http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/93096 Do we agree with Todt - could this lead to suspicions that he is trying to give his old team Ferrari an advantage? Predictably I wouldn't mind to see in-season testing, but I would like to see it done in a more controlled way with limitations so it prevents some teams from gaining bigger advantages due to greater facilities (like Ferrari's Fiorano Circuit for example). Todt makes a good point about young drivers as well - and it would stop current F1 drivers gaining unfair advantages. Already teams are bending the rules to give themselves and advantage - like Renault's rear facing exhausts at a recent demonstration and then there was Neel Jani's tweet about high speed cornering when Red Bull were supposed to be doing straight line tests. Anyone in favour of in-season testing?
Good article Forza. Considering your pseudonym and the fact that you've highlighted the Todt/Ferrari relationship as potentially advantageous to the latter, you've presented it in a very unbiased manner; something others could take note from. (I'll try to +Rep you if again if this odd site allows me.) In-season testing is something we need to go back to very carefully. In my opinion, it needs to be wholly focussed on new (not necessarily young) drivers who have never competed in F1, and needs to be done in such a way as to ensure no disadvantage to less well-financed teams. In essence, it is a good idea to be looking at this again, and in this instance - at least as things stand at the moment - I will give the benefit of doubt that Todt is not readdressing this in deference to Ferrari. I repeat, this is a good article; it should make for good debate.
I think limited testing should be reintroduced to allow Pirelli to develop their tyres on more up to date cars.
I think extra training oppurtunities for inexperienced drivers is no bad thing at all. They could indeed coincide it with helping pirrelli Put 1 or 2 sessions on a monday or thursday for pirelli to develop thier tyres on current cars and put non-race drivers in the cars.
One way to stop teams from gaining too much of an advantage would be to restrict testing to non-Grand Prix venues only. But I think testing is an excellent way for fans to get a taste of F1 action for the fraction of the price of a race ticket.
The problem with no testing is that it basically allows the team who starts best to keep an advantage, and some form of testing would allow othe teams to attempt to close the gap! It is often the case TVA the teams with innovative design that works at the beginning of the season, ( brawn, red bull) will often hold that advantage, because It is very difficult for other teams to introduce a new technology that they have no design research on without testing the new parts! I would suggest that mid season break should allow teams to test as much as they want at set testing venues, to allow teams to logistically benefit from choosing types of tracks to evalulate their cars progress! It would potentially bring struggling cars back into the fold come the second part of the season! One concession I would make, is that test drivers and rookie drivers would have to be used along side the established drivers to allow development of tamest!
I think it should be exclusivly young rookie drivers who do the testing. and maybe limit test miles depending on championship order at the time
I don't agree that the testing ban favours those who start the year with the best car. Whilst it is true that if testing came back, it would allow slower teams the facility to play catch up, it would also mean that the leading team would have more opportunity to add performance and maintain their established gap to the slower cars so it would all even out! McLaren had no testing in 2009 and they still went from the back of the grid to the front. Conversely, Brawn went from the front to fighting for the lower points. The racing and spectacle of the sport wasn't affected in the slightest by the ban so I see no reason for bringing it back in that regard. The only good reason I can think of for bringing it back is to a) give reserve/test drivers some mileage in the cars and b) to provide spectators with the chance to experience F1 cars without having to pay through the nose on GP weekends. Maybe 3 or 4 prearranged group test days, spaced throughout the year would be ok, provided they use test drivers for at least 2 of them at each teams choosing.
This is true to some extent. The reason is that during the winter months radical developments can be made with the possibility to steal a march on the others, since new and radical ideas benefit from practical testing. Obviously this gives potential for a team to arrive at the first race with a significant advantage, with any such device reasonably well worked out and incorporated into the design philosophy. Other teams may then quickly catch on but do not have the capacity to run the tests which the first car benefited from and may find themselves unable to adapt their original design. It is therefore a significant advantage to get things sorted before race 1. If in season testing is allowed, developments for the trend-setter will usually be relatively small tweaks to what they already have, since it will be quite well honed already, whereas the other teams can begin to catch-up by making the more fundamental changes which have already been worked through by the trend-setter. I hope this makes sense Westy.
