Inside Jerez Testing- Day 4
By Glenn Freeman
When you're on the ground at a Formula 1 test, the most common question you receive – from friends, colleagues, and fans – is "what can you tell about the competitive order?"
There are so many variables in F1 these days that can skew performance to a huge degree. Last year, the return of fuel tanks capable of doing a full race distance made the 2010 pre-season much harder to judge than its predecessors. This year, we have four tyre compounds from Pirelli that are more spread out performance-wise than we ever had from Bridgestone.
Timesheets can be – sorry, are – a misleading source of information at tests. So with that in mind, I ventured out trackside today to see if there was anything to be learned from seeing the cars up close.
And how's this for a stat? The car that impressed the most in sector one at Jerez (that's Turns 1 to 4, so a good variety) was only eighth fastest today. For those that haven't memorised the times yet, that car was – surprise, surprise – Red Bull's RB7.
Once you've finished groaning with disappointment, we'll move on. Sebastian Vettel was mind-blowing on corner entry into Turns 1 and 2. In comparison to its rivals, the Red Bull looked like it was accelerating towards the corners in the braking zones.
With the outrageous entry speeds dealt with, the only word to describe the RB7 once it was thinking about leaving a corner is 'planted'. The cars from Renault and Ferrari didn't seem too far behind, but neither looked like it was glued to the road.
Vettel was even able to get the adjustable rear wing slot open almost as soon as he was on the power exiting Turn 2. It then stayed open throughout Turns 3 and 4; both quick left handers.
The Renault wasn't too far behind with the use of its new toy, whereas Fernando Alonso had to wait until he was on the straight between the two quick lefts to get his slot open, and then closed it to have a bit more downforce for Turn 4.
Vettel seemed to have more than enough grip in the quick stuff, even with the wing open the whole time, which tallied with some useful information on the timing screen. Sector one ends on the exit of Turn 4, meaning we've had figures all week revealing which cars are getting spat out of the fast stuff at the highest speeds.
Only the Red Bull and the Renault could consistently clear 270kph through this speed trap. The Ferrari wasn't far behind, but you could see Fernando Alonso forcing the car to do something it would have rather not.
Hardly conclusive, but still ominous for those hoping to dethrone Christian Horner's troops.
Gary Anderson's pre-season tech blog
Jerez testing: Day four
As the sun set on Jerez it was still very difficult to predict who's hot and who's not. To get any idea of how the tyres are standing up to their work load, every team will be running with a reasonable fuel load on longer runs.
At the start of a typical GP, cars are carrying around 150kg of fuel, which is very tough on the tyres. If I was trying to make sense of where my car was, I'd be running around 100kg of fuel and doing something like 25-lap stints - this is a typical mid-race load and is fairly representative of what actually happens in a GP.
With this variation in fuel load being used by the teams at different times of the day, it makes any sort of calculation very difficult. However, you can take a couple of rounded up assumptions to try to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Around Jerez the car uses 2.5kg of fuel per lap and 10kg extra weight makes the car slower by 0.4s per lap.
Using the above assumptions, if you take Barrichello in his Williams - who set the fastest time of the week today with a 1m19.832s - at the beginning of an eight-lap run. To do this he needed around 20kg of fuel on board.
Later in the day he did a 1m26.8s at the beginning of a 25-lap run. The difference in laptime is so dramatic that he must have gone from 20kg of fuel to something like 160kg. This means he would be 5.6s slower per lap, which is not far adrift of the calculations. He would also have been looking after the tyres a little better than he was on his shorter runs.
After 16 laps of this 25-lap run, his times started to increase and he was in the 1m29s when he called it a day. Jerez is quite hard on the tyres but with this sort of drop-off we can look forward to multi-pitstop races this year. Working that backwards, if he was to go for a qualifying run with only three laps of fuel on board, he could probably do a 1m19.3s.
As you can see, a small difference in fuel load can make a big difference to laptime, so it is difficult to assess who is quick and who is not. All I can say is Fernando Alonso did 115 laps and Sebastian Vettel 90. I'm sure these teams were focusing mainly on tyres, as opposed to going for any fast laptimes.
It has always been important to qualify at the front, but for 2011 things might change just a little bit if the tyre drop-off is as dramatic as it looks. We could get multiple pitstops, with different cars using the tyres in different ways - and race strategy would become the prime factor.
As we used to say, Saturday is for glory and Sunday is for points. We all know points make prizes and in Formula 1 that's a huge cheque from Bernie Ecclestone, so I'm sure the real challengers are still concentrating on getting those points at the end of Sunday afternoons.
I'm off to Barcelona next weekend to smell the fumes in person, so hopefully I will be able to get a better feeling of what is happening for the upcoming season. Barcelona is, in reality, the first of the real tracks, where teams actually race, so the times are more meaningful. As the season gets closer, I'm sure everyone will be getting more tempted to fire in that qualifying lap just to see where they really stand.
Source: Autosport
@genius83
I think Sauber are doing a bit of it but not nearly as much as they were doing last year. This time around, they have more stability, more money and have reinforced their technical side. Some guy joined them from a team this year, don't quite recall the name right now.
All that in addition to the front runners not showing their hand is making Sauber look quick. Once the top three, four teams do a quick lap, Sauber will be back where they realistically should be, mid-pack.
