Do you want to see a good analysis on the pre-season tests this week by team? This one was written by Adaulto Silva, a Brazilian F1 journalist. He is not widely known outside Brazil, but his analysis is the best I've read so far. Translated using '' Google Translate '', then expect to see some english mistakes.
MERCEDES - The W08 is the car to be beaten and Hamilton is the driver to be beaten. They did at least two race simulations with medium tires and they had no problems. Bottas did some laps with super soft and even ultra soft tires, when he set 1'19.705 getting the fastest lap of the week. On the last day they had a small electrical problem, but it did not seem anything too serious that could not be resolved until next week.
The W08 does not have the famous "shark fin", but nothing prevents it from appearing with one, maybe not in the next tests, but in Melbourne. Anyway, Mercedes did not seem to have the same amount of slack that they had in the first four days of 2016. The car slides off the front on the fast corners (understeer), especially with medium tires. The second team (Ferarri) was closer. And there is still the case of suspension that can suffer sanctions from FIA.
FERRARI - Surprising! The Italians did not use what James Allison was programming for this car and started late from scratch. All with people 'from Italy'. Historically this has not been working for Ferrari. In the last 20 years the Scuderia has needed a lot of 'foreign' engineers to succeed, but this time the car looks well-born. With much more mileage - only losing to Mercedes - than they did last year, long stints and reliable, good speed on the straight and optimum performance on the curves, the SF70H proved much stronger than expected.
Both Raikkonen and Vettel made long stints with medium tires and the car behaved very well in the braking and cornering, balanced and without much escape from ideal race line. And with consistent times. Let's see what the Italians book us for the tests next week, but they certainly started very well. It remains to hope that the car does not 'undo' as it has happened before. But I'm optimistic.
RED BULL - Much more discreet than expected. Fifth team in mileage and the third in time, with Ricciardo being 1.2s slower than Vettel (Ferrari) with the same tire compound. It was expected some cool aerodynamic solutions from Newey, but they did not show up. At least until now. The rumor is that from next Tuesday the car will come up with several new aerodynamic appendages that can greatly improve lap time.
Renault's power unit - named TAG Heuer for commercial purposes - is new. The PU seems to have improved compared to 2016, but what about reliability? No car with a Renault engine has gone much in the first four days. Red Bull itself ran only half of Mercedes' mileage, as well as the car not having impressed in corners. Obviously it does not look bad, but Ricciardo and Verstappen don't managed to get around the long corners of Barcelona at the same speed as the Ferrari drivers came around - with the same type of compound.
RENAULT - Started well in relation to what we saw in 2016. It's a car with a lot more potential than last year, but to fight for podiums seems very unlikely, but not impossible. Joylon Palmer, who is a much better driver than Brazilian fans think, did great stints during first four days and his best lap was even faster than the best of Max Verstappen (with the same tire compound), which is a sensational and theoretically better driver in a better car.
Let's see what Renault will peform in the next four days, but for now it seems to be the fourth best team. The fight there is going to be good.
WILLIAMS - Very impaired by the crashes of rookie Lance Stroll, the team ran little in the first four days. Massa opened the works on day 1 and drove well, even better than expected. The Brazilian completed 103 laps with very good stints and his best lap (1'22.076) was the third of that day, only 0.4s slower than Hamilton, with the same soft compound. But from the second day... Stroll, who had trained with an old car from Williams and much slower, began to make some mistakes that greatly undermined the development of car. He drove only 12 laps and crashed, damaged the front wing and could not get back.
Stroll started better the third day. He managed to complete 98 laps and was in P6 with 1m22.351s of soft compound, But then he crashed on Turn 5 and everything ended for Williams, who could not even train on day 4. Felipe Massa only trained once in the four days .
It's possible to predict that Felipe Massa could improve his own time by at least half a second (with the same soft compound), perhaps more, if he had trained on day 4. This Would be more or less between the best time of the week for Palmer and Verstappen, which is not bad for Williams.
Let's see what Williams will do next week in the second half of practice. The car is at least reliable and looks reasonably fast on the corners, it remains to know how the car will behave on long stints.
