2011 Testing - Barcelona 18th - 21st Feb

[richard_leeds]

Another batch of testing coming up soon...

[myurr]

Another bath of testing coming up soon...

They're predicting torrential rain?

[mx_tifoso]

Circuit de Catalunya detail



Visca catalunya!

[luca]

This circuit should be a good aerodynamic test, right?

[ESPImperium]

This circuit should be a good aerodynamic test, right?

Pretty much as Valencia is for testing traction and braking events as well as slow to medium corner ability and quick changes in direction. Jerez is more for medium to high speed corners that are more of a constant radius as well as a good track for brake testing. Barcelona is more of a mix of the two, but the 1km main straight is ideal for straightline aero testing. Bahrain is ideal for figh speed runs and testing braking and traction events, not to mention quick changes in direction from turn 4 to turn 7 and turn 9 to 11 if memory serves me correctly from my many hundreds of laps arround Bahrain in F1:CE on PS3.

Id say that this test will see many of the teams finally start long run testing, especially the teams with the newer cars like McLaren and Force India. It will also see Hispania back from TV duties with Pirelli from Monza. Id also recon that Hispania will have their second driver installed for then as Karthikain cant go 4 days at Barcelona without being phisically spent. Id also think that Lotus renault will also have Heidfeld installed as their new first driver for Kubica.

[nipo]

Experts, how should we take the times we see at this test? Do they carry a little more meaning now? I know we won't know for sure until the first Qualifying, but will we be able to read more like into how Reb Bull is doing, or interesting things like whether Lotus has really done the job closing the gap, etc?

[raymondu999]

I'd say we can take Barcelona a little bit more meaningfully. It's the benchmark testing circuit of the lot. Granted, a team might go on a tangent and run a completely strange testing program.

[mx_tifoso]

While not being an expert on the matter, I would expect Barcelona to offer a more conclusive insight on the overall running order. Valencia and Jerez have served their purposes to shakedown and begin setting up the cars, so Barcelona will only expand on that and take it to the real level where cars will also have more updates.

And since most teams were doing long runs to figure out the tyres, I would expect some low fuel runs to get an idea of what the cars can really do with fresh tyres.

[myurr]

While not being an expert on the matter, I would expect Barcelona to offer a more conclusive insight on the overall running order. Valencia and Jerez have served their purposes to shakedown and begin setting up the cars, so Barcelona will only expand on that and take it to the real level where cars will also have more updates.

And since most teams were doing long runs to figure out the tyres, I would expect some low fuel runs to get an idea of what the cars can really do with fresh tyres.

In the autosport live feed there was a comment from an ex F1 designer, really sorry but forgot his name, where he said that you don't learn much from doing a low fuel run. He said that a car set up well for a heavy fuel run will still be there or there abouts for the low fuel runs, whereas the reverse is rarely true. So maybe each of the grandee teams will do a low fuel run or two, but I wouldn't expect too much of that. They'll spend most of their time on heavy fuel making small setup changes to see how the car responds, and on longer runs to see how the tyres respond.

(again I'm not an expert so could be completely wrong)

[marcush.]

maybe it´s not very indicative to go for low fuel quali runs for the teams but surely they need to have the cars driven to the limits at the respective fuelloads.It does not make any sense to look for setup driving at say 80% of effort.So we can clearly say these times we see can show some performance window as the longer runs show the true potential of the car at the time under the conditions with the fuelload and tyre choice they made and of course the drivers ability to extract everything from the car.
Taking into account the absolute best times of the car /driver combo one could derive something like a fuel/tyre window for these longruns.lots of work ..But don´t teams have some guys looking after the work of the opponents ?that was already normal in the 80s when Frank Dernie had his "own" chair in the Renault pits..the mechanics at Renault making the micky of him as he was always around and rather too randomly intersted in the goingons in the french pit..

[richard_leeds]

The low fuel runs are relevant for F1 because of the importance of qualifying. However, it is better to run in second and finish with good reliability, than to have a pole position car that fails to finish. Vettel was an example of that in the first half of 2010. Hence the importance of long runs.

[NewtonMeter]

Experts, how should we take the times we see at this test? Do they carry a little more meaning now? I know we won't know for sure until the first Qualifying, but will we be able to read more like into how Reb Bull is doing, or interesting things like whether Lotus has really done the job closing the gap, etc?

This is the times from Barca 2010:
http://www.newsonf1.com/testing/barcelonat.htm

Compare that to how the season went, especially the first part, and make of that what you will.

I pay rather more attention to the teams' comments than the times. Only they know if the time they did was, say, a good high fuel run or a bad low fuel run. And this will be reflected in the vibe of their press release (not the words themselves, as they're not allowed to make negative comments).

[myurr]

The low fuel runs are relevant for F1 because of the importance of qualifying. However, it is better to run in second and finish with good reliability, than to have a pole position car that fails to finish. Vettel was an example of that in the first half of 2010. Hence the importance of long runs.

And to counter that I quote veteran F1 engineer Frank Dernie, who worked for Williams, Lotus, Benetton, Ligier, Arrows and Toyota (via Autosport):

I thought readers may be interested in the type of testing teams are likely to be doing.

Every engineer has a different approach to keeping the others guessing. The fact is that, by miles, the most important thing everyone needs to do is learn how to get the best from the tyres. You learn almost nothing running light, so it is unlikely that any serious team will run low fuel at all, or if they do one or two runs only.

A car set up well for the tyres whilst heavy will be good light, the converse is almost never true. It means that it is quite likely nobody important will show their true pace before the first race.

Getting a race distance on the car is crucial. The best way to evaluate the competitiveness of the teams will be to compare the pace in the race simulations, but this data is rarely published, unfortunately.

The list of fastest times, which is always published, is probably the least useful testing information an observer gets!

[godlameroso]

I think a more useful measure would be to take an average of all timed laps, minus out and in laps, as well as laps that are obviously off the pace. Take those lap averages for each driver and you have a more accurate guess as to the pecking order.

[myurr]

I think a more useful measure would be to take an average of all timed laps, minus out and in laps, as well as laps that are obviously off the pace. Take those lap averages for each driver and you have a more accurate guess as to the pecking order.

Nice in theory, but subtly different testing programs would heavily skew the results.