Spanish GP 2012 - Barcelona

[f1316]

For those watching the BBC, I question the analysis of Ferrari's improvement.

Alonso was 1.2 off the pace, but had been only 1.3 off with the hard tyres, so I don't think that gap is at all representative. Indeed, most cars - Vettel for example - were improving 1.5 or so from hard to soft.

Whilst I don't want to be overly optimistic, I think Ferrari's improvement could well be far more than the 3 or 4 tenths they were suggesting.

edit: come to think of it, he was even faster on hards this morning, so about 1s off Button's soft pace using hards. Very silly conclusion jumping by the BBC (although far from surprising).

[Mestrades]

Ferrari will win the race on sunday. Their race pace has been the best today.

[Mui]

Anyone have a link to the laptimes?

You can download it via the FIA website when they publish them. So far times for FP1 have only been published.

http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/f1 ... iming.aspx

[Ferraripilot]

Ferrari will win the race on sunday. Their race pace has been the best today.

anyone have a link to all the laptimes? there has to be one somewhere.......

[f1316]

Ferrari will win the race on sunday. Their race pace has been the best today.

Do you have a link for long run lap times?

[Sjamaan]

Gene has confirmed that they have a "problem" with the soft compund and they don't know what is causing this disparity of performance between compounds right now. They'll be looking at it and hopefully they'll understand the problem by tomorrow.

[Mui]

Ferrari will win the race on sunday. Their race pace has been the best today.

Do you have a link for long run lap times?

Here you go. FIA publish this every race weekend after each session.

http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/f1 ... iming.aspx

[dren]

The race simulations have been very slow in comparision of the tops teams. I think that Mclaren, Ferrari, RedBull and Lotus Renault are in front of us in terms of race pace. I thought I would see Schumacher on the podium at my home circuit, but this will not happen...
I'm very dissapointed. Ferrari is already above us. Mercedes is light years away in the struggle to develop the car during the championship.

How very slow in comparison?

[f1316]

Ferrari will win the race on sunday. Their race pace has been the best today.

Do you have a link for long run lap times?

Here you go. FIA publish this every race weekend after each session.

http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/f1 ... iming.aspx

Brilliant, thanks for that. Alonso's times certainly look comparible, don't they? Grosjean's look strong though also, although I think different teams tend to run slightly different fuel levels in these sessions.

Do we have the Gene quote anywhere? Because it did seem Ferrari were the only ones getting little improvement from the softs.

[ivand911]

The race simulations have been very slow in comparision of the tops teams. I think that Mclaren, Ferrari, RedBull and Lotus Renault are in front of us in terms of race pace. I thought I would see Schumacher on the podium at my home circuit, but this will not happen...
I'm very dissapointed. Ferrari is already above us. Mercedes is light years away in the struggle to develop the car during the championship.

How very slow in comparison?

1-1,5 sec slow. Mestrades, FI and Williams were also faster.
http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/f1 ... -times.pdf

[dren]

Yes, the teams run different programs. If you look at the times, you could say Mercedes is only better than HRT. That is most certainly not the case. Ferrari's times look ok, but I don't know how you can say they will win the race based on those. The Lotus's look the best based on this information.

[dren]

I just looked. That is certainly not the case. Mercedes is only better than HRT with the times posted. I think we'll have to wait and see.

[Sjamaan]

Do we have the Gene quote anywhere? Because it did seem Ferrari were the only ones getting little improvement from the softs.

He said it at the spanish tv broadcast where he acts as commentator.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Ferrari will win the race on sunday. Their race pace has been the best today.

Really?

Button
15 1:30.213
16 1:30.116
17 1:29.751
18 1:30.056
19 1:30.036
20 1:30.309
21 1:30.564
22 1:30.461
23 1:33.305
24 1:32.317


27 1:30.390
28 1:30.231
29 1:34.646
30 1:30.125
31 1:30.204
32 1:31.480
33 1:30.662
34 1:31.696
35 1:30.490
36 1:30.773
37 1:30.761

Alonso
21 1:30.264
22 1:29.761
23 1:30.177
24 1:31.266
25 1:30.460
26 1:30.850
27 1:30.986
28 1:31.576

This was Alonso's only long stint in the 2nd session.

Button is a good 0.5 seconds better. The Ferrari matches the macca initially but falls back whereas the McLaren keeps its pace better.

[evered7]

How long do the teams think that the soft tires will last in the race? If the team rely on the hard/medium tires, then Ferrari can be optimistic about its chances since they could use the softs early and do the race on Medium/hard. Ironic that it is the exact opposite of last year's race for Ferrari, where they did well on softs and struggled on hard tires.

If the tire degradation of Ferrari is well controlled, then they might even make it to the end of the race with one less pitstop since they seem to match the front runners on pace anyway.
Going to be interesting to see the strategy used by the teams.