More teams have hit trouble in the final day of pre-season testing at Barcelona. At a moment when one would expect reliability issues to be nearly ironed out, the lack of running for some teams was surprising.
Kubica gave up test day
Lol to help with what? Letting the slower kids with more money drive more?Robert Kubica has volunteered to give up his test morning today in order to help Williams, said Claire Williams.
The guy with more experience and technical insight gives up to help the team, yes, it sounds very convincing...
The consistency once he got down to 1.20.6 over the remaining laps is just incredible, like clockwork. Wow. Merc have a real beast in 2018. I fear they're going to blow everyone away. James Allison really wasn't kidding when he said this car would obliterate last years car.
Long first stint. Shorter second stint. It's the same program Bottas ran yesterday so we should be able to have two similar race sims from Bottas and Hamilton with the same tyres to compare. Obviously the track is a much better temperature today but will see how that affects times first. Expect a long third stint on the medium now.
Fuel saving slows down Ferrari
Vettel already did "Lift and Coast" in the first stint. In the second and third he had to slow down even more. Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas were also left under their possibilities. Kevin Magnussen's lap times fluctuated with increasing distance. Because he had to let his car roll towards the curves more and more often. This cooled down the tyres, which again cost lap time.
There are other reasons why consumption was so high during these winter test drives. The cool temperatures, the new asphalt that provided more grip and endurance runs with less traffic. "In the race, the others set your pace. You're always slower on the road," the Mercedes engineers tell us.
The Longruns show that Mercedes continues to have advantages in this discipline. Already last year, the Silver Arrow pilots had to take 10 kilograms less fuel on board than Ferrari. Renault was usually somewhere in between. Apparently, nothing has changed.
Valtteri Bottas only slowed down in the last lap in the last stint. Then the lap time increased from 1.19.7 to 1.21.9 minutes. With Sebastian Vettel it was reversed. Three 1.21er times followed at the end a lap with 1.19,9 minutes. This suggests that more would have been possible if the high fuel consumption hadn't slowed down the Ferrari drivers so much. It wouldn't have been enough to catchBottas, though. The Finn drove 13 of the last 18 laps under the mark of 1.20 minutes.
Read it as running more fuel at first! We know the Merc engine is probably the most efficient out there already. I would guess they start with the least amount of fuel on board than anyone else on the grid whichi really helps them early on.Ishwar030 wrote: ↑09 Mar 2018, 13:32From @tgruener (auto motor und sport)
GPS data shows Ferrari had to save significantly more fuel than Mercedes during Barcelona race simulations, which explains part of the pace gap.
https://twitter.com/tgruener/status/972072275381030912
Would you mind posting or DMing me with the data from that race sim comparison so I can put it in excel? I'd just like to get it set in my mind whether the average lap delta is really 0.2 or over 1s like AMuS seem to think.GPR-A wrote: ↑09 Mar 2018, 00:47Not bad. Autosport.com has ranked the top 4 just like i have.GPR-A wrote: ↑08 Mar 2018, 17:50Based on Race Sim, here are my predictions.
1. Mercedes
2. Red Bull
3. Ferrari
4. Renault
Click to Enlarge.
https://s9.postimg.org/iu7z30w4v/race_sim_compared.png
Allison was spot on when he said the following yesterday.
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/13471 ... w-a-threat"I think there's three quick teams and there's no doubt that Red Bull are going to be people that we're going to be fighting with this year," Allison told Sky Sports News. "There's clearly no doubt about that.
https://www.autosport.com/f1/feature/80 ... -trackside
Not neccessailry, they can do the 100% testing on the dyno and then just test it in the car in Practice sessions,mrluke wrote: ↑09 Mar 2018, 13:15They will need to run their engines at 100% during testing at some point otherwise they don't know whether it will work when they do. They need to be confident on how hard they can push it over the opening races.random1283 wrote: ↑09 Mar 2018, 13:03Just like to point out that the renault engines are running detuned (reliability for testing i think), mercedes most likely knows this and can see this from the GPS traces, therefore the red bulls are most likely quicker than they appear.
The story continues... How unpredictable.MtthsMlw wrote: ↑09 Mar 2018, 13:34As I speculated yesterday
AMuS: (article shortened)Fuel saving slows down Ferrari
Vettel already did "Lift and Coast" in the first stint. In the second and third he had to slow down even more. Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas were also left under their possibilities. Kevin Magnussen's lap times fluctuated with increasing distance. Because he had to let his car roll towards the curves more and more often. This cooled down the tyres, which again cost lap time.
There are other reasons why consumption was so high during these winter test drives. The cool temperatures, the new asphalt that provided more grip and endurance runs with less traffic. "In the race, the others set your pace. You're always slower on the road," the Mercedes engineers tell us.
The Longruns show that Mercedes continues to have advantages in this discipline. Already last year, the Silver Arrow pilots had to take 10 kilograms less fuel on board than Ferrari. Renault was usually somewhere in between. Apparently, nothing has changed.
Valtteri Bottas only slowed down in the last lap in the last stint. Then the lap time increased from 1.19.7 to 1.21.9 minutes. With Sebastian Vettel it was reversed. Three 1.21er times followed at the end a lap with 1.19,9 minutes. This suggests that more would have been possible if the high fuel consumption hadn't slowed down the Ferrari drivers so much. It wouldn't have been enough to catchBottas, though. The Finn drove 13 of the last 18 laps under the mark of 1.20 minutes.
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