F1 2019 Pre-Season Testing Thread

[Big Mangalhit]

Just went faster Bottas on C2, 18.356

Maybe Merc is not that bad after all...

4-lap stint.
number of laps-stint is equally important than final time presently

So, the number of laps is a direct reflection of the fuel being carried? If that is the reference, then Leclerc was ONLY carrying 30 Kgs on the lap that he got 1m18.0xx. Right? With every 2.5kgs of fuel equlalling a tenth of a second, with 3 lap worth of fuel required for a proper quali run, that Ferrari can ONLY make 1m17.0xx on C3! If you extrapolate the gap between C3 to C5, which could be around a second, then 1m16.000 is all that Ferrari can do on C5. Knowing that the track performs better in the cooler conditions of the Winter and cars go slower in Summer, that might be slightly slower for a proper race qualifying. And that means, SF90 can't beat last year's pole time! Yeah.

But I am sure, there is so much more different. All I want to say is, it doesn't matter how many laps a car does on their fast run, that is not a direct reflection of the fuel the car is carrying.

I know damn well it is not your point. You just wanted to show fast times don't mean much. But just as a reminder. Nobody could do last year pole two laps in a row. Poles are done by starting with full b82rez and deploying all energy to finish with empty juice. These fast laps of Ferrari are sometimes back to back which shows is not quali mode obviously. Ofc Merc is just doing their own program. I think we will have a better idea next week when. Teams run race simulations and we get longer more consistent times to try to compare. But anybody who discards the 5 times in a row winner mercedes is a big big fool. They are still favourites. Also the ham effect is Hella strong. I even wish he has a slower car the same way as I always root for him to qualify behind rosberg. He is much more entertaining when he faces obstacles

[Phil]

I've barely any interest in testing lap times and I haven't even looked at the long runs for 2019 but I'd be willing to put money down that, over the course of the season, Red Bull will be good on aero heavy tracks, and Ferrari and Mercedes will be the top two constructors. Oh, and Williams will finish last.

If you think testing is irrelevant and you barely have any interest in it, what are you doing in this very thread? Some of us actually enjoy the speculation and go through a lot of effort, finding and quoting/sharing input from people who are actually on track and see how the cars are behaving through various corners and speak to the teams. Lap times aren't much, especially without the proper context, and yet, it's all we have to speculate on anything. That, and various interviews and comments.

I think it's fairly obvious and predictable that Mercedes, Ferrari and RedBull will be in a league of their own. Beyond that however, half the fun of pre-season testing is getting a feel on how close each of these teams stack up to one another. Doesn't mean we will be able to predict pole times on this very track on completely different temperature conditions at a very different time of the year. No one is actually doing that, nor is it needed to form any basis for an educated guess on what the pecking order could be.

[motobaleno]

But anybody who discards the 5 times in a row winner mercedes is a big big fool. They are still favourites. Also the ham effect is Hella strong. I even wish he has a slower car the same way as I always root for him to qualify behind rosberg. He is much more entertaining when he faces obstacles

I completely agree with these considerations

[muramasa]

I was in barcellona in 2018 and I was on the forum and the common sense was far from what you say now...ON THE AVERAGE people thought that mercedes was far ahead.

Really? Last year as well Mercedes sank low in lap time in winter testings and some or quite a few people thought Merc went too conservative and surpassed by Ferrari. There is no way people "on average" thought mercedes was "far ahead", you are just remembering wrong, bit time.

https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433 ... er-testing
https://www.crash.net/f1/results/891459 ... ed-results

The fastest laps of winter testing per team (2018)
Team Driver Date Tyre Time
Ferrari Sebastian Vettel Day Seven Hypersofts 1:17.182
McLaren Fernando Alonso Day Eight Hypersofts 1:17.784
Red Bull Daniel Ricciardo Day Six Hypersofts 1:18.047
Renault Carlos Sainz Day Eight Hypersofts 1:18.092
Haas Kevin Magnussen Day Seven Supersofts 1:18.360
Toro Rosso Pierre Gasly Day Seven Hypersofts 1:18.363
Mercedes Lewis Hamilton Day Six Ultrasofts 1:18.400
Force India Esteban Ocon Day Eight Hypersofts 1:18.967
Sauber Charles Leclerc Day Eight Hypersofts 1:19.118
Williams Sergey Sirotkin Day Eight Softs 1:19.189

[motobaleno]

I was in barcellona in 2018 and I was on the forum and the common sense was far from what you say now...ON THE AVERAGE people thought that mercedes was far ahead.

Really? Last year as well Mercedes sank low in lap time in winter testings and some or quite a few people thought Merc went too conservative and surpassed by Ferrari. There is no way people "on average" thought mercedes was "far ahead", you are just remembering wrong, bit time.

