2012 Testing - Barcelona 2: 1 - 4 March

[SchumiSutil]

Though Schumi admitted yesterday that Mercedes needs some work to keep the soft tyres in shape as "other cars" are doing better.

[Mr.S]

Fry did admit, however, that one of the problems the team is facing is that the car tends to have a narrow performance window - where its form fluctuates dramatically as conditions change.

"We drop in and out of having a good balance or not, and that is something we are working on trying to understand still. Yesterday there were times when the car was good and times when it suddenly changed, and that is what we are trying to understand."

Ferrari evaluated a new front wing on Friday, which was not used for its race simulation run, and Fry said that more experiments were expected on its exhaust configuration, with the team having moved away from a more aggressive concept used at the last Barcelona test.

"It showed some good promise but after the test we did here last week, it was clear that we needed to do a lot more development before we race it, so it is something that we will carry on working on and look at later.

"Now obviously, having developed that car for that concept, we are looking to try and re-optimise everything for the week and a half we have got. There is not a massive difference between the two but we need to go through and check all the details – there are more bits turning up tonight and some other bits for Sunday to try and do the final optimisation."

[SchumiSutil]

More problem for Lotus ? Only 7 laps completed for Kimi, and no significant lap.

[CHT]

More problem for Lotus ? Only 7 laps completed for Kimi, and no significant lap.

kimi doesnt like the feel of the steering column, they spending the whole morning fixing it.

[Mr.S]

Damn Mercedes is Quick. 11 Lap Soft Run. Big Degradation but the Softs dont run for 11 Lap+ in Barca. Ane he is probably still going. I was expecting an 8-9 Lap run for Softs. Barca will probably have Medium-Hard allocation same as Malayasia this year.

Anyways Nico's 1st lap was 1.22.9 & then he drifted to 1.27.476. That is 4.5s+ Degradation on a 12 Lap Run but he did a quick lap in his 1st lap. If he had done a slow lap like others maybe the degradation would have been at 3.5-4s.

This is good. 13 Lap run & no DRS. That is atleast 1.5 + 1s = 2.5s. I think Mercedes can do a 1.20.5 odd if they manage to work on the setups & improve the car furthur.

Pace looks good. If Mercedes manages to reign in degradation this car is definitely a Podium contender. No doubts about that in my mind.

[vlado09]

Front wing duct

[tinvek]

More problem for Lotus ? Only 7 laps completed for Kimi, and no significant lap.

kimi doesnt like the feel of the steering column, they spending the whole morning fixing it.

obviously the problem of drivers not liking the feel of the steering is caused by the lotus badge, since caterham removed it, they've had no trouble so far

[marcush.]

PIC

Where is the snowplough?

[Dragonfly]

Front wing duct
wher eis the snowplough?

Maybe they used it as a speed limiter and now have removed it to unleash the car's performane

[marcush.]

you can add ballast instead of fuel ..so masking performance with weight is an easy job.I bet people analyse sector times for fuel load ,as a heavy car will suffer more in some area due to weight and raised cofg.You should be able to correlate and draw your conclusions from this ..maybe one could analyse acceleration and deceleration figures as well.

[FrukostScones]

you can add ballast instead of fuel ..so masking performance with weight is an easy job.I bet people analyse sector times for fuel load ,as a heavy car will suffer more in some area due to weight and raised cofg.You should be able to correlate and draw your conclusions from this ..maybe one could analyse acceleration and deceleration figures as well.

you can also use fuel as ballast in a race sim as BArcelona is not the track with the highest fuel consumption.

So before/during a race sim you can overfill up your car and don't use KERS to mislead the spies. (I hope Red Bull wasn't doing it...)

[Moanlower]

09:50 Now Massa is on hard tyres, and goes quicker yet again with a 1m22.896s.

How sure are you he set that time on hards ???

[Ferraripilot]

I know someone sitting at G2 in the top row at the end today watching testing. He said the Red Bull looks very twitchy compared to previous days and has run off a couple times. Also, their tire degradation is worse.

[FrukostScones]

09:50 Now Massa is on hard tyres, and goes quicker yet again with a 1m22.896s.

How sure are you he set that time on hards ???

source is autosport, automotorundsport.de reported the same and as long they don't copy and paste each other seems legit


or it was an unmarked mystery tyre with a supersoft compound...

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I know someone sitting at G2 in the top row at the end today watching testing. He said the Red Bull looks very twitchy compared to previous days and has run off a couple times. Also, their tire degradation is worse.

Has he been there throughout this test?