More from Ted: “Just a few snippets from the pitlane. Sauber are debuting their double DRS rear wing stalling device today. It’s effectively a copy of the Lotus device, which takes air through little ‘ears’ either side of the roll hoop and diverts it through a fluid switch to blow underneath the rear wing mainplane, thus stalling the rear wing and cutting drag above a certain speed. The difficult thing, as Lotus have learned to their cost, is getting it to be consistent. You don’t want to stall the rear wing (and therefore lose rear downforce) when the car really needs it in a corner, but you do want to do it when it doesn’t i.e. on a straight. Anyway, Sauber are the latest team to pick up on this technology after Lotus and Mercedes. I wonder whether we’ll see the big teams try it now the rules on DRS use have tightened up. “Talking of Mercedes, they’ve just completed a back-to-back test on their new Coanda exhaust and the old non-Coanda, centrally-exiting exhaust, with which they ran for most of last year. Now there are two ways of looking at this: either it’s just necessary homework and rigorous scientific evaluation of how much they’re gaining by their new exhaust, or it’s that they still don’t know which is better and they want to try the old one out to see if it makes the car go faster. Let’s give Mercedes the benefit of the doubt and say it’s the former. But still, I haven’t seen any other teams with a Coanda exhaust testing their old spec. this winter. “And finally, Red Bull look like they’re preparing for something, perhaps a race simulation. Christian Horner has taken his place in the middle of the Red Bull pitwall and they’ve fuelled the car up yet again. Let’s see whether they go for a 60-lap run. This is Sebastian Vettel’s last day in the car at this test, so I’d be surprised if he didn’t want to try a race simulation before all the new parts arrive for the third and final test.” Seb still running with a lot of fuel.
If Red Bull are preparing for a race simulation does that mean they were doing qualifying simulations a few minutes ago?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/21519122 Benson had to do it when Hamilton was top of the timesheets! He couldn't help himself!
andrewbensonf1: Vettel comfortably quickest at moment, but he's doing a series of one-lap runs on soft tyres so you'd expect that. HAM 0.6s back on hards Must be a qualifying simulation
With you there mate, just looked as his past times, and he is going out and sprinting, and coming back in again like you said. Must be a Qual sim.
We are not even into the afternoon, honestly that man makes me sick. No need for journalism as bad as that. How and why he was employed is beyond me.
Looks like they're investigating how the tyres work at optimal range, IRBR said they were mostly focused on the tyres. Race simulation should be coming up though. They were seeing how the tyres operate (Soft-Medium-Hard) before he does this full race run, so I don't think they're as light as people would like to think as Ted says above; they keep topping him up with plenty of fuel.
I'm getting encouraged by Mercedes tbh. The lap times look fairly consistent and to be 0.6 behind Vettel on hard tyres is promising.
I think Mclaren are yet to show off their pace, but Mercedes do seem better than their first test I agree.
The times are good with the hard, but I feel teams are still learning more in respect with the medium and the soft tyres so the times will look like that until everybody gets an equal and general idea of the tyres with their new car. IRBR seem to be the only team not afraid to use all 3 compounds at the moment and still go pretty quick and not show much deg. I think Sauber are the only other team to use them all, unlike the rest of the grid who are focusing most of their efforts into the hard compound.
Oh McLaren are so f****** sandbagging it's becoming laughably obvious now. Do you see how quiet the media have been about them? there's like 0 interest in them... Just how they want it at this stage IMO, unlike Mercedes who has all the pressure of the media on them with about 50% of all the stories in general are about them. Slight interest with IRBR and Ferrari after that, followed by McLaren and Lotus as the quietest of the top 5.
I'm worried that things are looking too good. Vettel's hard times are 2 tenths slower than Hamilton's... He's only 7 tenths behind Vettel's Soft tyre run... So, sod's law states that Vettel has a bazillion gallons of fuel on board and Lewis is running on fumes. That 2 tenths up will inevitably translate into 8 tenths down. Looking at the coverage, the Red Bull is so well balanced, has better turn in, exit and ability to power on, I don't see anything coming close to it ... It just looks so easy to drive the damn thing! The Mclaren, to me, looks to be sandbagging the most, or else is completely terrible. While it's a completely different concept to the previous car, it still retains the same Mclaren-esque stiffness round corners and just seems heavy. Ferrari, while seemingly a bit more agile, looks more skittish than the Mclaren again. Still think that car looks heavy as well. My pecking order, in terms of lap-time- 1.Red Bull <vast nothingness> 2. Mclaren +0.5 seconds 3. Ferrari +0.6 seconds 4. Lotus +0.6 seconds 5. Mercedes +0.8 seconds 6. Sauber +1.0 seconds 7. Force India +1.3 seconds 8. Williams +1.5 seconds 9. Torro Rosso +1.6 seconds 10. Caterham +3.5 seconds 11. Marussia +4.5 seconds Not exactly putting myself out there, I know
So is this the right time to add Benson's logic that the soft tyre is in fact slower than the hard tyre by about 0.8-1sec? So Seb isn't 6 tenths faster than Lewis, he's 1.2 seconds a lap faster
Yeah man looking by the videos yesterday, that RB9 was SMMMMMOOOOOOOTHHHHHHHH!!! through the corners, no understeer, no oversteer, nothing! And by Ted's report yesterday Seb had a lot! of fuel onboard all day. Mercedes were on the limiter at the straight so it's "safe" to suggest Mercedes are pushing harder with regards to engine power or they were a lot lighter than most. Seb will do his first race run with the RB9, so a lot of interest will be coming his way. But if he starts doing 27's on average at the start I will laugh and not bother watching the season as it would already be game over maybe....
Love the Sky Sports focus of F1 compared with the BBC in the past, but I'm starting to get a bit stuffed on all the Mercedes talk going on. It's getting pretty bad with Ted making up conversations in his head now "Red Bull will now sit up an take notice". It's great they're trying hard for the majority of the British watchers, but not much is being spread about in my opinion and it's getting as bad as when they started with the coverage last year with about 80% of their coverage entirely focused on McLaren, Lewis and Button. Ok the focus on IRBR and Mercedes has improved, but it seems they're really lacking on Sauber, Williams, Ferrari, Lotus and even McLaren now. It's simple Sky, don't go down the ITV route and more people will watch....
