Really impressed by the way Haas have started out, especially after the scoffing when they were first announced by certain idiots around the Internet. Do we think anything has changed over the winter though? Chances are that Merc will be put of the block first with Ferrari and Williams slugging away for second.
http://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/f1/10180215/teds-notebook-day-3-pre-season-testing 3:50 into this video.
Not a fan of the strange beard the car has sprouted under the nose between the wheels with vanes and slots in it. I'm sure it's very clever but it looks awful.
Have we spoken too soon on Mclaren reliability? 3 laps for Alonso so far today, versus 76 for Hamilton.
It's amazing how every year i take a pessimistic outlook on McLarens chances and then they still manage to do worse than i expected. It just never gets any better. Huge budget, works team, two of the best drivers in the sport and....backmarkers again. Happy days. Wonder if they'll beat Manor.
I didn't think they would be an HRT/Caterham/Virgin because of the way they sourced their parts, a junior team/partner compared to just a customer. As to if things have changed, hard to say at the sharp end, the Mercedes looks reliable running at a very conservative pace, if they want to drive it until it breaks like they're saying they do then they need to do the things that will stress it, like push it a bit. Ferrari have probably made a bit of a jump, butI'm looking forward to seeing what the Manor is like, at least in the hands of Wehrlein, he looks up to the job, so far this juror is out on Haryanto
Haryanto has spun off twice in two attempts so far so he's hardly putting in a good showing for himself. Shame about McLaren today, Ferrari seem unreliable to at the moment. The Kimi curse.
Have Mercedes run anything but the medium tyre yet? They've yet to run low fuel or full whack. I can't help but think that's not the most productive way to spend four of your eight days testing regardless of the number of laps they've done. What a waste of fuel and rubber.
I don't know. Using same tyres and different noses and other development parts or dev software will give you lots of data to directly compare. My guess is the performance work will be next week. I do agree though that they should test all available tyres to get the data they need for rest of season. I do hope Honda provide a very powerful, maybe not initially reliable PU but I would be surprised if they focused on performance over reliability. Their image took a hammering so while they need performance they need reliability as well.
Keeping their powder dry I suppose. I must admit now that they have the new nose and vanes I thought some high speed runs might be a good way of finding out how effective they are. Apparently not.
I've never really got all the "cloak and mirrors" stuff in testing and practice. Everyone's looking at Mercedes regardless of the times they set, I don't know why they'd compromise their program in attempt to conceal their pace, which is fooling nobody. The only time I could see value in it is if you were a lower grid team and had something innovative, or illegal, or barely legal, and didn't want to draw attention to it too early by setting blistering lap times in testing.
Maybe Merc concealing their true performance is more to do with negative publicity and 2017 rules negotiations.
