Jersey Tom wrote:I can't imagine a pro race team sand bagging in testing. Seems pointless. Why even show up?
Agreed. Although I think there were several phases that all teams went through during testing — first reliability checks, than mechanical setups. At the final test teams introduced aero packages that were intended for the first fly-away races.
Many teams made significant advances in speed with such package and for some reason Ferrari didn't.
I still wait for when onboards from Malaysia will show up on Youtube. In Australia the car seemed to be light on the front which definitely was not a problem during testing. That is what seems strange here — there were no signs of handling problems before actual races.