Barcelona questions and updates
Damian, via text: "It will be interesting to see how Lewis Hamilton does today - McLaren really need to sort their car out, for a third year in a row it is off the pace and that can't be a good thing. What happened to the good cars of 2007/08?"
Ans: BBC Sport's Andrew Benson: "Damian asks a very interesting question. I did touch on this in my blog about the McLaren car launch. Clearly, we're talking differing degrees of being off the pace in the last three years. The 2009 McLaren was terrible - seconds off the pace. Last year's was much better - basically the third quickest car but still good enough to win races and fight for the title. And we don't yet know the full extent of their problems in 2011. It's also a moot point whether the 2007/08 cars were actually as good as they looked. Yes, they respectively should have and did win the title in those years, but look at the drivers in the McLaren and rival Ferrari. In 2007 McLaren had Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, who left at the end of that year. Ferrari had Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa both years. And if you look at the relative pace of Alonso and Massa at Ferrari last year, you can extrapolate logically that probably the 2007/08 Ferraris were faster cars than the McLarens but that the driver(s) made up the difference. You might not agree, but it's an interesting topic for discussion, certainly."
Max, London, via text : "Hispania remind me of a student who is constantly making up excuses to get deadline extensions on their essays. How many times have they put the launch date of the F111 back? One suspects, just like the student, they're eventually going to get found out. What odds a repeat of 2010, when Karun Chandhok was essentially carrying out a shakedown test in Q1 of the first race weekend?"
BBC pit-lane reporter Ted Kravitz: "Some more news on exhausts. Red Bull and Ferrari have gone for directing their exhausts as far back as possible, while Renault have tidied up their system for the Barcelona test, while retaining the unique exits right at the front of their sidepods. Mercedes, meanwhile, have gone for a halfway measure with exhausts that exit right in the middle of the outer body of their sidepods. They've had to put a metal turning vane on top of the floor to guide the exhaust gas to where they want it. But it's still more of a 2010-style solution rather than the more integrated system used by Red Bull and Ferrari."
Dave Hicks asks "Is it fair to say from what's been seen so far that the Red Bull seems to have a pretty spectacular advantage over anything else! Looks odds-on for a 1-2 in Australia at this rate!"
Ans: Vettel and Webber's pace has certainly been ominous over the last couple of days, but they have gone for some qualifying-style short runs, and that's when those blistering times have been set. With Ferrari not here yesterday, we haven't got so many longer runs to compare, but there is less to choose between Red Bull and Ferrari over the longer stints they have done this morning - and Ferrari hasn't gone for a low-fuel sprint yet.
On the other hand, we also heard Nick Heidfeld yesterday say he thought Red Bull was effectively sandbagging, and when we spoke to the drivers in the paddock last night, Webber's demeanour was extremely confident. The mood at Red Bull seems to be 'bring on Melbourne, we're ready to go'.
Final F1 test Day 1: McLaren tries to flex, Red Bull still on top
The final test session before the start of the new F1 season kicked off today in Barcelona with most, but not all of the teams running today.
Engineers Iâve spoken to believe that both cars, certainly the Red Bull, are capable of a lap in the high 1m 21s. We may see that by the end of the week, hopefully. Ideally it would be good to establish the outright performance difference over a single lap between the two cars, certainly there doesnât seem to be much between them in race trim.
Interesting, Red Bull has pumped in the lap JA talked about. Ferrari seemed to be busy working on their new exhaust system today. With rain forecast for Saturday, we might see a qualifying run from Massa tomorrow.
@m_waqas
Here is one way you can get his book.
Predict the lap time for Mercedes & McLaren in final Barcelona F1 test
Predict the fastest lap time by a McLaren or Mercedes car this week and win a signed copy of the JA on F1 2010 yearbook.
This bit has been posted before by genius83, but i am posting it for it`s sheer sarcasm:D
Ferrari changes car name again
@genius83
Can we get a couple of pictures of Ferrari from today's test? Their revised aero, especially the exhaust pics, thanks
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