Seemed to be Lotus are struggling with the tyres at the start, but pick up at the middle point. They seem 0.2 a lap faster on race pace in the middle and are able to stick in the 28 mark for longer while RBR are in the low 29's-30's for the majority. RBR middle stint doesn't look as strong as Lotus' but at the end for Mark he looked quicker when they were pretty light. If you divided the race pace distance into quarters I see it like this: 1/4: RBR 2/4: Lotus 3/4: Lotus 4/4: RBR Would fit into the concept that RBR like to pull away early in the race then hold the gap and be able to qualify high up. Lotus not very fast in qualifying spec but get their speed in the race and tyre wear.
Why do teams bother hiding their true pace? What possible advantage does it give them, except giving gullible others a false sense of optimism? Surely everyone in the pitlane know exactly who's pushing and who isn't...? If Red Bull went out and blew everyone away, what's it going to do that blowing them away in Melbourne won't? If the teams aren't trying to get as much pace as possible anyway, then they've got no business being in F1.
tgruener: #F1 Best sector times of #Barcelona day 3: S1: 22.745 - Grosjean | S2: 30.747 - Alonso | S3: 28.203 - Hulkenberg - Ideal lap: 1:21.695min Compared to yesterday: S1: 22.774s (Raikkonen) - S2: 30.774s (Vettel) - S3: 28.207s (Perez) - Combined: 1:21.755 Min.
In the sky preview last year I seem to remember them last year looking quite smug with a device they were using that listened to the cars as they go past and they recon they could get an idea of how hard they are pushing and how heavy they were running. They were either bullshitting or they do know more than they lead on
ESPN F1 ‏@ESPNF1 Button on tyres: "This year it's more of a fair playing field. The tyres are easier to understand" (but not make last) Button: "I really wish tomorrow was dry because there's so much work still to do" Button: "At the moment there's no team that stands out to me as being superior" Button: "It's been a very tricky few test days for me ... sometimes the car feels good and sometimes it doesn't"
ESPN F1 ‏@ESPNF1 Button: "It's been a very tricky few test days for me ... sometimes the car feels good and sometimes it doesn't" Oh oooo?
So Lotus look to be pretty good under heavy breaking and medium speed? RBR and Ferrari with high speed with Sauber and McLaren with slow speed + mechanical grip?
Looks that way, but I'll also add that Autosport's trackside observations said that Lotus, Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes all looked closely matched in the first sector, meaning that even though Lotus seem to be ahead in that area for now, the other four teams also appear to be strong in braking and medium speed.
Good read from a guy on autosport: QUOTE (Seanspeed @ Feb 21 2013, 09:17) I had miscounted the first time. He completed a full 66 laps, not 65. An analysis is going to be difficult for the race sims. Bottas only completed 47 laps, so I checked up to that point to see where they stood after 47 laps. Grosjean and Webber had pitted 3 times by then, while Bottas had only done 2 stops. I added 21 seconds for each pitstop. So: Webber had a time of 61:18.3. Grosjean's time was 61:14.1, so about 4 seconds ahead of Webber. Bottas came in at a pretty poor 64:59.3, which would have him lapped twice already. I double checked the count cuz this seemed awfully slow, but it checked out. If we go to lap 50, right before Webber pits for his presumably last stop, Grosjean was ahead by 7.5 seconds. What I gather from all this is that Lotus and the Red Bull seemed awfully comparable. There's no telling what would have happened for the last 16 laps, but the pace Lotus was showing was definitely impressive and I see no reason to think the Red Bull would have suddenly clawed back the advantage, although it wouldn't be impossible. Webber and Grosjean were both on 4 stoppers, so that wouldn't have factored into it much. I wouldn't go making any conclusions here. Teams will use these race sims to see where they can adjust their strategy, the driving and the setup in order to improve their 66-lap race performance, so on another day, things might turn out different. I also dont know the state of the tires they used, which can have a noticeable effect. But yea, it looks as if the Lotus is pretty impressive, if we can use Red Bull as any sort of benchmark. He misses that Webber had his last run compromised but I'll update it when he does but it looks to be 4-5 seconds ahead of RBR on race pace, but Mark all used Mediums so the data it slightly screwed since Grosjean used a set of Hards.
