Lessons Learned from 2nd Formula 1 Test in Barcelona
The second Formula One pre-season test ended on Sunday with Romain Grosjean leading the way in Barcelona.
The Lotus man set the benchmark on Day 4 with a time of 1:24.067 seconds, but his wasn't the lap that caught the eye. Less than an hour later, Nico Rosberg set the second-best lap of the test—a 1:24.321.
Grosjean was on the supersoft tyres, the quickest of Pirelli's four compounds; Rosberg used the mediums, the second-slowest.
Small details such as these are vital when trying to interpret what times from pre-season testing mean, but some information remains out of reach. Fuel loads and engine modes are hidden from the eyes of observers, and we can never be entirely sure how hard each driver is pushing his car.
Despite this, we can glean little bits of information and reach certain tentative conclusions.
Here are six things we learned in Catalunya—starting with one which requires no deep analysis.
McLaren Are Definitely in Trouble
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McLaren-Honda had a rotten time in Jerez, completing just 79 laps and setting no representative times. There were no major, fundamental problems, but rather a series of small, irritating issues.
They arrived at Catalunya hoping to do much better but again ran into trouble. Thursday saw Jenson Button's running ended by a faulty MGU-K seal. Fernando Alonso was also affected on Friday, but with a newly designed seal set to arrive on Saturday hopes were raised again.
Until...
"After the morning session, we found similar issues to Thursday. We will now resume testing this afternoon with limited power to the MGU-K.
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) February 21, 2015"
The new seal had failed as well. A follow-up tweet announced a "new re-engineered seal" was on its way to the circuit. This third attempt was fitted to the car for Sunday.
After a delay getting started, Alonso managed 20 laps before a mysterious crash at the exit of Turn 3 put an early end to his and McLaren's test. He was taken to hospital for precautionary checks, but the team later announced that all was well:
"McLaren: Result of Alonso's CT scan is good and Fernando is fine - effectively un-injured. Still no info on why car went off.
— Ted Kravitz (@tedkravitz) February 22, 2015"
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for their testing program. Having completed just 124 laps at Catalunya, they have by far the lowest mileage count of any team.
McLaren and Honda have a lot to do ahead of the third test on Thursday.
The 2015 Cars Are a Lot Quicker Than Their 2014 Counterparts
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Jerez doesn't host a grand prix, so we had to wait until the cars arrived at Catalunya to get some idea of where they are relative to 2014.
Now we know—sort of.
No one will have been pushing even close to the limit, we don't know the fuel loads, the track conditions were very different and the tyres are slightly different, too. But the fact a whole host of cars beat last season's pole time bodes well for those fans who feel the sport was too slow in the first year under the new regulations.
Romain Grosjean's test-best 1:24.067 was set on the supersofts, but Lewis Hamilton's 2014 Spanish Grand Prix pole was set on the mediums. So for a better comparison, we turn to Hamilton's Mercedes team-mate, Nico Rosberg, who used the mediums to do his and Mercedes' best lap on Day 4.
Hamilton's pole time was 1:25.232, while Rosberg's testing time was 1:24.321—so we can safely say the cars have made a significant step forward.
With all their new upgrades attached, the engine turned up to the max and the driver pushing hard, a 2014-to-2015 improvement of close to three seconds per lap looks possible at the start of the year.
Ferrari's Jerez Pace Was Not Representative, but They're Still Doing Well
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Ferrari grabbed the headlines in Jerez by setting the quickest lap on three of the four days. On the other day, it was Ferrari-engined Sauber perched at the top of the time sheet.
Per BBC Sport's Andrew Benson, the Italian team's average lap over the course of the test was nearly a second-and-a-half quicker than that of any other team.
While no one truly believed Ferrari had morphed from also-rans into 2015's dominant team, there was no denying that Sebastian Vettel's and Kimi Raikkonen's displays were impressive.
Was it the dawning of a new era for the Scuderia? More eyes than normal were fixed on the SF15-T when it rolled out of the garage on Thursday to start the Catalunya test.
