planetf1.com

The Toro Rosso front wing is similar in concept to the Ferrari wing, so RedBull has some idea of what they'd be getting into with the change. Still, you'd think that the front wing has drastic influence on how every other aerodynamic element of the car works.

I'd say the testing results we've seen point to one of the more interesting championships we've had, but I can't help but to feel that Alfa-Romeo, Haas, and Toro Rosso all have much too close ties to teams that won't let them compete for wins when the preferred teams are contending.

Early days but already very excited for the season! Ferrari may well be best with Red Bull possibly ahead of Mercedes, but RBR and Merc have typically been better at developing the car throughout the season. It is still early, I appreciate, and things may look different at the end of day 8.

Black_Flag_11 wrote:Johnny Herbert just said that he spoke to someone from Red Bull but wouldn't name them. Apparently the belief at Red Bull is that the order is:

1. Ferrari
2. Red Bull
3. Mercedes

Mercedes playing catch up again then.

BMWSauber84 wrote:Toto reckons the Ferrari is half a second quicker than Merc and Red Bull and they are debating whether to switch to Ferrari's front wing concept. That is similar to what Fransz Tost of Red Bull said, although they see more potential in their own front wing philosophy.

But Helmut Marko thinks Red Bull are only slightly begind Ferrari.

I guess if you keep changing the regs then you will eventually find the silver bullet?

Black_Flag_11 wrote:Johnny Herbert just said that he spoke to someone from Red Bull but wouldn't name them. Apparently the belief at Red Bull is that the order is:

1. Ferrari
2. Red Bull
3. Mercedes

So last year it was horses for courses i.e. it depended on the circuit as to which car dominated, so is the hierarchy for this circuit or do Red Bull have special predictive software. All a bit speculative isn't it?

I don't get how these predictions are being made, tbh. Mercedes are right near the bottom of the timings and you'd have to say that's highly unlikely to be the case. It's much more probable that they're focusing on reliability rather than speed at this stage of testing. I don't get how rankings are being arrived at

Zoue wrote:I don't get how these predictions are being made, tbh. Mercedes are right near the bottom of the timings and you'd have to say that's highly unlikely to be the case. It's much more probable that they're focusing on reliability rather than speed at this stage of testing. I don't get how rankings are being arrived at

I believe they base it on the long runs rather than glory laps?

pokerman wrote:

Zoue wrote:I don't get how these predictions are being made, tbh. Mercedes are right near the bottom of the timings and you'd have to say that's highly unlikely to be the case. It's much more probable that they're focusing on reliability rather than speed at this stage of testing. I don't get how rankings are being arrived at

I believe they base it on the long runs rather than glory laps?

Even if they were based on long runs, how do they know how much fuel each car is running, engine modes etc.

JN23 wrote:

pokerman wrote:

Zoue wrote:I don't get how these predictions are being made, tbh. Mercedes are right near the bottom of the timings and you'd have to say that's highly unlikely to be the case. It's much more probable that they're focusing on reliability rather than speed at this stage of testing. I don't get how rankings are being arrived at

I believe they base it on the long runs rather than glory laps?

Even if they were based on long runs, how do they know how much fuel each car is running, engine modes etc.

They've been able to tell engine modes (or at least output) for years by doing sonic analysis. As for the fuel, they can make an educated guess by how long the run was - if they're looking only at full race distances, that's going to provide a very accurate idea of fuel loading, since if a car doesn't pit during a 66-lap run they were fueled for a full distance. And since there isn't much extra room in the rank beyond a full distance, there's not much room to sandbag on a full run.

JN23 wrote:

pokerman wrote:

Zoue wrote:I don't get how these predictions are being made, tbh. Mercedes are right near the bottom of the timings and you'd have to say that's highly unlikely to be the case. It's much more probable that they're focusing on reliability rather than speed at this stage of testing. I don't get how rankings are being arrived at

I believe they base it on the long runs rather than glory laps?

Even if they were based on long runs, how do they know how much fuel each car is running, engine modes etc.

They have tools like GPS were they can see how fast the cars are accelerating, that's what flagged up Ferrari's performance last year and asked questions about how the car was able to accelerate so fast.

Zoue wrote:I don't get how these predictions are being made, tbh. Mercedes are right near the bottom of the timings and you'd have to say that's highly unlikely to be the case. It's much more probable that they're focusing on reliability rather than speed at this stage of testing. I don't get how rankings are being arrived at

I'm with this. It's all just guesswork, particularly when Mercedes haven't even shown their hand yet.

Remember when everyone thought Brawn GP were doing low fuel glory runs?

pokerman wrote:

Zoue wrote:I don't get how these predictions are being made, tbh. Mercedes are right near the bottom of the timings and you'd have to say that's highly unlikely to be the case. It's much more probable that they're focusing on reliability rather than speed at this stage of testing. I don't get how rankings are being arrived at

I believe they base it on the long runs rather than glory laps?

