JPBD1990 wrote: ↑19 Feb 2019, 16:00
People have made a big deal of Mercedes testing program, but personally I don’t understand ferrari’s. I can’t percieve of any possible benefit of just coming straight out and spanking lap times so early. Also different to their 2018 strategy (from memory).
Can anyone speculate? Wouldn’t they just want to get a baseline of the cars aero performance first and foremost? How could introducing a whole lot of different fuel loads so early... help?
Ps I’m a Ferrari fan so don’t attack me as if I’m saying it’s wrong... just trying to learn.
Perhaps we are witnessing another Brawn moment? Brawn was out of sight in both testing and more than half the season. However Ferrari's long runs don't seem to bear this out.
It would seem like Ferrari and Alpha Romeo (Sauber) have gone for low downforce configurations. In which case they would be faster in quali, but use up tyres in the race; they would also spin more in the corners (witness Alpha Romeo and yesterdays red flag).
The way the cars go through the corners (and over kerbs) is the thing to observe at this time as F1 is mostly about cornering speed.