2018 pre-season testing thread

[Vasconia]

Australia may not show the 100% real pecking order but if Mercedes is dominant here I could say that the season is over.

[TAG]

Australia may not show the 100% real pecking order but if Mercedes is dominant here I could say that the season is over.

Bottas would immidiately gain an incredible number of fans here.

[Vasconia]

Australia may not show the 100% real pecking order but if Mercedes is dominant here I could say that the season is over.

Bottas would immidiately gain an incredible number of fans here.

In times of desperation you know...

[dans79]

Australia may not show the 100% real pecking order but if Mercedes is dominant here I could say that the season is over.

Bottas would immidiately gain an incredible number of fans here.

Something very sad and troubling about that.

[McHonda]

Australia may not show the 100% real pecking order but if Mercedes is dominant here I could say that the season is over.

Bottas would immidiately gain an incredible number of fans here.

Something very sad and troubling about that.

Really? Seems pretty obvious to me if there's only one team that can win and within that team there is a gulf in class between the drivers, then then underdog will attract more fans than he usually does. Otherwise if it's title fights you enjoy, why bother to tune in?

I'd find it bizarre if Ferrari or McLaren were dominant and Kimi and Stoff didn't get a boost of people wanting them to at least make a fight of it with their star team mates.

[dans79]

Really? Seems pretty obvious to me if there's only one team that can win and within that team there is a gulf in class between the drivers, then then underdog will attract more fans than he usually does. Otherwise if it's title fights you enjoy, why bother to tune in?

In my opinion, usually the best "racing" doesn't happen at the sharp end of the grid. The mid-field battles are usually far more entertaining. The cars strengths and weaknesses fluctuate more from track to track and team to team, yielding more actual racing.

IMO if it's an intra-team battle for the WDC fans don't seem to root for the drivers they like, but against the driver they don't. Xenophobia and childishness always seem to rear their ugly heads, and that's what I find sad.

[McHonda]

Really? Seems pretty obvious to me if there's only one team that can win and within that team there is a gulf in class between the drivers, then then underdog will attract more fans than he usually does. Otherwise if it's title fights you enjoy, why bother to tune in?

In my opinion, usually the best "racing" doesn't happen at the sharp end of the grid. The mid-field battles are usually far more entertaining. The cars strengths and weaknesses fluctuate more from track to track and team to team, yielding more actual racing.

IMO if it's an intra-team battle for the WDC fans don't seem to root for the drivers they like, but against the driver they don't. Xenophobia and childishness always seem to rear their ugly heads, and that's what I find sad.

Personally I agree about the better racing further down the grid and that's what I'm looking forward too fwiw but I don't think people rooting for one of the only two drivers that can win means they're doing it for those reasons if Bottas gains support.

I'm sure some are but those rooting for an underdog or just those who only like the battles at the front and have no interest in watching Lewis stroll to 21 wins in a row will far outweigh them. Not having a battle at the front makes the Sport look bad no matter who's at the front and I think unfortunately we are in the minority of people who are just as happy watching battles for 6th as we are watching a battle for 1st. I think most want to see fights at the front and if you're not a Lewis fan then it doesn't leave a lot of choice for who you want to win in a dominant Mercedes scenario.

Only some of 1 portion of the entire F1 fan base will be happy with Lewis dominating so it still makes sense to me if his only rival then gets some added support from the overwhelming majority of F1 fans who are left watching with their guy/team not in the mix at the front. (Not that he'd get mine, I'd want Lewis to win in this scenario).

[LM10]

Australia may not show the 100% real pecking order but if Mercedes is dominant here I could say that the season is over.

That's a pretty pessimistic way of looking at it. The season is long - 21 races. There are so many aspects which could change things. Why do you think that the season would be over if Mercedes dominated Melbourne?

It will depend on the amount of development each team will do. Mercedes didn't change their concept. Their car is a quite developed one already. If we consider that the concept is the same and that Mercedes already developed their car throughout whole last season you might tell that they probably will not do as big steps as Ferrari and RBR making their car faster.

Of course, Ferrari and RBR also didn't do a completely new car design, but you can tell that they did a more radical evolution (at least optic-wise).
Speaking for Ferrari, I think there is much more potential/performance in the SF71H than there was in the SF70H at this period of time last year. However, they struggle to unleash it yet. It could be true that the SF71H is more of a diva now, just like Mercedes last year.

Out of an article (https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/feat ... -year.html) on the official F1-homepage:

"It’s clear from testing that while the car looks quick and shows great potential, the team do not yet know how to get the best out of it."
"As Ferrari battle to understand their car, the early gap to Mercedes could balloon. But once they get on top of it, the ultimate gains could be big."
This sentence is interesting as well: "There’s a genuine air of confidence sweeping through the halls of Maranello right now."

