F1 2016 pre-season testing

[flickerf1]

Most of what he said, in my opinion, was an educated guess I think, but it is still conjecture. Though I do agree with the statement saying that Ferrari were .2 - .5 seconds behind Mercedes. It's not outlandish like some saying that Mercedes are 1 second ahead of everybody else. We'll have to wait until Melbourne Q3.

I'm pretty sure that all teams have upgrades coming, it wouldn't do for any of them to fall behind due to lack of development. Early in the season is the prime-time to get points, i.e. Sauber in 2015.

[dans79]

so can you explain please? i'm not sure i came to the same conclusion after reading that.

On short stints, they are very close on pace when on similar tires. This is what you would get with two cars with similar power output. Williams is a good example of this, they have qualified well over the last 2 years, but drift back during the race thanks to their low drag low down-force philosophy eating through tires.

take a look at the graph right above this line. "Estimated deficit to Mercedes: 0.2-0.5 seconds"

Merc falls off less when they push, and that directly relates to downforce. You see this trend all the way back through the field.

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?

They both have new parts coming, and neither of them had all the new parts they tested on the car at the same time.

were they both in similar engine modes or not?

he was looking at race simulation data, it would be pretty stupid of either of them to not be in the correct engine mode for the simulation.

[dot235]

Even the slowest team didnt show all their potential in testing.

Yes, but I'am not sure how that's relevant to my post you are quoting.

Secondly Barcelona is not Australia or Malaysia

Who said it was?

So i'm curious how did u know what team was pushing harder in testing?

I didn't.

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.

Are you implying that Merc didn't improve? That would be a silly thing to assume. They could have easily made their engine XX bhp more powerful and it's only fair to assume they did as well as improved in the aero department. No one knows how much.

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 ___________ ?

What myth? I threw it in as a "what if...".
In case you didn't understand, all what was for you to take from my post was that in case Mercedes increased the gap to Ferrari, we might not see exactly how big it is until we see some futher progress from Ferrari. That's it. No need to get all serious and ready to fight/flight

[ferkan]

I guess Ferrari would be rather happy with that gap at Barcelona circuit after Merc pretty much brought number of upgrades, while they retained their last years FW, RW, bargeboard etc. Not to mention that is the track Merc has had leg up on RBR even before V6 came, their S3 was always monstrous.

Lets wait and see...Hopefully that grin from face of Merc disappears, and we actually get some proper racing

[dot235]

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

Regardless of those predictions which shouldn't be taken extremely seriously, there is some VERY interesting data collected in that article.

What kinda worries me is that if I interpret his data corretly it looks like Rosberg was on considerably longer stint than Kimi when he did that 1:23.0 on softs. It does look like Kimi was pretty much flat out on that lap. On the upside though, I'am sure Vettel could better that as well by a tenth or more.

[Just_a_fan]

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?

This appears to assume that Mercedes have brought their Australia upgrades to testing ahead of time and Ferrari have new stuff to bring in Australia. It's entirely possible that Ferrari won't have any upgrades until Europe or that Mercedes were trying somethings out with a view to their European upgrade packages. Until we get to Australia we won't know who was running new, old or a mix of the two. Both might have new stuff, both might have nothing.

Australia will start to answer the question. Roll on Australia! =D>

[ferkan]

Don't know where they got that stint lenght, he did 2 laps on those softs. Out lap, 23' lap, cooldown and then 26'5'' one. Pitted and came back with 23'5 lap with best 1st sector but couldn't improve.

[giantfan10]

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

Regardless of those predictions which shouldn't be taken extremely seriously, there is some VERY interesting data collected in that article.

What kinda worries me is that if I interpret his data corretly it looks like Rosberg was on considerably longer stint than Kimi when he did that 1:23.0 on softs. It does look like Kimi was pretty much flat out on that lap. On the upside though, I'am sure Vettel could better that as well by a tenth or more.

how do you know kimi was flat out on that lap? you cant pick and choose little tidbits that you think prop up your perspective and use it right after saying these predictions shouldnt be taken seriously : )

[giantfan10]

Even the slowest team didnt show all their potential in testing.

