press releases thus far contrast very differently from the ones of the W01, the team KNOWS where it is going with the W02.
Still far too early to say, and looking at Force India's 2010 car banging in a 1:13.2 we can safely say Schumacher was running around Ricardo Tormo with a sizeable amount of fuel aboard. Roll on the final 2 tests, because that will be more indicative of car performance for everyone. The next test in Jerez will probably be similar to that of this week....glorified shakedowns basically.
