Guys opinion who was at Barcelona: Clearly not a day for times at the CdC, so throw them out the window. Williams and Red Bull practiced many pitstops, well in to double figures; varying degrees of success, each had some sticky wheel nut issues; but I believe Red Bull are now capable of consistent sub 3 second stops. I spotted David Croft doing some chit-chat to camera during the Red Bull practice. I think everyone today was throughly chilled to the bones, so I sign off from my four days at the CdC with this as my parting list of teams that are best to worst...: Best: Red Bull, McLaren, Lotus, Ferrari, Williams, Mercedes, Sauber, Force India, Toro Rosso, Marussia, Caterham: Worst
Well its nice to know a 'guys' opinion; I feared it would be a renowned analyst like James Allen or someone
I think the order looks like this: Red Bull Lotus Mclaren Ferrari Mercedes Sauber Williams Force India Toro Rosso Marussia Caterham
Silverarrow's video above... 15:03 - Mercedes 15:10 - Red Bull 15:13 - McLaren The RB didn't sound like it had to lift to make the corner. The Merc and McL did. Hmmm...
I also noticed in the video (5:06 onwards) that Mercedes were opening the DRS very early (right after turn 16) on the main straight where the likes of RBR and Lotus were opening it on the DRS activation line or slightly earlier which was about another 50-60m down the road. Force India looked like they weren't using DRS.
Yes, BriBau4: this Red Bull is glued to the track. It's easily the best car at the moment. It will be interesting to watch what I expect to be a close-run development battle throughout the season between Ferrari and McLaren but at this stage I cannot see either team challenging Newey's masterpiece. I know this might sound a bit OTT but when compared against relevant rivals, it looks every bit to be one of the best F1 cars ever! And after an extended period of stability in the regulations â when one logically expects differences in performance to become very small â this is really quite incredible. Everyone in F1 knows Newey's a genius, but really⦠(scratches head⦠)
High expectations then for the RB9, the team and drivers both seem quietly confident. I think they have an absolute rocket in their garage. Would not be surprised if it as perfect as the f2002 or f2004, as it is an evolution.
Yeah well the BBC were harping on about how fantastic the RB8 was until Australia when they found out it was barely the 5th best car on the grid (McLaren/Lotus/Mercedes/Sauber=Williams), so it's a bit early declaring RBR have the best car because of Newey being involved.
We have yet to see the real thing, but I reckon there are about 5-6 minor upgrades they added with Mark which we will likely see on Seb come the next test. Rear wing, bargeboard divider, floor, rear beam wing, S-duct tunnel, rear wing, hump under nose. (This is what I saw over the 2 whole tests Jerez/Barcelona that were put on and taken away quickly.)
Bloody whole bag of upgrades, well it looks to me they know what they are doing and where the car needs improving.
How good a car looks on track is not the same as it's outright performance, though there is a decent correlation there. Some teams and drivers have said that's it's too early to say what the pecking order is but have also said that no car stands out as dominant. Whoever has the fastest car only has a small advantage. All we really know is that the fastest car is not Sauber, Williams or Mercedes (Hulkenburg said Sauber couldn't match the race simulation times of Grosjean (and therefore Webber), Williams' race simulation was much slower than RB and Lotus, Hamilton said they still haven't recovered the deficit they had last year). No way do Red Bull have a rocketship. Lotus and Red Bull were equally matched in the race simulations!
A decent review from Sky: [video=youtube;BRfmrSuU6XU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=BRfmrSuU6XU[/video] I hate to say it but Sky are starting to win me over considering how much effort they're putting in. Just need to get rid of the plebs; (Slater, Lazenby, Hill) and replace them with somebody better like Karun and McNish. Would love to see somebody from the Ferrari vine in the team, just so Sky could get some better access to Ferrari, somebody like Alesi or Berger, hell even Schumacher could do it with the extra time now. From 13:24 you can see Jenson use DRS out of the main straight, so we now know teams will use it out of the DRS zone so qualifying times go out of the window now...
Esteban: Lotus and RBR are the most fluid: http://www.marca.com/2013/02/22/motor/formula1/1361532303.html
