2013 Testing - Barcelona 2: 28 Feb - 3 Mar

[R_Redding]

The W04 looks to be a nice fast car.....but so did the W03 at testing last year...and for the first 5 or 6 races.

The real race that will show if Merc have improved is the development race.
The W03 was a trick pony will very little scope for development (ala Lotus FF exhausts) , and not basic enough to allow Merc to perfect a fast chassis.

The 2012 development race was won by RB , McLaren and Ferrari....

It will be interesting to see if Merc can derive and apply updates at the same rate as the above three will.....and not get hung up trying to perfect some novel D-DD-DDD-DDDDRs etc that will ultimately prove to be at the cost of a well balanced and sorted chassis.

Rob

[Artur Craft]

Arthur please take your unfunded comments elsewhere. How you know how much fuel Ferarri and Sauber carry? First people said 1:20 wasn't not possible now its done people say 1.19 is the time you should run. Please tell me why Ferrari would send Massa out on Supersoft for 2-4 laps with 60kg of fuel? Ferrari is just slower just face it. They haven't brought there Melbourne packet, no packet will give you 0.7 a lap. All the pundits that are at the track said the car looked good on track. But "Arthur Craft" knows more then the people on site.....

Ross told Martin that car doesn't look different from the outside but under the hood the car has fundamentally changed. Even the drivers say that the Merc looks great. But "Arthur Craft'' has inside information because he knows what fuel loads Ferrari and Sauber are running.

To be honest i can't take people like yourself serious. Comments: "W04 have no, at least superficially, thing compromising it's design but it doesn't have anything revolutionary either, it looks merely a top midfield car."
Plain ignorance!!!

To start with: who said laps in 1.20s were not possible?

"pundits", most of them, no nothing about tech side such as vehicle dynamics. They, in majority, are actually marketers who says what fans want to hear in order to have more internet visitors, viewers, readers and etc. Just look how much Lotus have been hyped since Kimi joined them(despite no pole or front row start, and a fluke win).

W04 being described positively, by "pundits", would always gonna happen

As I said before, the car is certainly much improved. They got rid of some dated bits on it but, again as I said before, there is no piece that stands out either. It's a solid car but it's still anyone's guesses to know if it will really be in top tier(personally, I think it's unlikely)

I find it hard to believe teams would be using the same numbers as the year before since so many people move around the paddock eventually everyone would know everyone´s baseline.

Not to mention new regulations, new tires, different weather, different temps makes it quite hard to know for a fact how much quicker your car is then the year before.
Seems like simulator and wind tunnel would give you far better guidelines of the improvements made.

But they do and that was exactly Gary Anderson's point. He said something like: "don't believe when they say they don't know where they stand because, with people moving from team to team, the baseline fuel is known by virtually every team"

The baseline fuel is a standard procedure adopted by most teams, I'm not guessing here.

But that doesn't say anything about specific laptimes. I didn't guarantee Guttierrez's or Massa's times to be on those fuel loads(they most probably weren't) but I can also tell you that there are some teams that never drop from 30-50kg during the entire testing, even on the "qualifying simulations" (which are not actually Q sim btw)

Race simulation will give a much better idea, stay tuned for tomorrow

[Juzh]

Am I the only one who thinks red bull are not seriously sand bagging? This merc does look fast.

[Neno]

Am I the only one who thinks red bull are not seriously sand bagging? This merc does look fast.

Well it's not just Red Bull if you ask me, Lotus and Mclaren dose not look much worse then Red Bull, you could include Ferrari also. They all at least running with plenty of fuel, maybe a bit more Red Bull then others

[raymondu999]

I find it hard to believe teams would be using the same numbers as the year before since so many people move around the paddock eventually everyone would know everyone´s baseline.

Priestley is familiar with how confusing testing can be, but reckons there are ways to find out where teams are at.

"It's probably been the most unrepresentative pre-season test period for years," he says. "And you really can't read anything into the times; the teams are not just looking for lap times.

"But within the team you'll have a baseline fuel load you use year in, year out. When you have people move between teams those numbers get around so everyone gets a rough idea of where they're at and what the pecking order is."

Source: http://plus.autosport.com/premium/featu ... ers-rated/

[ringo]

That's an impressive showing from Hamilton. Now, I believe they will be competitive for this year. I think this year will be even more close than the last one Mercedes, Lotus, Mclaren, RB all look very close, but my guess will be

RB > Mercedes = Lotus > Mclaren = Ferrari

mercedes=lotus and mercedes > mclaren

i think RBR>Mclaren>Lotus>Ferrari=Mercedes

McLaren won last two races. Mercedes 1 sec slower than mclaren last year.
you dont forget

I think last years order of time gaps only holds for teams who had an evolutionary design like ferrari and redbull.
Mclaren and Mercedes have an all brand new design, so there is no reason they can't make really big jumps forward or backward. It's not impossible for the Mercedes to be fastest. All it takes is a really good design, nothing more.

[beelsebob]

Am I the only one who thinks red bull are not seriously sand bagging? This merc does look fast.

Everyone thought RedBull were sand bagging last year, and got a surprise when they were roundly beaten in the first few races. My bet is RedBill is not sand bagging, just like last year.