I might be wrong with all things I've written and we will see another year of Mercedes driving in cruise control upfront. But I really hope it's gonna be an exciting season with an unknown world champion until last races.

[TAG]

It's the responsibility of other teams to catch up, not the responsibility of the lead team to slow down. Just this decade, we've had 2011, 2013, 2015 with zero in the way of competition for the lead. Let's not even talk about the early part of the previous decade. So I think F1 fans have a lot of experience watching runaway seasons. More than they recall.

[SparkyAMG]

Australia may not show the 100% real pecking order but if Mercedes is dominant here I could say that the season is over.

That's a pretty pessimistic way of looking at it. The season is long - 21 races. There are so many aspects which could change things. Why do you think that the season would be over if Mercedes dominated Melbourne?

Perhaps because Australia has been a bogus track - relatively - for Mercedes over the past few seasons and dominance here would suggest a larger performance delta than last year and 2016.

However I wouldn't necessarily agree with that view... because the one concept that Mercedes has definitely changed for 2018 is its approach to tyre management / suspension geometry, and as such I don't expect that we'll see the usual 'struggle' on street tracks compared to high speed circuits.

[vanburin]

It's the responsibility of other teams to catch up, not the responsibility of the lead team to slow down. Just this decade, we've had 2011, 2013, 2015 with zero in the way of competition for the lead. Let's not even talk about the early part of the previous decade. So I think F1 fans have a lot of experience watching runaway seasons. More than they recall.

2014 was also practically a run away. The only reason the championship went to the final race was due to the bogus double points scoring at Abu Dhabi. I believe Lewis won 11 races that year, with Nico picking up the lion's share of 2nd places. This just further reinforces your point, a single driver/team dominating Formula 1 has certainly been the norm rather than the exception going back the past 15-20 years or so.

[Sieper]

It is both a shame and a blessing. On one hand you want to see the most innovative (or shall we say (if we want to look at it negatively) the teams who spent the most in a capable way) teams reap the rewards, and next to this you want the best drivers to earn a seat at the best team, like Hamilton at Mercedes). On the other hand we also saw Nico have a seat (I personally feel Nico is a very good driver (imho worthy of his Merc seat) but not up to the world beating standards of Lewis) and now even Bottas (who I regard below Nico) having that seat and being able to get results which are not due to his driving skills but rather the politics of this seat faling to him and him beating the likes of DannyRic or MaxVerstappen which I feel are both better then he is.

And on the other hand we would like to see more competition without it becoming a standardized series, which is not what F1 is about (to me).

[PhillipM]

Australia may not show the 100% real pecking order but if Mercedes is dominant here I could say that the season is over.

That's a pretty pessimistic way of looking at it. The season is long - 21 races. There are so many aspects which could change things. Why do you think that the season would be over if Mercedes dominated Melbourne?

Because generally Melbourne is one of the weakest races for Merc's car philosophy, and with everyone finding their way with setup it usually means there's a fight for the lead even if Merc looks fast - if they are dominant here it's very worrying.

[Vasconia]

Australia may not show the 100% real pecking order but if Mercedes is dominant here I could say that the season is over.

That's a pretty pessimistic way of looking at it. The season is long - 21 races. There are so many aspects which could change things. Why do you think that the season would be over if Mercedes dominated Melbourne?

Because generally Melbourne is one of the weakest races for Merc's car philosophy, and with everyone finding their way with setup it usually means there's a fight for the lead even if Merc looks fast - if they are dominant here it's very worrying.

That was exactly my point.

[Brenton]

Really? Seems pretty obvious to me if there's only one team that can win and within that team there is a gulf in class between the drivers, then then underdog will attract more fans than he usually does. Otherwise if it's title fights you enjoy, why bother to tune in?

In my opinion, usually the best "racing" doesn't happen at the sharp end of the grid. The mid-field battles are usually far more entertaining. The cars strengths and weaknesses fluctuate more from track to track and team to team, yielding more actual racing.

IMO if it's an intra-team battle for the WDC fans don't seem to root for the drivers they like, but against the driver they don't. Xenophobia and childishness always seem to rear their ugly heads, and that's what I find sad.

Yeah, sports have always been a mostly harmless outlet for our tribalistic emotions. F1 is good in that you don't see disgusting fan behavior nearly as often as some other sports like football.

I used to ignore the midfield but it's more fun to focus on it, true. TV coverage used to be worse in Motorsports, (with Nascar being an exception) and in f1 it's easier now to keep track of the midfield battles. This year might have the tightest midfield ever outside of the end of the v8 era , or am I looking at the test times wrongly?