McLAREN: Talking about McLaren is sensitive. Many Brazilians have this team as their favorite. Fittipaldi and then Senna made history here. Senna became legend. Today we have Fernando Alonso, who is loved by some and hated by many. I do not love or hate Alonso, I just consider him one of the best drivers I've seen in these 44 years with F1. It certainly is on my list of the top 10 in history. And McLaren for me does not stink or smell. Of course I have respect for his story, I respect Ron Dennis for having the courage and the ability to administer Senna - Prost, probably the two best drivers in F1 history on the same team at the same time. Only Ron Dennis has this merit in the history of F1, which is absolutely impressive.
But Dennis is not infallible and he was wrong. He was so mistaken that he took McLaren to limbo. The team lost sponsors for asking too much, then lost the best F1 driver, finally lost the best F1 engine. In that process he also lost first-rate technicians and engineers to his opponents. The result is a team that once struggled every year for title and today struggles to stay in the middle of the pack.
Is this going to change this year? For the first four days, the answer is no. Honda engine remains fragile and pushes less than the others. Has it improved in terms of power? Yes, but the difference was so great that just like at Renault, everything is new in the Honda power unit. And it will break, of course it will break. It's already breaking. Will the Japanese be able to get at least close to the Ferrari and Mercedes units? One day they will, but not in 2017.
And the car? Well, the car so far is not much. It's a nervous car, a car that escapes from the race line with great ease, a car that in those first four days had to brake very early before enter the corners. A car with medium compounds showed very little grip on the corners. A car that only made more mileage than Toro Rosso, a team full of problems at the start.
Alonso and Vandoorne could not do long stints. In addition to the imminent fear of engine breakdown, both made the long curves of Barcelona braking before and with the car dancing in its outline, corrections at all times, delay in reacceleration. Anyway, far from where it should be.
Both the engine and the car have to improve a lot so that some McLaren driver can play a P5 for example, in races. At this very moment, the car is more to fight to get into Q3 than anything else. It remains for its huge crowd that Honda and McLaren people find brilliant solutions in short term, otherwise ...
FORCE INDIA - The team did not impress at the start. He made his fastest laps with both drivers using super-soft compounds and even then they were P15 and P16 overall. In mileage they only ran more than McLaren and Toro Rosso. Williams does not count because he stayed one day without running for lack of parts, otherwise they would have run much more than Force India. And guys, what a ugly car!
There seems to be missing downforce in the car, which brakes very early and is so slowly on the corners, just like McLaren. In 2016 they surprised and stayed in P4 in the constructors' championship. This year I doubt they will. Unless they have something very good up their sleeve to show next week.
HAAS - The team - now in its second year in F1 - made good mileage this week and was better than Force India and McLaren. The Ferrari engine helps, pushes and looks confident. Grosjean complained about the brakes again, something that needs to be reviewed because it's a very sensitive part who give to driver confidence. Unpredictable brake equals frightened pilot. And frightened pilot does not push 100% of what he can, because he knows that at any moment the brakes can fail
Dallara makes the chassis and they've never been good in downforce, which is more important in F1 than in any other motorsport category. They seem to be able to play against McLaren and Force India earlier this year. But then they need to find more downforce or they will stay behind.
SAUBER - As incredible as it sounds, Sauber was the team that most ran in the first week after Mercedes and Ferrari. At least the car looks reliable. And it's not that slow compared to opponents compared to last year. The reliability of the Ferrari engine showing itself once more.
The point here is downforce (once again) and adaptation to the tires of harder compounds. The car even goes reasonably well with super-soft, with soft, drops to just reasonable and with medium becomes slow. Any car in F1 has to perform well with medium tires because they are the most used in racing, so it's no use to train a lot with softer tires because the reality will be different when the championship starts.
Ericsson made good time with super-soft tires, but it was a very short stint with new tires. Let's see next week.
TORO ROSSO - Total disappointment in the first week. The car is designed by one of F1's best engineers and aerodynamic specialist, James Key. The engine is the Renault and that's where they 'died' in the first four days. Unlike Renault and Red Bull, who already used the Renault engine last year, Toro used Ferrari, so this engine is new for them. This means that the adaptation of the unit in the car suffered too much and led to a series of small problems that prevented them from completing a good mileage.
Toro Rosso was the team that ran the least and the one that made the worst time. But despite this - which seems a contradiction - the team has the potential to recover in the short term. The chassis is good, the aerodynamics theoretically too, the front suspension is practically the same as Mercedes and the engine is the same used by Renault and Red Bull.
Original article (In Portuguese):
http://www.autoracing.com.br/analise-da ... 1-parte-1/