I thought my considerations were clear but maybe my english is too poor: anyway my considerations refer to the time before and during first days of testing and I confirm that.
your reports are after the whole testing.

[qatmix]

Bottas just did an 1:18.1 on his 16th lap of a stint on C2 tyres

[JPBD1990]

The most sensible view so far, unsurprisingly by someone who might know a thing or two and isn’t just an armchair critic.

Leclerc:
"They are probably not pushing and we are not either."

“It’s difficult because I’ve only driven the car twice and not many laps. But it feels good. The balance feels good. As Seb said, it doesn’t feel like a new car it already feels like it’s a quite established car.

"But the other teams are sandbagging, we need to see where they are.”

Cool? Cool

[F1Fan2018]

The most sensible view so far, unsurprisingly by someone who might know a thing or two and isn’t just an armchair critic.

Leclerc:
"They are probably not pushing and we are not either."

“It’s difficult because I’ve only driven the car twice and not many laps. But it feels good. The balance feels good. As Seb said, it doesn’t feel like a new car it already feels like it’s a quite established car.

"But the other teams are sandbagging, we need to see where they are.”

Cool? Cool

agree, He also added

"But the other teams are sandbagging, we need to see where they are."

[Just_a_fan]

As Leclerc says, everyone is hiding their position. Both Mercedes drivers doing near enough identical times again today, for example.

[motobaleno]

The most sensible view so far, unsurprisingly by someone who might know a thing or two and isn’t just an armchair critic.

Leclerc:
"They are probably not pushing and we are not either."

“It’s difficult because I’ve only driven the car twice and not many laps. But it feels good. The balance feels good. As Seb said, it doesn’t feel like a new car it already feels like it’s a quite established car.

"But the other teams are sandbagging, we need to see where they are.”

Cool? Cool

there have been many "views" from non armchair critics in the last hours...from marko, horner, wolf and others: on what basis you think that all the others are trolling and leclerc was genuinely true?
Besides leclerc says literally "they are not pushing and we are not either" so if these words are to be considered gold truth and postulating a first-order hypothesis of equal amount of "not pushing", we have that the present times (normalized for tyre compound) represent the pecking order?
you mean this?

[JPBD1990]

The most sensible view so far, unsurprisingly by someone who might know a thing or two and isn’t just an armchair critic.

Leclerc:
"They are probably not pushing and we are not either."

“It’s difficult because I’ve only driven the car twice and not many laps. But it feels good. The balance feels good. As Seb said, it doesn’t feel like a new car it already feels like it’s a quite established car.

"But the other teams are sandbagging, we need to see where they are.”

Cool? Cool

there have been many "views" from non armchair critics in the last hours...from marko, horner, wolf and others: on what basis you think that all the others are trolling and leclerc was genuinely true?
Besides leclerc says literally "they are not pushing and we are not either" so if these words are to be considered gold truth and postulating a first-order hypothesis of equal amount of "not pushing", we have that the present times (normalized for tyre compound) represent the pecking order?
you mean this?

I mean that I don’t know the pecking order, nor do you, nor does Leclerc. Horner, wolf, etc MAY know, but they also have vested interests in selling a story.

Toto loves to sell this idea that they’re the underdog, even though they’ve walked 10 championships in 5 years (arguably last year wasn’t a total cake walk but a double crown nonetheless). Imagine our surprise when we show up in Melbourne and the cars great! What an amazing news story!

Likewise redbull. Imagine if they show up on Melbourne and they’ve surpassed the amaaaazing pace set by Ferrari in testing.

These dudes are running businesses. That’s literally it. Every word they utter to the media is calculated by media advisors and strategists and interns, etc.

As Charles said, and I will say again. Nobody knows. I think the most annoying thing, though, is Mercedes and Ferrari fans (biggest culprits on both sides) antagonising each other constantly. Sooooooo tiresome.

[Jozsusz]

Bottas just did an 1:18.1 on his 16th lap of a stint on C2 tyres

Do you have the whole stint?
Also on which tyre he did his 17.9?

[santos]

Bottas just did an 1:18.1 on his 16th lap of a stint on C2 tyres

Do you have the whole stint?
Also on which tyre he did his 17.9?

C4

[F1Fan2018]

Bottas just did an 1:18.1 on his 16th lap of a stint on C2 tyres

Do you have the whole stint?
Also on which tyre he did his 17.9?

Think it was C4 from Autosport

[Sierra117]

I don't understand why Toto or any other team boss gets so much hate for not saying cocky things. From what I can see, they're keeping themselves humble because they have experience of how quickly things go bad (a la "party mode" comments). Plus, keeping an underdog mindset in a sport like this means your engineers are working towards a goal rather than thinking "nah this issue is fine, we can get back to it later, we've won all these championships so I'm sure we can figure it out". Keeping on your toes is a good thing and it has the dual benefit of keeping any breakthroughs a secret from other teams anyway.