It is too early to be ranking the cars...we really don't know a thing beyond doubt at this point. Just speculation and politics.

pokerman wrote:

Zoue wrote:I don't get how these predictions are being made, tbh. Mercedes are right near the bottom of the timings and you'd have to say that's highly unlikely to be the case. It's much more probable that they're focusing on reliability rather than speed at this stage of testing. I don't get how rankings are being arrived at

I believe they base it on the long runs rather than glory laps?

ah good point. How did I miss that?

pokerman wrote:

JN23 wrote:

pokerman wrote:

Zoue wrote:I don't get how these predictions are being made, tbh. Mercedes are right near the bottom of the timings and you'd have to say that's highly unlikely to be the case. It's much more probable that they're focusing on reliability rather than speed at this stage of testing. I don't get how rankings are being arrived at

I believe they base it on the long runs rather than glory laps?

Even if they were based on long runs, how do they know how much fuel each car is running, engine modes etc.

They have tools like GPS were they can see how fast the cars are accelerating, that's what flagged up Ferrari's performance last year and asked questions about how the car was able to accelerate so fast.

This was my first thought as well, but through the season they have a tonne of data from previous sessions that they can use to set a baseline – during races with known fuel loads and from qualifying in various modes. Starting from scratch there are a lot of unknowns at the moment, so while the teams will have a much better picture than those spectating , would still question even how certain they can be at this stage?

Plus there the teams have a lot of different motives around their messaging – Red Bull will want to keep their drivers confident in the package. Teams that think they have an advantage will not want to draw attention to it. Others that have not enjoyed the success they expect in the past will want to keep shareholders/investors satisfied. Makes it really hard to weed out the balanced observations.

I think it's far too early to be guessing at a pecking order, but there's certainly some things that seem clear:

Ferrari are strong. Whether they are in front of Mercedes is only something that we'll know in Melbourne Q3, but the outright speed, consistency and reliability is looking very good. Ferrari in the past few years have made big leaps over winter and emerged with strong cars early in the season, only for their development to fall behind over the year. Maybe this pattern will continue.

The Honda is so far looking reasonably reliable compared to past years. Red Bull don't seem to be pushing it fully yet, but all four cars seem to be trucking along ok with reasonable speed.

The midfield will be very competitive. Alfa Romeo seem to have a quick car, as do Toro Rosso. The pecking order is hard to pick, but the Ferrari engined cars are looking good and only Williams seem to be well behind at the moment. McLaren appear to be a bit more in the mix (better Renault engine?).

For me the unknown is Renault. They should be hovering around the 3rd-4th constructor, but with such a strong midfield and that Ferrari engine seeming to have made another step, where is the yellow car? They got into some reasonable times yesterday (albeit on a softer tyre). Reliability of the engine seems good, but how quick is it?

Blake wrote:

pokerman wrote:

Zoue wrote:I don't get how these predictions are being made, tbh. Mercedes are right near the bottom of the timings and you'd have to say that's highly unlikely to be the case. It's much more probable that they're focusing on reliability rather than speed at this stage of testing. I don't get how rankings are being arrived at

I believe they base it on the long runs rather than glory laps?

It is too early to be ranking the cars...we really don't know a thing beyond doubt at this point. Just speculation and politics.

Teams sandbag but politics I don't understand, why politics?

Zoue wrote:

pokerman wrote:

Zoue wrote:I don't get how these predictions are being made, tbh. Mercedes are right near the bottom of the timings and you'd have to say that's highly unlikely to be the case. It's much more probable that they're focusing on reliability rather than speed at this stage of testing. I don't get how rankings are being arrived at

I believe they base it on the long runs rather than glory laps?

ah good point. How did I miss that?

Yeah who's fastest doesn't mean that much, it's still largely guess work though.

You can follow the final day of test from here:

https://www.gptoday.net/en/live/f1/2453 ... st-in-2019

Robert Kubica is driving today. Great for him after all the trouble he had after that horrible accident

Norris in the gravel

Hamilton has already found 2 secs from his time yesterday

Siao7 wrote:Hamilton has already found 2 secs from his time yesterday

to be fair Mercedes have been going extremely slowly all week and only Williams have kept them from the bottom of the timings. A 2 sec jump in time isn't as impressive as it sounds!

Zoue wrote:

Siao7 wrote:Hamilton has already found 2 secs from his time yesterday

to be fair Mercedes have been going extremely slowly all week and only Williams have kept them from the bottom of the timings. A 2 sec jump in time isn't as impressive as it sounds!

Yeah I know, it was clear that they were sandbagging all this time. I was more surprised by the fact that they actually showed their cards a little bit, if that makes sense.