Yes, but I'am not sure how that's relevant to my post you are quoting.

Secondly Barcelona is not Australia or Malaysia

Who said it was?

So i'm curious how did u know what team was pushing harder in testing?

I didn't.

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.

Are you implying that Merc didn't improve? That would be a silly thing to assume. They could have easily made their engine XX bhp more powerful and it's only fair to assume they did as well as improved in the aero department. No one knows how much.
where did you get the implication that i said Mercedes didnt improve? read the last sentence of that portion of my post again

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 ___________ ?

What myth? I threw it in as a "what if...".
In case you didn't understand, all what was for you to take from my post was that in case Mercedes increased the gap to Ferrari, we might not see exactly how big it is until we see some futher progress from Ferrari. That's it. No need to get all serious and ready to fight/flight

what further progress do you need to see from Ferrari to form an opinion?they had competitive times in testing.. every pundit who was at the track says there is nothing between the 2 teams as far as balance,corner exit and car behavior on track. so they didnt do 150 laps per day....not a big deal ferrari said they completed their testing program. whats there to fight about? i'm pretty chill

[dans79]

how do you know kimi was flat out on that lap? you cant pick and choose little tidbits that you think prop up your perspective and use it right after saying these predictions shouldnt be taken seriously : )

If you read what he actually wrote, and have a basic grasp of data analysis, you would see he has approached his analysis a lot like the teams do!

[giantfan10]

how do you know kimi was flat out on that lap? you cant pick and choose little tidbits that you think prop up your perspective and use it right after saying these predictions shouldnt be taken seriously : )

If you read what he actually wrote, and have a basic grasp of data analysis, you would see he has approached his analysis a lot like the teams do!

i have a better than passing knowledge : ) . i think you should have read what i posted which was a direct response to what Dot235 posted and has nothing to do with the analysis done by another site .
i'm assuming that you're not telling me that Dot235 is approaching his analysis a lot like the teams.

[dot235]

how do you know kimi was flat out on that lap? you cant pick and choose little tidbits that you think prop up your perspective and use it right after saying these predictions shouldnt be taken seriously : )

Just look at the data and use some fricking common sense as well as read the Rosberg's interview where he was talking about that 1:23.0 run. Kimi might not have been pushing pushing exactly as much as for the Q3 lap, but it was definitely right up there close enough. What kind of laptime on softs with increased tyre pressures do you expect? 1:22.0 ?!

[Hail22]

A bit of on board footage of Raikkonen using the Halo hoop on his installation lap and Hamilton talking about what happened in the final day of testing regarding why he stopped on the track and discussing what he's looking forward to for this season:

[Manu_Forti]

Having watched F1 for many years its the same every year with testing. Unless all the cars are running at the same time using the same tyre, same fuel loads and have the wick turned up on the engines no true direct comparisons can be made. There is a vague order at the moment but nothing is certain until P1 at Melbourne.

I follow McLaren and despite them openly stating they werent chasing performance and that the car wont run in true 2016 spec until Melbourne already people are writing them off. Its testing. No one outside the individual teams "knows" anything solid.

[Andres125sx]

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.

It makes more sense assuming the utterly dominant car past two seasons will not dominate this season because _____________?


I´ve never liked making assumptions in pre-season, but lately I find it quite entertaining reading fan theories in pre-season. It´s fun reading how some people argue about how much team X has improved and how much team Y will struggle, to read some posts later someone arguing exactly the opposite when both are based on exactly same data


That´s the best of pre-season, reading funny theories like if F1 teams would be stupid enough to NOT hide their true potential. In pre-season you will only see what they want, and each team have different priorities, so you can´t even compare between them because some teams need sponsors so they need to show some pace (FI) and they´ll look stronger than they really are, while others have no need at all to show any potential (Mercedes) so they will look slower than they really are.

These two are obvious, the rest are not, so now try to compare between them... if you can. I´ll read it to have some fun before Melbourne