F1 2019 Pre-Season Testing Thread

[Mach]

Ferrari gonna be the team to beat.
Mercedes and RedBull fight for P2, and both will improve during the season and seriously fight for P1 with each other and Ferrari.

I'm a Ferrari fan waiting for Mercedes to eventually start to dominate after Austrian Grand Prix-ish. It's inevitable.

Hamilton is that good.

I hope to be proven wrong.

[Chuckjr]

Championships come pretty easy when your only competition is your team mate. You've got a 50-50 shot season after season after season...

Love the glossy tires as that shows if they are spanky new. Thank you Perrelli. Glad we are moving to just three compounds. Well done Perelli.

I cannot believe people are predicting anything after one day. Marc is fine. They are running their program like anyone. They will be right at the sharp end with Ferrari and Red Bull. This should be a very competitive year and whoever wins it, if indeed the top three are competitive, will really have something to be proud of.

Vettel has something to prove and so I'm not surprised he's coming out stomping. I just hope he can contain it because the race loses last year were at times due to himself.

So happy, thrilled even to see all four power units reliable and running. Especially Macca who hasn't had a first day like this in years and years.

Does Williams have a management problem? How can missing testing days be acceptable? Is Claire the right person for the job? Is she removable? I just cannot stand seeing Williams like this. They were once the standard of the field!! Just cannot believe this has happened after all the adjustments they made to turn the ship around.

Alfa Romeo and that front wing--or lack thereof, right?!?? I noticed the Ferrari wing tapered way down on the outer edges also tho...Has Italy found something this year? Maybe...

Great to see the cars all running so well. Really hoping for a competitive season at sharp and mid field.

[DiogoBrand]

Pre-season testing in a nutshell:
*Car finishes the day 2 seconds off pace*
"Oh god, we are doomed! This team has built a dog of a car and will struggle not to finish last every race."

*Car finishes 4 tenths off the best time of the day*
"What a joke, they're just doing glory runs! I bet that in Australia they'll struggle to reach Q2."

The simple lesson is:
Don't judge based on winter testing.

[yelistener]

Pre-season testing in a nutshell:
*Car finishes the day 2 seconds off pace*
"Oh god, we are doomed! This team has built a dog of a car and will struggle not to finish last every race."

*Car finishes 4 tenths off the best time of the day*
"What a joke, they're just doing glory runs! I bet that in Australia they'll struggle to reach Q2."

The simple lesson is:
Don't judge based on winter testing.

Well, over-reaction IS a common game on the internet.

[godlameroso]

We need to wait for long runs, a race sim, or something along those lines. The pace of the cars can vary as much as 6 seconds from slowest race pace to fastest quali run. In the race sims they will gain 3 seconds as the car burns fuel. So if you know the cars are filled to the brim, you take the lap time and subtract 6 seconds and you get roughly what the car is capable of at full tilt. Alternately you can find a short run, maybe 5 laps with low fuel, and you'll know that the ultimate pace is more or less around 3 seconds faster. The tricky thing is that they can fuel anywhere in between, and no team shows their real hand in testing, even in the qualifying sims, they'll use a harder tire to qualify on, or lift somewhere in the lap to mask their pace.


Right now most teams are checking that the real aero is matching their virtual numbers, systems checks, trying things out. We won't see any work on performance until tomorrow.

[e30ernest]

We need to wait for long runs, a race sim, or something along those lines. The pace of the cars can vary as much as 6 seconds from slowest race pace to fastest quali run. In the race sims they will gain 3 seconds as the car burns fuel. So if you know the cars are filled to the brim, you take the lap time and subtract 6 seconds and you get roughly what the car is capable of at full tilt. Alternately you can find a short run, maybe 5 laps with low fuel, and you'll know that the ultimate pace is more or less around 3 seconds faster. The tricky thing is that they can fuel anywhere in between, and no team shows their real hand in testing, even in the qualifying sims, they'll use a harder tire to qualify on, or lift somewhere in the lap to mask their pace.


Right now most teams are checking that the real aero is matching their virtual numbers, systems checks, trying things out. We won't see any work on performance until tomorrow.

I don't think you can judge their real pace through their lap times even then. There's no telling what suspension/aero setup they have going at any single time.

[Vasconia]

Pre-season testing in a nutshell:
*Car finishes the day 2 seconds off pace*
"Oh god, we are doomed! This team has built a dog of a car and will struggle not to finish last every race."