[gray41]

They all look pretty fast, so driver/car combo could be very important.

Could we really have 5 great teams?

[CjC]

I personally think no one will beat hamiltons time, not because it's unbeatable but because Mercedes have slightly shown their hand and the other teams will read into the laptime and work out where they are from their, to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if it was Rosberg who was the only one to get near/ beat hamiltons time. We will only know tomorrow.

You're all crazy trying to predict the pecking order, the only thing you can be sure is that Red Bull (Vettel) and Alonso will challange for the title, I feel the others are purely there to fill the gaps and to provide entertainment

[beelsebob]

That's an impressive showing from Hamilton. Now, I believe they will be competitive for this year. I think this year will be even more close than the last one Mercedes, Lotus, Mclaren, RB all look very close, but my guess will be

RB > Mercedes = Lotus > Mclaren = Ferrari

mercedes=lotus and mercedes > mclaren

i think RBR>Mclaren>Lotus>Ferrari=Mercedes

McLaren won last two races. Mercedes 1 sec slower than mclaren last year.
you dont forget

Remember, McLaren, Ferrari and RedBull developed their 2012 car nearly up to Brazil. Merc have probably been working seriously on their '13 car for much longer.

Merc have also had their first full year with a lot of new technical staff, who will have brought with them a lot of the tricks of the top teams. I have no doubt that they could have gained a very significant amount on the top teams.

[Juzh]

Am I the only one who thinks red bull are not seriously sand bagging? This merc does look fast.

Everyone thought RedBull were sand bagging last year, and got a surprise when they were roundly beaten in the first few races. My bet is RedBill is not sand bagging, just like last year.

Yup, that's exactly what I meant. Although rule changes from 2011 to 2012 were more severe than 2012 to 2013. Still, If tommorow they still do not deliver a serious lap I'm calling all this sandbagging just BS.

[kooleracer]

Of course there is a baseline fuel.But teams aren't consistently running the basline fuel. Otherwise we would't see such a big delta in the laptimes. The basline fuel is the fuel level that teams run to compare the progress between seasons. But that doesn't mean that they can't change the fuel load. They can know each others baseline fuel level but, on the track they can't see each others fuel cell, so knowing the baseline doesn't give you anything frankly because you don't know when the team is running basline fuel....

RB isn't sandbagging they just haven't run low fuel, because of the amount of parts the have to go through. Newey said the where late with the new car because of last year. So they are swamped. There no such thing as sandbagging, because the team that is sandbagging is only hurting themselves because they aren't doing there own program. RB9 looks really good, when i saw it on SKY F1. The rear looks really stable. Red Bull is running baseline fuel a lot. As Ted Kravitz always saw them fueling the car after every run they did. What is understandable if you look at the amount of parts they tested.

A lot of people say that Mercedes did a PR run / Showed their hand. How about mercedes doing some light fuel testing / performance running? Isn't that a loud anymore? Nobody is looking at times but at the same time, it's the times that everybody is discussing. Just face it every team has different testing procedures. Maybe Red Bull aren't running low fuel because the Melbourne package will be that different so doing a light fuel run doesn't fit there program?

1’19.954 Rubens in BrawnGP fastest time ever in F1 car. So 1.20:5 ought to be a solid time.

[Artur Craft]

I find it hard to believe teams would be using the same numbers as the year before since so many people move around the paddock eventually everyone would know everyone´s baseline.

Priestley is familiar with how confusing testing can be, but reckons there are ways to find out where teams are at.

"It's probably been the most unrepresentative pre-season test period for years," he says. "And you really can't read anything into the times; the teams are not just looking for lap times.

"But within the team you'll have a baseline fuel load you use year in, year out. When you have people move between teams those numbers get around so everyone gets a rough idea of where they're at and what the pecking order is."

Source: http://plus.autosport.com/premium/featu ... ers-rated/

Exactly what GA was saying as well

Am I the only one who thinks red bull are not seriously sand bagging? This merc does look fast.

Everyone thought RedBull were sand bagging last year, and got a surprise when they were roundly beaten in the first few races. My bet is RedBill is not sand bagging, just like last year.

tomorrow we'll have more basis to speculate on that. So far, I would say there aren't going for headlines but equally, they are far from looking to have a car capable of set the world on fire. If they will remain with fastest car, it looks to be with some tenths of advantadge rather than the big gap them, and Mclaren, had to others in the end of last year

PS: was it said which bits will Nico test tomorrow? I mean the car features not the programe itself

[wesley123]

Am I the only one who thinks red bull are not seriously sand bagging? This merc does look fast.

Everyone thought RedBull were sand bagging last year, and got a surprise when they were roundly beaten in the first few races. My bet is RedBill is not sand bagging, just like last year.

Maybe it's not Red bull that is sandbagging, but Merc running underweight? I could imagine them doing so, as for example there were rumors around Brawns job.

I really wish Merc the best, but somewhere in the whole picture, things arent right. I certainly do believe McLaren are sandbagging and Merc is running light. Red Bull seems to be sandbagging a little, only Lotus seems about right to me on pace.

[stefan_]

Bad post.