Hail22 wrote:Alonso out, will Ferrari throw in the towel after today?
Err no.
Christ guys, it's testing. Same thing happens every year. We get the same daft predictions, same stories of teams struggling. And yet come the first race things are usually pretty much the same with only minor shifts in relative performances.
McLaren and now Ferrari seem to focus much more on data gathering and baseline setup, concentrating on medium to high fuel levels. Red Bull seem to prefer working through a variety of fuel levels to make sure the car behaves itself across the board. We haven't even seen the race spec cars yet, and whilst there's unlikely to be any major surprises there will be a hell of a lot of small refinement and tweaking before the first race.
McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari will all be there or there abouts. One or other of them may have a slower start to the year than the others, but all three will be in the fight to win races at least now an again. Perhaps Ferrari are a bit slower out the blocks than they would like with this car, but come the first race they'll have things more or less sorted. At the same time last year everyone was predicting runaway success for them after a strong showing in the long runs.
McLaren are already in a much stronger position than they were last year as they are able to get some miles on their car. They'll be collecting enough data to make your head spin, and we'll see many refinements to their car by the first race - they'll all be subtle changes but it'll add up and they'll be in the running.
Red Bull have made relatively more subtle changes from last year than the other two grandees as they were in a stronger starting position. Is it really a surprise that they already know how to get a good basic setup on the car and that it's setting strong lap times out the blocks?