It does look a bit 'basic' but we can't really see the area's where Newey weaves his magic. As to the livery, it's pretty much the same as years before, it would look better if the blue was a few shades lighter imo.
We're under way!! Surprises so far, well not that many. Merc, Ferrari and Williams setting the initial pace, Haas having a few teething troubles (front wing falling off............), but McLaren have managed to get some decent laps in on the car .
Shame sauber couldn't bring a 2016 car. Would have been the first complete test for a while if they did. Obviously they didn't hire enough drivers.
The pace isn't great, but they are not using the definitive 2016 engine yet. Allegedly they are using a bespoke engine which is effectively the 2015 unit with the necessary fundemental redesign - this will evolve over the next test and up to Australia.
Early days still here today- Merc reliability once again absolutely class of the field. Ferrari I believe are pretty good- I think those two are a good bit clear as you would expect but no one is pushing to the limit. Honda are a couple of steps behind them and they will look to some phased progression throughout the 8 days. Massive day for them today though banking over 80 laps- that will be vital data for them given what they are developing PU wise. Will be interesting to see their progress- hopefully they can build a reliable PU this year. Would be interested to hear JBs thoughts on the energy deployment today.
http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/24...-welcomes-big-step-forward-from-mclaren-honda Deployment "so much better"- but concedes he doesn't know how it feels to other teams but that it's a big step forward. Important for them that there is some clear progress though. He says it's hard to rate the overall power because this is not the engine that they will go to Melbourne with- upgrades on the way to test. Let's hope they are reliable and another step forward. One bit at a time.
I've had to laugh at the complete bollocks spouted by Rachel Brookes on SkySports today. Absolute complete and utter bias. Sensationalist diatribe. She said that McLaren Honda had 'promised massive horsepower gains' and'the promises of time they would close up on their rivals' but had 'lagged' behind 2 seconds off the pace on soft tyres. What a load of nonsense. They never said that, the media invented those promises, and she knows no fuel loads. She can **** off and educate herself. What a woeful broadcaster of F1 they have been given their resource. McHonda could never in a million years have come out today and gone to Merc level out of the box. All day long SkySports ran with the headline 'Vettel tops times from long-running Hamilton while McLaren remain on the back foot'- are you kidding me?! This is a team that did 6 laps last year and was approximately 160hp behind in ERS alone, yet have returned in the FIRST session of the winter with an ERS that works and one that can do 84 laps- albeit not all in one go- and is bang in the mix with everyones lap counts bar the World Champions themselves. Forget the performance at this stage- that will get added once they prove reliability. I'd love it, love it beyond words if MCHonda went and slammed their poster boy Lewis and Mercedes and shut all of them and the critics up. Sadly it might not be until next year. But I am fuming, fuming beyond words that just one day into testing Sky have manipulated the actual events of the day to fit their headline grabbing style.
Whilst McLaren and Honda do deserve a lot of criticism for their performance (or lack of) to date, I agree that these headlines quotes are misguided and unwarranted - at this stage.
I reckon McLaren will surprise a lot of people, they are being panned unfairly based on day one of testing but if they have sorted their big weak area then they'll be relatively ok. The times aren't even close to representative on day 1 for any team, especially McHonda when you consider their whole powertrain has had to effectively be redesigned and they will need to play about with fine tuning a lot of the mapping for the new configuration. There's not a hope in hell they were running anything even close to full power out the box, nobody will but they are more likely than anyone to have ran it in the lowest mode purely and/pr heavy with fuel to check systems work and spot any fundamental weaknesses before they slowly turn it up. What the hell do the media think it says for Renault if they deem McLaren bad, when they were near 5 seconds slower than McHonda and broke down? The fact the McLaren was a second faster than last years Sauber (a car that is proven and should have been running on more than low power) and less than half a second off the new Force India (which again is just an evolution of last years car and should also have been getting ran harder) on the same tyres is actually mildly impressive.... as is the fact they did more laps than Ferrari, WIlliams, Force India, Toro Rosso etc. Basically, terrible journalism.
Agreed gents- if they cant string a race together and they're being lapped then fine, pan them, but I don't think they realise the magnitude of what Honda are attempting here. If someone would have said to me that Honda would do 84 laps today I'd have had severe doubts given they have only McLaren to use data from- so I agree that mildly impressive is somewhere where I would badge their performance today, in the context of where they are starting from.