At this moment I'm pretty sure every team - maybe except of Williams - can top the table and beat the best time so it's really pointless to read anything from best laps (we all know it but still we are doing it every year xd).
I think Ferrari and Merc are pretty close to each other and even Melbourne Q3 won't answer who is better as this is specific track and usually in next races situation is different.

Hamilton has gone fastest on C4 tyres but seems he didn't have the best lap. Autos port saying his middle and final sectors weren't great so seems Merc might have a bit more on that tyre.

Hamilton does a 1:17.97. Kubica finally in the low 22's

From Autosport:


Source - www.imgur.com

Siao7 wrote:Hamilton does a 1:17.97. Kubica finally in the low 22's

Which simply proves what we were saying earlier, we will not know who has a quick car until we have see a 2 or 3 races. I think it will be much closer in terms of car performance this year and a lot will be decided by the drivers. As an example look at Daniel Ricciardo in the Renault. Looking forward to this years WDC!

Ricciardo (Renualt) 1:17.913 (30 laps)
Hamilton (Mercedes) 1:17.977 (26)
Leclerc (Ferrari) 1:18.475 (44)

Option or Prime wrote:

Siao7 wrote:Hamilton does a 1:17.97. Kubica finally in the low 22's

Which simply proves what we were saying earlier, we will not know who has a quick car until we have see a 2 or 3 races. I think it will be much closer in terms of car performance this year and a lot will be decided by the drivers. As an example look at Daniel Ricciardo in the Renault. Looking forward to this years WDC!

Ricciardo (Renualt) 1:17.913 (30 laps)
Hamilton (Mercedes) 1:17.977 (26)
Leclerc (Ferrari) 1:18.475 (44)

Yes, I know that, thank you very much. I was just reporting that Merc is in the 1:17's now.

Siao7 wrote:

Option or Prime wrote:

Siao7 wrote:Hamilton does a 1:17.97. Kubica finally in the low 22's

Which simply proves what we were saying earlier, we will not know who has a quick car until we have see a 2 or 3 races. I think it will be much closer in terms of car performance this year and a lot will be decided by the drivers. As an example look at Daniel Ricciardo in the Renault. Looking forward to this years WDC!

Ricciardo (Renualt) 1:17.913 (30 laps)
Hamilton (Mercedes) 1:17.977 (26)
Leclerc (Ferrari) 1:18.475 (44)

Yes, I know that, thank you very much. I was just reporting that Merc is in the 1:17's now.

I get that, I was just doing the same!

@Autosport

And here are the number of laps completed by each team:

Leclerc - 75
Grosjean - 64
Hamilton - 58
Giovinazzi - 56
Gasly - 52
Kubica - 48
Norris - 48
Albon - 44
Stroll - 41
Ricciardo - 34

From GPToday:


Source - www.imgur.com

UnlikeUday wrote:From GPToday:


Source - http://www.imgur.com

Looking at the tyres that have been used Ferrari are still the quickest.

A 1-18.360 by Bottas on the C2 tyre I would say the fastest lap in testing thus far.

pokerman wrote:

UnlikeUday wrote:From GPToday:


Source - http://www.imgur.com

Looking at the tyres that have been used Ferrari are still the quickest.

Not sure. Albon set his time on the hard, C2. Which makes it almost a mega lap, if you want to read into anything in these tests

The Mercs are finally turning up the wick a little it seems.

Siao7 wrote:

pokerman wrote:

UnlikeUday wrote:From GPToday:


Source - http://www.imgur.com

Looking at the tyres that have been used Ferrari are still the quickest.

Not sure. Albon set his time on the hard, C2. Which makes it almost a mega lap, if you want to read into anything in these tests

Albon was on the C5 sames as Ricciardo.

pokerman wrote:

Siao7 wrote:

pokerman wrote:

UnlikeUday wrote:From GPToday:


Source - http://www.imgur.com

Looking at the tyres that have been used Ferrari are still the quickest.

Not sure. Albon set his time on the hard, C2. Which makes it almost a mega lap, if you want to read into anything in these tests

Albon was on the C5 sames as Ricciardo.

Here it says C2, if you hover above the tyre marking:

https://www.gptoday.net/en/live/f1/2453 ... st-in-2019

sandman1347 wrote:The Mercs are finally turning up the wick a little it seems.

Yep but still everyone seems to have the opinion that Ferrari are the fastest, maybe half a second faster?

pokerman wrote:

sandman1347 wrote:The Mercs are finally turning up the wick a little it seems.

Yep but still everyone seems to have the opinion that Ferrari are the fastest, maybe half a second faster?

From what we have seen so far; Ferrari being fastest in Australia is looking to be the most likely scenario. You can never know for certain.