F1 2016 pre-season testing

[Raleigh]

We can conclude this hierarchy bearing in mind that :



We know that Renault, Mclaren and Haas were a bit struggled with the reliability. Sauber has made only 4 days of testing whereas the team Haas is making his debut. In addition Ferrari, Renault and maybe Honda (I'm not sure for Honda) will introduce a new engine in Melbourne. See Ferrari behind Force India and Williams, Mercedes only 0.1 second faster than the Williams it's very stange. Ferrari and Mercedes have probably hidden their games, and when you see the number of kilometers they did, it is likely that they did not seek performance unlike FI and Williams who told the press that they has searched performance.

Sorry for my poor english :/

This is not realistic, Ferrari set the fastest soft tire laptime (ahead of Mercedes by 0.012 and Williams by 0.171). Probably the order is Mercedes/Ferrari/Williams, then Toro Rosso/Force India/Red Bull fighting over 4th.

I would not pay any attention to ultra-soft or super-soft times, the tires literally last 1 lap and it's entirely possible to kill the ultra-softs within 1 lap here, so if you get traffic or make any slight mistake the lap is ruined. Williams for example did super-soft runs but their best time is on soft tires, soft tire times are the most representative.

[3jawchuck]

Ted's Notebook - Day 4 & Development Corner:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQkDHCls5pY

http://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sp ... 4-2nd-test
what's the point of reuploading it?

Sometimes people abroad have problems with Sky.

[Rikhart]

I think a lot of people are going to be shocked by redbull. They are much stronger than they look.

[F1NAC]

https://twitter.com/Graftechweb/status/ ... 0577367040

[flickerf1]

Ferrari & Mercedes Tech Updates w/ Scarbs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx01FeeJgVs

[nevill3]

Ted's Notebook - Day 4 & Development Corner:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQkDHCls5pY

http://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sp ... 4-2nd-test
what's the point of reuploading it?

Sky content is not always available to non UK users

[Phil]

I appreciate the links too, much easier to watch from the youtube app on the mobile phone.

Ps: i really enjoyed pretesting. Love the speculation, the analyzing, the intepretating of lap times. None other like it. Once the season starts, the speculation stops and the tension is all over. Come Melbourne, the illusions are over.

[irang]

Don't forget last year mercedes was especially dominant on this track. Vettel +45s at the end even though rosberg was in cruise control almost entire race.

Vettel was stuck behind Massa.. It's when Massa pitted that released Vettel and we saw what the car is capable of after that Vettel too was in cruise mode as there was no point pushing as both Merc drivers were too far ahead.

It's off topic but that's definitely not what happened. Vettel was ahead of Hamilton in the first two stints and Hamilton was forced to take an alternative strategy to get the P2. Rosberg was cruising, never under any sorts of threat. It's Kimi who was stuck behind Bottas the whole race.
http://www.fia.com/events/fia-formula-o ... ap-chart-3

[McG]

McLaren did not struggle with reliability.

Winter-Test 2016 : global conclusion.


We know that Renault, Mclaren and Haas were a bit struggled with the reliability. Sauber has made only 4 days of testing whereas the team Haas is making his debut. In addition Ferrari, Renault and maybe Honda (I'm not sure for Honda) will introduce a new engine in Melbourne. See Ferrari behind Force India and Williams, Mercedes only 0.1 second faster than the Williams it's very stange. Ferrari and Mercedes have probably hidden their games, and when you see the number of kilometers they did, it is likely that they did not seek performance unlike FI and Williams who told the press that they has searched performance.

Sorry for my poor english :/

[iotar__]

I think a lot of people are going to be shocked by redbull. They are much stronger than they look.

Define shocked, beating Merc or Ferrari? Third would only be a surprise. They look fine though, weren't they good on tyres compared to TR? Same as McL, they might get better in Melbourne and it's a good track for them but it all depends on competition. It's too close to tell but Spain is closer than average.

Renault's upgrade in June: "Taffin stressed that the specification used in Barcelona would be run in Australia, while an upgrade is planned in June." http://en.f1i.com/news/46026-reliabilit ... affin.html

Whatever happened to Mercedes' dominance - it took two days for it to disappear in gossips. So was Alonso full of it and trying to justify his mistake for the 100th time or what? IMO they're winning Melbourne and later we'll see.

