2018 pre-season testing thread

[GoranF1]

You just have to look at the difference in speed for red bull at the start/finish line between 2018 and 2017 to know how completely irrelevant those numbers are. Difference of 12 kph would mean renault has gone 100 bhp backwards.

It also confirms all Renault power teams have not tested whit full power?

If you look at S2 speed traps you will see haas is 30 kph faster than bottas, mercedes also not running full power?

No, just Bottas lifting where he's told.

[Juzh]

It also confirms all Renault power teams have not tested whit full power?

If you look at S2 speed traps you will see haas is 30 kph faster than bottas, mercedes also not running full power?

No, just Bottas lifting where he's told.

Why is alonso 13 kph faster than hulkenberg on the start/finish line? Don't you see? It's all pointless.

[Vladimir]

Nico tested at wet morning on day 4 with green compound, that is the reason.

[Brenton]

How do teams typically measure performance on testing laps? The simplest way would be lap time. But lap times have so many variations, as they're so long, with varying degrees of performance output from one corner to the next by the driver.

What if they instead judged performance by the speed through individual corners?

I imagine they could make software that models which corner the driver performed best at when driving at the limit for a proper setup test. This software could judge the specific speed trace from braking to corner exit, and compare it to an existing expectation when factoring the specific variables like PU mode and track temperature.

The software could take the traction data, the driver inputs, and model a theoretical fastest possible performance based on just one corner.

The driver could even mess up braking by a tiny bit, and the software could notice that and factor that into the model that determines the theoretical traction/performance limit

This way, a driver could coast for half a lap yet still give enough data to determine if the setup change made the car faster or not.

Tldr: do teams have software that does a complex analysis of car performance of a test/practice lap to determine how fast the car really is? Or do they measure the car's performance by manually looking at sector times and extrapolating from there?

[PhillipM]

They have massive amounts of logging, revs, speed, temperatures, g forces, suspension loads, tyre temps, pressures, gps data, etc, etc. All generally logged at a >100hz

[NathanOlder]

If you look at S2 speed traps you will see haas is 30 kph faster than bottas, mercedes also not running full power?

No, just Bottas lifting where he's told.

Why is alonso 13 kph faster than hulkenberg on the start/finish line? Don't you see? It's all pointless.

If all this speed trap data is from day 4 then I think everyone seems to be missing a huge point.
Alonso and Sainz both ran in the afternoon when it was fully dry. Bottas and Hulk only had a small amount of dry time as it was wet in the morning. This blows out any theory for speed trap data and PU performance.

If its day 4 your talking about that is.

[Juzh]

No, just Bottas lifting where he's told.

Why is alonso 13 kph faster than hulkenberg on the start/finish line? Don't you see? It's all pointless.

If all this speed trap data is from day 4 then I think everyone seems to be missing a huge point.
Alonso and Sainz both ran in the afternoon when it was fully dry. Bottas and Hulk only had a small amount of dry time as it was wet in the morning. This blows out any theory for speed trap data and PU performance.

If its day 4 your talking about that is.

Bottas was doing solid laptimes on dry tires before hamilton took over, yet 30 kph down in S2. Anyway, there's a bunch of cars on video using slipstream at various times during the day (gasly 333 kph would mean 2018 honda would dust 2017 mercedes... yeah, no). Then there's a bunch of different ERS deployment strategies, particularly into S1 speed trap. There's a million variables in testing which makes speed trap numbers obsolete in one way or another.

I remember the hype about renault for 2016 when one car had a high speed trap number, but was then like 20 kph slower in the actual qualifying.

[Blackout]

You're right; there is too many variables in testing and that makes speed traps useless.
But no, in 2016 all Renault cars had consistently good top speed numbers. There was a pattern, a tendency and a change. And the season'ss qualy numbers have confirmed that in a way; the top speed gap between the RB and the others best decreased a lot; often by 50% in qualy so there was an improvement.

[Just_a_fan]

Testing times and speeds are all to be taken with a pinch of salt. Lots of chances to "cheat" the stop watch and look fast. We won't know who is really fast until Qualifying (Q3, especially) in Melbourne. Even then, we can't be totally sure until we get to the European races.

[Phil]

Come on guys, dont take all the fun out of testing.

It’s like a puzzle and putting together the pieces. Teams are doing lots of assessment and that in turn gives us a small insight into their form, hidden or not. It’s not exact science, but it’s not completely useless either.

[TAG]

an entirely mo' better week for testing. A lot less places to hide and I'm sure we'll get to see some distinct gaps between the Pirelli compounds.

[NathanOlder]

yes Yes YES !!!!

[godlameroso]

Well some of the corner pieces of the puzzle have been laid out. Hamilton on medium tires was knocking out 1:24's to 1:20's doing 10-15 lap stints. That's a big hint. It puts the gains they have made in line with predictions of about a 1.5 - 2 second improvement over last year. Therefore I think we can see mid 1:16's if he were to give it the beans. If the others can't match mid 16's they're going to be in for a long season.

My complete WAG is as follows
Mercedes 1:16.287 Hamilton on top form, Hypersoft, testing engine don't care if it blows, glory run.
Ferrari 1:16.434 Vettel version of above.

The rest is too little to guess, no one was doing long runs, it was all 3 or 4 timed laps.

[Juzh]

The rest is too little to guess, no one was doing long runs, it was all 3 or 4 timed laps.

How about Ricciardo's 35 lap stint on mediums with a best lap of 1:21.179 on day 1? Supposedly he had around 60 kg of fuel onboard. How would that go down by the same calculations compared to merc and ferrari? 60 kg is worth around 2.5s on this track, no?

Source:
https://translate.google.com/translate? ... t=&act=url

[godlameroso]

That's interesting, that would put him there or thereabouts. Tomorrow can't come soon enough.