Official: Testing Thread

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Lewis Hamilton described his first day of running in the 2012 McLaren as "all positive so far" - expressing his cautious satisfaction with the speed of the car and his relief that it was proving much more reliable than the 2011 model had at this stage.

Hamilton seems to think the McLaren is a bit twitchy but after 3 days he seems happy with the base he's been given to fine tune with the engineers.
 
They all sound fairly cagey. I imagine almost everyone has a car which is worse than last year, so a driver's hardly likely to step out and be thrilled by the way things have gone.
 
Another tweet from Ted:

@tedkravitz said:
And Lewis Hamilton says his McLaren is missing high speed downforce, describes Red Bull and Lotus as 'quick' and 'impressive'.
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Got to love the speculation testing causes ;)
 
AbsolutelyGlorious said:
They all sound fairly cagey. I imagine almost everyone has a car which is worse than last year, so a driver's hardly likely to step out and be thrilled by the way things have gone.
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The only teams who sound very positive are Force India (well until today) and Caterham
 
I know this is just about the only opportunity for test drivers to get a chance to drive the car, but using them certainly isn't helping the teams. Bianchi crashed early on meaning Force India in effect missed out on a whole day of testing, a shame given their very promising last couple of days. Then van der Garde in the Caterham also spun off towards the end too. At this early stage, I think the race drivers should be doing the driving- or experienced test drivers.
 
Stephen Lickorish said:
I know this is just about the only opportunity for test drivers to get a chance to drive the car, but using them certainly isn't helping the teams. Bianchi crashed early on meaning Force India in effect missed out on a whole day of testing, a shame given their very promising last couple of days. Then van der Garde in the Caterham also spun off towards the end too. At this early stage, I think the race drivers should be doing the driving- or experienced test drivers.
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But Surely as a 'Test' driver who will spend a lot of time on simulators and such, They will be the guys doing a lot of work behind the scenes so they will need the real time experiance and give some usefull feedback to a team. Of course their inexperiance is a risk of trashing the car. better now than like Chandhok in Aus.
 
North North Watford said:
I remember Eddie Irvine summarising his Jag a few years ago, saying it felt perfect and was still slow. He said that this was worse than handling like a dog and being slow, because at least in that situation you know there are quick wins to be found.
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This <ok> how do you fix a car there is nothing seemingly wrong with. Could it even be simple aerodynamics, that lego step up looks like it really would be affecting the car's drag coefficient without the downforce gain. Aerodynamically inefficient should we say
 
Personally I think, the term 'test driver' is a little out-dated, due to the fact they don't really test the cars these days, although the feedback from 3 drivers is better than 2 (I guess), they are really all rookie reserves.
 
I don't know what to make of the lotus. Is it quick, or is everyone else just taking it easy? Shades of last pre-season, with Williams looking good, and ending up being terrible.
 
Many of them are playing games. Who's showing off and who's teabagging is anyone's guess, right now. Others will just be knuckling down to serious preparation. How can we know?

Personally, I hope Lotus come good. And Force India, Mercedes, Williams and Caterham too.
 
MaxWhiplash said:
Many of them are playing games. Who's showing off and who's teabagging is anyone's guess, right now. Others will just be knuckling down to serious preparation. How can we know?

Personally, I hope Lotus come good. And Force India, Mercedes, Williams and Caterham too.
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I think you mean sandbagging. :grin:
 
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