[dot235]

Here's the idea to think about for Melbourne before we all get hyped about potentially close margins.

If you were easily the fastest team, would you really want to show all of your potential regardless of the competition? Or would you instead try to maintain the gap to the 2nd best team as low as possible for the obvious reasons (pressure to change the regs, unhappy fans, unhappy F1 shareholders, competing teams very eager for drastic progress, constant scrutiny of your car for potential illegal aero/chassis solutions...). It's very easy to just adjust your engine modes and control the whole grid giving the impression of being under pressure.

So I guess my point is, we can't really be certain what kind of gap between Ferrari and Mercedes exactly is as long as Mercedes is consistently in front. What Mercs did in testing isn't very promising for Ferrari either. They acted like they were 100% confident of comfortably staying in front and almost exclusively focused on only thing which can ever cause the problems for dominant team - reliability.

[giantfan10]

Here's the idea to think about for Melbourne before we all get hyped about potentially close margins.

If you were easily the fastest team, would you really want to show all of your potential regardless of the competition? Or would you instead try to maintain the gap to the 2nd best team as low as possible for the obvious reasons (pressure to change the regs, unhappy fans, unhappy F1 shareholders, competing teams very eager for drastic progress, constant scrutiny of your car for potential illegal aero/chassis solutions...). It's very easy to just adjust your engine modes and control the whole grid giving the impression of being under pressure.

So I guess my point is, we can't really be certain what kind of gap between Ferrari and Mercedes exactly is as long as Mercedes is consistently in front. What Mercs did in testing isn't very promising for Ferrari either. They acted like they were 100% confident of comfortably staying in front and almost exclusively focused on only thing which can ever cause the problems for dominant team - reliability.

Even the slowest team didnt show all their potential in testing.
Secondly Barcelona is not Australia or Malaysia
So i'm curious how did u know what team was pushing harder in testing?
what Mercedes did in testing means absolutely nothing other than their engine is reliable and it doesnt look like their car lost any performance from last year. How much they or ferrari for that matter gained nobody knows.
Where did this Myth that Mercedes just turns their engine down to appease fans come from? the 3 races they lost and the several other times they got pushed into silly mistakes was that just a miscalculation of their engine modes?
So do you have any factual evidence or are you just using the logic that Mercedes was ahead last year so they must be ahead this year because ___________ ?
a compromise car in the F15-T with not so good aero ,a less than optimal nose and no qualifying mode beat Mercedes 3 times last year and pushed them on several more occasions. So now in 2016 with aero up to par front suspension up to par... variable inlet trumpets ,bigger turbo , finally a max output qualifying mode along with various other engine upgrades they actually lost time to the Mercedes evolution of the 2015 car? that my friend makes zero sense.

[Juzh]

F1 metrics' take on testing:
https://f1metrics.wordpress.com/2016/03 ... orm-guide/

tldr:
mercedes
ferrari + 0.2-0.5s
williams + 1.1-1.3s
red bull + 1.0-1.6s
toro rosso + 1.2-1.4s
force india + 1.3-1.5s
renault + 1.6-1.8s
mclaren + 2.2-2.6s
sauber + 2.2-2.7s
manor & haas + at least 3s

[dans79]

[quote="Juzh"]F1 metrics' take on testing:
https://f1metrics.wordpress.com/2016/03 ... orm-guide/


I just read this, and it seems to imply that Ferrari are pretty close on power, but still behind some with regards to down force.

[giantfan10]

F1 metrics' take on testing:
https://f1metrics.wordpress.com/2016/03 ... orm-guide/


I just read this, and it seems to imply that Ferrari are pretty close on power, but still behind some with regards to down force.

so can you explain please? i'm not sure i came to the same conclusion after reading that.
i take all the analysis he did with a grain of salt... its more likely than not that both teams have more performance to give, how much only they know.
how does this testing at Barcelona play out on a completely different track in Australia?
what happens when Ferrari installs their new floor, a monkey seat and 2016 front and rear wings? does that change anything?
does Mercedes have more aero upgrades coming?
were they both in similar engine modes or not?
his analysis brings up more questions than definitive answers.

Vettel says it better than i can :
As Vettel put it: "Before it was always a question of how much - or little - fuel everybody was running. Today there are 10 other things that have to be considered when looking at the time sheets.