Sorry for the rubbish and very probably incorrect technical description! I've crudely circled it now.
Pre-Season 2012 Testing: Barcelona
- Thread starter landogeorgelewis1
- Start date
And the idiot prize goes to....me!
Cheer FB sometime the patently obvious needs to be pointed out!
Cheer FB sometime the patently obvious needs to be pointed out!
tranquility2k9
Podium Finisher
All the top teams are putting on their big update packages tomorrow. McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari have all reported the majority of their upgrades and AUS package will be arriving on Friday evening and so they'll be using it for the last 2 days of the test. None of them have bolted on any of their big upgrades yet.
Interestingly Ferrari and Lotus are doing race simulations that look to be comparable. The Lotus looks leaps and bounds better than the Ferrari, not so much on out and out pace but with tyres. The Ferrari seems to be suffering massive degradation after only a small amount of laps. To put it in perspective on both of their 4th stints, Grosjean has just done a 25 lap run on Hard tyres that started with a 1.26.9 and ended with a 1.28.9. Mean while, in the same respective stint ran by Alonso on medium tyres, he started with a 1.27.5 and after just 14 laps ended with a 1.29.1.
In the second stint Alonso dropped from 1.29.1 up to 1.32.0 after just 8 laps, meanwhile Grosjean did 1.29.3 to 1.30.6 over 13 laps. Third stint, Alonso dropped from 1.28.1 up to 1.31.5 after 12 laps, meanwhile Grosjean did 1.28.2 to 1.29.5 over 9 laps.
Whilst I know these things are always inconclusive, without a doubt the Lotus will be banging on the door of the top 4 and unless Ferrari make big improvements before AUS I think Lotus may be ahead of them. I think Lotus' tyre management is as good as any other car, on a track where there's generally high degradation. To say they missed a whole test, it is impressive.
Interestingly Ferrari and Lotus are doing race simulations that look to be comparable. The Lotus looks leaps and bounds better than the Ferrari, not so much on out and out pace but with tyres. The Ferrari seems to be suffering massive degradation after only a small amount of laps. To put it in perspective on both of their 4th stints, Grosjean has just done a 25 lap run on Hard tyres that started with a 1.26.9 and ended with a 1.28.9. Mean while, in the same respective stint ran by Alonso on medium tyres, he started with a 1.27.5 and after just 14 laps ended with a 1.29.1.
In the second stint Alonso dropped from 1.29.1 up to 1.32.0 after just 8 laps, meanwhile Grosjean did 1.29.3 to 1.30.6 over 13 laps. Third stint, Alonso dropped from 1.28.1 up to 1.31.5 after 12 laps, meanwhile Grosjean did 1.28.2 to 1.29.5 over 9 laps.
Whilst I know these things are always inconclusive, without a doubt the Lotus will be banging on the door of the top 4 and unless Ferrari make big improvements before AUS I think Lotus may be ahead of them. I think Lotus' tyre management is as good as any other car, on a track where there's generally high degradation. To say they missed a whole test, it is impressive.
tranquility2k9
Podium Finisher
Grosjean just goes and pops in the fastest time of the day at the end with seemingless ease, a 1.22.6 during a 4 lap run on soft tyres. Baring in mind everyone has been saying it's easier to set a faster time during the morning, that is a solid lap. So Grosjean fastest on both days, with an impressive race simulation, hmm, they have carried on where they left off in Jerez, looking really impressive. I have to say if I were a betting man right now I'd put money on Lotus being faster than 1 of the big 4 teams at Melbourne and possibly even more than that. I don't think they'll be faster than Red Bull, but any of the others, who knows.
That's my favourite quote of pre-season testing by far.
tranquility2k9
Podium Finisher
Alonso and Grosjean race simulations side by side:- http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2270354/Simul ALO-GRO.pdf
Looks like overall Alonso was 3 seconds quicker, but that does not take into account how many times they pitted. Alonso pitted one more than that Grosjean, so he actually would have finished about 20 seconds behind him based on that. Also his race distance will look faster than in reality it was due to having fresher rubber. Although saying this im seeing on twitter some people saying Grosjean had new tyres whilst Alonso was on used tyres for most of his. All in all though, the Lotus certainly looks no worse than the Ferrari.
Looks like overall Alonso was 3 seconds quicker, but that does not take into account how many times they pitted. Alonso pitted one more than that Grosjean, so he actually would have finished about 20 seconds behind him based on that. Also his race distance will look faster than in reality it was due to having fresher rubber. Although saying this im seeing on twitter some people saying Grosjean had new tyres whilst Alonso was on used tyres for most of his. All in all though, the Lotus certainly looks no worse than the Ferrari.
tranquility2k9
Podium Finisher
lol
Yes it does sound a bit contradictory. I guess im just saying that you cannot conclude precisely where they are but that it seems certain they will be closer to the top 4 and could even be ahead of 1 or 2. It's the same as saying, that we cannot 100% know for sure that Red Bull are out front, although every single person involved in F1 seems to think they are at the moment.
tranquility2k9
Podium Finisher
Red Bull have been granted permission to use a new Chassis tomorrow. They had to ask the other teams before going ahead as I think it isn't usually allowed during the middle of a test. The reason for this is to incorporate their new upgrade package, which everyone seems to think will mean an upgrade to their exhaust system. It could also reveal the secret behind the letterbox inlet on top of their nose. All in all, I think everyone is pretty worried as to what they are going to see Red Bull reveal tomorrow.
Grosjean... wow!
A 25 lap run with much lower drop off than we have seen for some others! This was cut off the end of the side by side with Alonso, who was off by 2.5s a lap before fuel adjustments after just ten laps or so. Ferrari might be in a spot of bother again... Red Bull & McLaren again doing shorter runs so as not to show their hand.
A really good showing by Caterham again and no sign of the Williams or Toro Rossos stringing any laps together again to compare with.
I just picked up the Massa story on Twitter too. Posted it in the 2012 season thread though 
Someone explain to me why Red Bull need permission to test something different during a test session when the idea is that they are testing the cars to see how they perform during testing?
Someone explain to me why Red Bull need permission to test something different during a test session when the idea is that they are testing the cars to see how they perform during testing?
Because you have to test whether it is acceptable to change your cars substantially in the third test of the off season - in case there was an unacceptable reason for not testing the new chassis at the first test of the off season. And, of course, they would not want to be accused of moving the goal posts by introducing a totally new car so far into the off season and the third test, p'raps!
tranquility2k9
Podium Finisher
I see what you're saying.I just saw that they had to ask the other teams for permission to use a 2nd chassis during a test. I guess it makes sense as teams are only allowed to run 1 car during a test and therefore technically they are running a 2nd car during the same test as they are using a new chassis. After all Sky Sports F1 reports:-
"Red Bull are bringing out a new car for the final two days of testing. Full story and interview with Ted coming up.."
tranquility2k9
Podium Finisher
There's probably not a rule specifying it either way, but as it could be interpreted that they are using a 2nd car during the same test, even though not concurrently, they probably wanted to ask other teams permission to save a potential row over it as you never know when other teams will get picky on something in the regulations.
