Pre-Season Testing Has Started

'Filming' you're fooling no one.

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They fine a driver for doing donuts in celebration or stopping for a flag. It's a life ban and a 3 trillion dollar fine these days for even thinking about letting a driver sit on the side pod. I dread to think what would happen if anyone tried the above.
 
Ferrari would just claim it was part of a media day and be allowed to do it during a race. The other teams will then kick up a stink that they had too many people on the track during the run to the grid and ensure that Ferrari are fined the appropriate amount for breaking that rule and that in future they have to buy an extra pit pass for Vettels pet hamster.

At some point during all the angst and outpouring of woe one person will ask what about safety as the driver can't actually see where he is going during a race and will be instantly fired for not considering the spectacle for the viewer....
 
Second Test......how things appear to have moved forward for McLaren/Honda. Considering the newness of the car/engine combination and the number of laps they completed in the first test at Jerez the times Button has been achieving are sensational. Very early days in the second test, way too early to get too excited, but by the time they reach Melbourne who would count them out of a very good result.
 
Meanwhile, Mercedes have suffered a reliability issue, but with an ill Hamilton not the car :sick: and Nasr has just set a lap time 8 tenths faster than what Sauber managed in qualifying at the Spanish grand prix in 2014.

EDIT: And now a full second faster.
 
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McLaren made good use of their filming day to iron out a few pre-Barcelona bugs.

Times at 10:35:
1. Felipe Nasr - Sauber - 1:27.522 - 28 Laps
2. Kimi Raikkonen - Ferrari - 1:28.064 - 29 Laps
3. Jenson Button - McLaren - 1:28.182 - 21 Laps
4. Pascal Wehrlein - Force India - 1:28.379 - 20 Laps
5. Pastor Maldonado - Lotus - 1:29.069 - 16 Laps
6. Max Verstappen - Toro Rosso - 1:28.640 - 25 Laps
7. Lewis Hamilton - Mercedes - 1:30.429 - 11 Laps
8. Susie Wolff - Williams - 1:31.207 - 35 Laps
9. Daniel Ricciardo - Red Bull - No time - 6 Laps
 
Yeah, once again the BBC are doing themselves no favours with their piss poor coverage of F1. Andrew Benson has updated about once every two hours.

Meanwhile, looks like Kewee spoke too soon, McLaren have stopped for the day due to an issue that requires the whole power unit to be replaced.
 
Honda now have a problem with a seal which means replacing the engine. Not only that, the failure was due to a design fault, they need to redesign this, they will not have the new part until Saturday. So no more testing today with Alonso having to run with a dodgy engine tomorrow.

I thought that they had done lots of engine testing, it seems odd that it was not noticed before. Maybe the engine suffers from motion sickness.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/117731
 
It may be that this seal is on an item that is subject to the atmosphere, rather than internally, it is possible that the seal was allowing dust or other crud into the MGU-K workings and causing tracking of high volts internally. Despite many hours of running on a bench with simulated runs, it was just too sterile an atmosphere. There again it may be something elseLOL
 
Raikkonen has now gone 1.5s quicker than he managed in qualifying last year, so I guess the cars are going to be something like around 3s/lap faster this year, or 2s at least... although Perez has also gone a second faster in the 2014 Force India.
 
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