As far as I'm concerned, if you come up with a concept which is more effective than everyone else's you deserve to carry that advantage for a while. I believe the current restriction on testing rewards good engineering, whereas in the days of unlimited testing the richer teams could get away with ineptitude by adopting a haphazard trial and error approach. This is probably why the FIA are so keen to bring testing back. I won't go as far as suggesting they're trying to favour Ferrari or anyone else, but under the current RRA which also limits CFD and windtunnel hours it plays massively into the hands of Adrian Newey, something Frank Williams alluded to last season.
Yes, I think there's some truth in that too AG. Going back to the logic of who benefits most from testing, development of a car or any of its parts is not a linear process but logarithmic. i.e. the biggest steps are made early in its development, with little to do the closer it gets to achieving its optimum. We can use the analogy of a car accelerating. Its top speed can be considered the equivalent of an optimum in development. From zero, a car accelerates hard, very rapidly gaining speed over others that are standing still, but as more and more speed is developed it becomes ever more difficult to accelerate, until eventually a top speed is reached. As soon as the others get started, also being limited to their top speed, they can never catch up but will still be accelerating whilst the leader tops out, and will eventually be able to keep pace, albeit slightly behind.
Bah, tosh! What do you know Cosi! Who do you think you are? A race driver/instructor or something!?! Oh, wait...
AG and Cos Those are my thoughts and probably slightly better explained than my statement. I am nit for open testing, but controlled point mid season allowing certain teams to readdress the balance whils giving some experience to other drivers! I do think the art of developing cars should not just be from the smooth lines of drawing board, but the arse and vision of theraving driver who has to live with it for the rest of the season! May I also point out, that with no form of testing or resource to develope or copy the front runners, back of the grid teams will always be running 1 and 2 year old designs and stand no chance of actually making a race of it! Gone are the days when a team like Jordan or Arrows have a WDC in their car and almost win ( Hungry) and win ( Spa) against bigger teams, budgets and better drivers! Sahme on the sport that Virgin etc really are just mobile advertising boards and slow ones at that!
I think that if they do bring in some in-season testing then it should only be young/test/reserve drivers who carry it out.
This Someone like Ricciardo would benefit enormously from this. If a driver gets injured then drivers who have less running will be at a significant disadvantage, look at Algersuari in 2008(?) or Badoer
I just think that Badoer was a mistake, full stop. He was rubbish when he had a full time seat, he was rubbish as a test driver, and he was rubbish as a replacement.
The current system of allowing "Promotional Filming Days" and the like annoys me, because clearly teams are using them as a testing opportunity. The bigger teams are more in demand for advertising, so get more of these opportunities, which I don't think is really fair. I feel that if they wish to maintain the current "ban" on in-season testing, then there should be a ruling on what they can use for promo days. Whatever they run, they'll pick up data from it, even if you give them completely different tyres and limit them to half-revs, as they can compare different parts side by side, whatever the conditions. So the only way I see of preventing the teams from using these filming days as unorthodox testing days, is for an FIA official to be present at each filming day, and personally delete any data collected before the teams have the chance to take it away and analyse it. Any team found transmitting this data to circumvent this should be penalised, in my opinion by losing the right to have these filming days. Alternatively, if you allow testing, it has to be fair to all teams, and I feel the best way to achieve this is to have a set number of tests, ideally on the monday/tuesday after race weekends when there is a fortnight to the next race. It minimises set up cost, and would give all the teams equal opportunities. Based on this years calendar, feasibly tests could be held at Shanghai or Istanbul, Montreal, Silverstone or Nurburgring, Spa or Monza, or one of the last 4 races. 5 2-day tests throughout the year would be good in my opinion, especially if only test-drivers, or drivers with no F1 experience, were allowed to take part, then these tests would be of maximum benefit to everyone concerned. I know I've only recycled idea presented by Cosi and a few others, but I'd really like to see something done about this before next season, especially the "promo filming days" loophole.
