2012 Testing - Barcelona 2: 21-24 Feb

[bhall]

Can't get over the idea that [an FIA off-throttle exhaust clarification] is particularly significant. We saw the one time last year when there was a significant change to these (at Silverstone), Ferrari looked much stronger in comparison to the others. Shows they've got a big deficit in that area.

I don't know how significant such a clarification would/will be now. A very large portion of the concept's worth has already been neutralized due to the introduction of the new rules concerning exhaust location.

[Ferraripilot]

start of race sim for Mercedes, oh dear the tyres are already suffering 2011 allover again... noooo

I'll be more interested in race sims next week with their 'barely legal' exhaust

[LionKing]

The pace of Mercedes wrt. to Red Bull is a bit worrying.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Head to head race sim going on.....


Autosport report it as "boring" wanting the headline lap times but....This is where we can draw some info....
Both Schumacher and Webber are on the Soft tyre.

Webber

1st lap of the simulation :1:29.562 (31)
1:29.684 (32)
1:30.650 (33)
1:29.720 (34)
1:29.851 (35)
1:30.939 (36)
1:30.212 (37)
1:30.153 (38)
1:30.265 (39)
1:30.762 (40)
1:30.816 (41)
1:30.910 (42)
1:31.588 (43)
pit tyre change

Schumacher
1:29.836 (57)
1:30.181 (58)
1:30.334 (59)
1:31.282 (60)
1:30.307 (61)
1:30.836 (62)
1:32.116 (63)
1:31.171 (64)
1:31.583 (65)
1:32.456 (66)
pit tyre change


Red Bull Quicker, Mercedes W03 an improvement on the 02 but still with tyre deg issues...BUT....some interesting times coming in from the W03 now...

[Lorenzo_Bandini]

13:55 Button, having put in 11 laps - eight of them in the 1m30s - pits, cuts the engine and is rolled back into the garage.

They will do like with Hamilton yesterday, full tank in the pits.

[Ferraripilot]

W03 appears to be not quite as quick after the tire swap, at least compared to the RB anyway. Finding best setups now or more aero needed? Maybe a bit of both

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Button on medium tyre 11 lap avg 1:31.076

Mercedes arent far off this.

[elf341]

Yeah, if this is a race simulation and they're not sandbagging (don't think they would), then these times are fairly disappointing. They appear a full second off Red Bull.

My guess is that Mercedes' general strategic aim for the year is to come within 0.5s of the Red Bull. So they've some way to go.

[Ferraripilot]

RB8 and W03 have very similar lap times once their tires fall off a bit in this second stint here. Interesting.

[FrukostScones]

Button on medium tyre 11 lap avg 1:31.076

Mercedes arent far off this.

but Button looks not fast either, but I think the Red Bull does not like the Hard tyres

Schumacher: Soft, Soft
Webber: Soft, Hard
BUtton: Medium, (refuel) Medium

[Mr.S]

Red Bull is MUCH quicker than Mercedes at the moment. Close to a second,difficult to compare but still almost that big.

[Ferraripilot]

RB is definitely very easy on tires once again. MB and Mclaren definitely look very close though. Even with Jensen on meds

[diego1960]

Where does everyone see the 1s difference? Comparing the times posted above, in most laps the difference is half a second. Unless we take extreme laps into consideration which is difficult to judge as Schumacher or Webber might have fallen into traffic.

[Giblet]

The DRS wing and KERS really screws up testing for the fans. Its like the perfect sandbagging tool and could skew the results by a couple seconds.

How do we know a fast lap didn't involve 15 seconds of KERS and DRS everywhere, or the exact opposite using none?

[Mr.S]

RB is definitely very easy on tires once again. MB and Mclaren definitely look very close though. Even with Jensen on meds

Yes Mclaren & Mercedes are on a more similar pace. Mercedes maybe slightly quicker. Red Bull look from a different planet. Like Close 1 Full Second away from the rest