*Car finishes 4 tenths off the best time of the day*
"What a joke, they're just doing glory runs! I bet that in Australia they'll struggle to reach Q2."

The simple lesson is:
Don't judge based on winter testing.

Well, over-reaction IS a common game on the internet.

And not only in internet, just read some newspapers/magazines and their headlines.

For me the most important thing are:

-Reliablity
-Long rungs pace
-How the car behaves in certain corners. I read with more interest than anything else those articles based on track analysi,s where they closely look to the cars and see how easy they are to handle and how stable they are.

[Schuttelberg]

Followed the test extensively. The sandbags on the Mercedes are humongous.

I personally don't believe so. They're somehow too 'conventional' if I may say. The front wing looks rudimentary compared to most of them.

Ferrari looking very strong though.

I think Schuttelberg is dead-on, but I don't agree with the term "sand-bagging."

Merc are just running their own program, and couldn't care less about turning out the occasional quick lap. I can't argue with their approach, considering what it has helped them achieve the past 5 years.

What are you basing your contradictory opinion on? It can't be just the front wing, which I think is actually fascinating (partially because of the end plate design) and beautifully constructed. The FW appears to be fine, especially considering Mercedes previously had the most complicated front wing in the entirety of F1 with their beautifully sculpted outwash tunnels.

Mercedes and Ferrari both had a reasonable start from a reliability perspective. It's been 1 day. In terms of pace? We have no serious long run times to analyze yet.

James Allison after testing today:

"We managed to squeeze quite a lot in to this first day of running, finding out both how the 2019 tyres are working and also learning about the way the car responds to set-up changes. Today was not about absolute pace and we’re reasonably pleased with the handling of the car and the way it is behaving."

And as a reminder, last year, after 2 weeks of testing, Hamilton was 8th fastest in terms of single lap pace.

To add to this-

Over the last five years, Mercedes have led a PR tirade led by Toto Wolff. A bloke whose squad has won ten titles on the bounce comes out and says Williams are a genuine threat? I think that's a bit insulting to the knowledge of hardcore motorsport fans and an unnecessary bite at Williams who are still a more legendary team than Mercedes. We all know the difficulties of Williams and hope one day the glory will return.

The only time Wolff was himself was when Ferrari and Vettel became a genuine threat in that period between Bahrain and Germany qualifying. The pressure was absolutely massive and he well and truly cracked and shattered. It was Lewis' brilliance that rescued him in my opinion.

Sport is a lot about psychology. Mercedes underplay themselves and almost put on an underdog avatar for unnecessary reasons. Ferrari like to show off with all the history and heritage. Red Bull are a bit in between with little mercy for their partners/suppliers.

My personal and absolute honest opinion is that this season will be a Merc-Ferrari duel and it will come down to how much Ferrari can maintain the development curve in an upward direction and if Seb can be as good as Lewis. I expect Charles to annoy him a lot this year and a proper duel between the Ferrari boys next year.

Anyone, who after 5 championships says Mercedes is not favourite to win a 6th is out of their minds. It's not just the engineering and the car. They also have excellent operations for which Toto must be credited and that insane freak of a driver who seems to just keep getting a little better when we have thought he has peaked. The dislike from my end is for the fans who are trying to set up this heist from the get go that the Ferrari is half a second faster without proof and how miraculously Lewis, Toto and Mercedes will still triumph against all the odds. That bit, does not fly with me.

[Mr.G]

Vettel has something to prove and so I'm not surprised he's coming out stomping. I just hope he can contain it because the race loses last year were at times due to himself.

I don't think it work that way. Why do you think Vettel doesn't need to obey team orders? He is doing during the test what he is told. When Hamilton driving to a delta it's normal, when Vettel drives faster he is doing glory runs by his own?

When he is going faster, it's because the team (test program) need to be fast at that time.

[Juzh]

Here's one of the laps from Sainz - laptime around 1:20.3 (reupload from facebook). Car is quite loose in T2 and understeery in T7.

[wickedz50]

When is Day 2 testing scheduled to begin today?

[gandharva]

In 16 minutes. Like every day.

[sn809]

3 mins and counting till green flag

[Morteza]

https://twitter.com/racefansdotnet/stat ... 9404156928
By the way I didn't know those rain lights could turn green

[bauc]

For those who followed the first day of testing on Sky, was there a TED's notebook at the end?