This time out, Vettel and Raikkonen appeared more "normal," and certainly behind the Mercedes drivers. Jerez was as we thought: the result of different teams doing different programmes.
But Ferrari ended the test looking like they're in a far better place than they were at the end of 2014. Right now, they're Mercedes' closest challengers.
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Mercedes Are Fast. Very Fast.
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Everyone suspected it already, but Catalunya showed us that Mercedes are likely to retain at least a substantial portion of their advantage into 2015.
The first sign came on the second day. Daniel Ricciardo set the pace on the soft tyres, with Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen both within a tenth of a second on the same rubber. But Lewis Hamilton, still not 100 percent after missing Day 1 with a fever, was just three-tenths back on mediums.
Per Autosport's live text commentary, he went even quicker on the next lap but pitted before finishing it, and later said on the team website that Mercedes weren't even trying to do quick laps.
Testing times are notoriously unreliable, and it would be wrong to read too much into them, but Ricciardo's best was nearly seven-tenths quicker than last season's Spanish Grand Prix pole time.
They're not going flat-out yet, but the sandbags are gradually falling off.
On the final day, Nico Rosberg went even quicker than Hamilton had. Also using medium tyres, his 1:24.321 was the second-best time of the test and gave us a small hint of the W06's true capabilities over a single lap.
Mercedes' long-run pace was also, per Autosport's Scott Mitchell, highly impressive relative to the competition. The car is reliable, too.
Don't bet against another Hamilton-vs.-Rosberg duel in 2015.
Red Bull and Renault Have Slipped Backward
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Red Bull have not yet shown even the slightest hint that they've broken free of the chasing pack to become Mercedes' main challengers.
If anything, they appear to have slipped back into the clutches of Ferrari. Sky Sports F1's Ted Kravitz said on Day 3 of his Notebook series that he feels the Scuderia are actually ahead.
The biggest positive for Red Bull came in the form of laps—Daniel Ricciardo did 143 laps on Day 2, and Daniil Kvyat managed 215 in his two days in the car. This suggests Red Bull have got on top of the issues which restricted them to just 166 laps on the shorter Jerez circuit at the first test.
There was a decent headline lap time, too, set by Ricciardo on Day 2—a 1:24.574 on the soft compound.
But Nico Rosberg beat that on the final day using mediums, and Autosport's Ben Anderson points out that on Day 2, there was a huge gulf between Ricciardo's race-simulation pace and that of Mercedes man Lewis Hamilton.
It was around a second per lap when both were running the same tyres.
After the day's running was done, Ricciardo was quoted by Auto Motor und Sport (h/t grandprix.com) complaining his team was "lagging a bit behind" relative to Ferrari and Mercedes.
Red Bull fans will be hoping the RB11's pace improves a little at the third and final test.
Lotus Are Back in the Mix
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Lotus were the surprise package of 2012 and carried through their strong form into 2013. But last season, a combination of a weak Renault engine and poor chassis saw the team drop to eighth in the championship with just 10 points.
Signs from Catalunya suggest that although a return to top-three contention isn't on the cards, Lotus will be back fighting for regular points in 2015.
Romain Grosjean told Formula1.com during the test:
"We do have the best power unit on the grid—that’s a fact and that’s quite good. Last year we knew that even with a Mercedes engine the car [would not have been] good enough. So there’s been a lot of work done in Enstone, a lot of progress, and I was very happily surprised to find that the car was reacting well and it provided a much better baseline to start work.
"
Grosjean's 1:24.067 was the quickest time of the test, ahead of Nico Rosberg's Mercedes.
Headline figures are unreliable, and he was using the supersoft tyres, but if nothing else the lap shows Lotus are capable of doing a decent time. What's more, it was nearly three seconds quicker than Grosjean's best from 2014's Spanish Grand Prix qualifying.
This, coupled with a much greater kilometre count than at the same time last year, shows the team are heading in the right direction.
Lap time and number information throughout sourced from daily figures published by the official Formula One website.
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