2018 pre-season testing thread

[NathanOlder]

Can't go too far away for testing, the beauty of Barcelona is a part can be completed in the factory at 8am, and be on the car after the lunch break. I'd vote estoril like someone said. Mugello, Imola, Misano all seem equally as bad as the uk right now according to the met office. Maybe Portimao would be good.

[Restomaniac]

Am I the only one that thinks the messy area around the sidepods/bargeboards would make these cars look damn ugly even without the halo?

Yes the halo draws your eye but these cars are a mess anyway.

[Afterburner]

Can't go too far away for testing, the beauty of Barcelona is a part can be completed in the factory at 8am, and be on the car after the lunch break. I'd vote estoril like someone said. Mugello, Imola, Misano all seem equally as bad as the uk right now according to the met office. Maybe Portimao would be good.

Definetely Portimão would be perfect, it has all the safety approvals to be raced by F1 cars and the best weather on Europe.

The track itself is very complete, a 1km start finish straight, slow, medium, and fast corners, various camber corners with plenty of ups and downs and with a very challenging last corner.

On top of that they would get a track where no one would get advantages on championship.

For those who miss the old V8's...


Some onboard:

[SiLo]

Tbh all the cars looked very skittish on what looks like a very slippery cold surface. Which is to be expected.

Traditionally Merc also run higher fuel loads than most others too so that might account for their understeer (with right foot contributing to oversteers moments).

[Chuckjr]

Can anyone comment if the extremely cold weather this year has adverse affect on the teams getting an idea of their cars actual cooling capability? It would seem Malaysia, with an ambient in the 90's, would offer a much more realistic measure of the ambient a power system can take so how can a 40 degree ambient --a full 50 degrees less than a typical Malaysian event-- give adequate representation of what the car can actually handle? And isn't temperature effect on metal/liquid measured on a logarithmic scale -- like earthquake seismic measures?

[Brenton]

I know nothing but wouldn't cooling capability be plenty enough measurable here? It's not as simple as taking readings and adding 30C to get an idea of what it would be in hot weather, but I don't think it would be too complicated for F1 engineers to estimate. Straightforward mathematical formulas should do it... Could anyone confirm?

Regarding set lap time targets, I'm surprised they wouldn't use designated test drivers only for that if they're asking for lap times much slower than what the car is capable of in that moment. For most drivers, if you want a consistent lap time from them, the time should be close to the limit of what the car is capable of. Otherwise it's nearly impossible to consistently hit those times in a manner that involves consistent inputs for each corner. This is why I think lap times are relevant. (Referring to a few pages ago but didn't want to have a massive multiple quote post). But I'm not very informed about how exactly capable F1 drivers are at this particular skill, so correct me if I'm wrong. Test drivers are different... Chosen specifically for this skill and train constantly at this skill, I'm assuming.

[PhillipM]

F1 drivers train constantly for that skill too, cars are nowhere close to flat out for much of the race, it takes far too much fuel and tyre life to do so, driving to a time target is 90% of modern racing.

[Restomaniac]

I know nothing but wouldn't cooling capability be plenty enough measurable here? It's not as simple as taking readings and adding 30C to get an idea of what it would be in hot weather, but I don't think it would be too complicated for F1 engineers to estimate. Straightforward mathematical formulas should do it... Could anyone confirm?

Regarding set lap time targets, I'm surprised they wouldn't use designated test drivers only for that if they're asking for lap times much slower than what the car is capable of in that moment. For most drivers, if you want a consistent lap time from them, the time should be close to the limit of what the car is capable of. Otherwise it's nearly impossible to consistently hit those times in a manner that involves consistent inputs for each corner. This is why I think lap times are relevant. (Referring to a few pages ago but didn't want to have a massive multiple quote post). But I'm not very informed about how exactly capable F1 drivers are at this particular skill, so correct me if I'm wrong. Test drivers are different... Chosen specifically for this skill and train constantly at this skill, I'm assuming.

I would imagine that's a test for later next week.
This is currently about looking at aero data compared to the wind tunnel or CFD and looking for failures in normal running. These engines are going to be binned (In reletive terms) so I would imagine they will wait until everything else is done before turning the units up to 100% (something an F1 engine doesn't get to run at these days) and looking for overheating spikes.

[NathanOlder]

https://www.motorsportweek.com/live/

Live timing on this site. Not sure if its any good. Just noticed it on my news feed.

[Vladimir]

Yesterday afternoon , in cold track the fastest driver was Sainz.
Seems that Monte Carlo rally debut work for him nice

[FrukostScones]

Don't think teams need do much cooling testing.

Cold track of course is bad for set-up, tyre testing. Still can do a lot of aero-testing, PU settings.

Discussion whether testing should be done in warmer climate is pointless in my opinion.

Montmelo is benchmark aero and most of the time (a least the second week) the weather is fine and representative track temps are reached.

Be glad the circuit it is so close and you can go there easily for not much money; teams and fans.

[BrunoH]

Estoril has the highest FIA rating today, Portimao does not... plus its 10 min away from the private air strip and 20min from Lisbon... belive me, Estoril was and is a really good track to test.. unfortunately the money the F1 organizers wanted to test there in Estoril was too much for the circuit.. ( plus the electricity bill is off the roof, with the DTM testing they had there a few years ago.. i saw how expensive that was, i can only imagine F1 with all the tire warmers and tire ovens )

[Gerhardsa]

Lots of cars having moments in turn 1/2, that includes the ferrari at 4:41. Though from what I've seen on the official stream it did look by far the most planted of the cars running at that time (no red bull though).

What official stream?

[bauc]

Apparently it will be a AERO day if it stays like this, which is not a bad thing we will see a lot flow wiz and sensor filled images

[GoranF1]

anyone have access this?

https://www.autosport.com/f1/feature/80 ... pening-day