2011Testing-Barcelona-Circuit de Catalunya- 8th - 12th March

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Schumachers recent stint

14 1:25.779 -1.846
15 1:26.040 +0.261
16 1:26.228 +0.188
17 1:26.571 +0.343
18 1:26.412 -0.159
19 1:26.906 +0.494
20 1:26.945 +0.039
21 1:27.096 +0.151

Just a note here. I think its visible how Schumacher attempted to push a bit harder on 18, and found he lost half a second in perfromance the following lap.
This bodes well for the season in terms of on track action!

[marcush.]

the characteristic of the tyres will cause some headscratching in the teams.Basically you are severely punished for pushing too much ..it´s a bit like a bucket of water with a 10 mm drainhole at half height.Go modestly and you will lose as much as is passing through the hole ,go a bit quicker and the water will go over the lip of the bucket..but it´s gone.So taking back aggression is not giving you back performance...

what i see is a tyre not enabling you to defend really ,but also it does not allow you to attack. we should see do or die moves accordingly as there is really only one chance if you are quicker.second try your weapons are severely blunted.

But this will also lead to late tyre changes not being a very attractive option:You will have to overtake a lot of people and if your potential degrades severely with every move ...we will see diminishing returns for the added risk.
At this time I don´t really see the Pirelli tyres add to the spectacle.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Marcush I agree.

I personally feel Pirelli have it spot on this year. Drivers are screaming blue murder over these tyres and, I say let them.
Basically we may see some teams opting for the softer tyre to qualify higher, but that will hinder their race. Some will go harder and have a better race but may lose a wing in the midfield.
And if they get stuck behind a slower car, they may need to push harder and use the tyre harder...which mean serious drop off!

[Sebp]

I have something else I go by and it is not testing times alone. It is soo easy to tell when you do what I do. What I do accounts for 80% of my predictions. And that method usually works.

Ok, you got me interested enough to "bite". What is that thing you do that usually works and accounts for 80% of your predictions?

Yeah, let's have it!

[volarchico]

Perez in his Sauber just set the fastest lap of all testing in Barcelona: 1m21.761s

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

What I do accounts for 80% of my predictions. And that method usually works.

Murky crystal ball gazer?

Sauber looking good! Seems they may need extra sponsors...im only being a bit cynical as they did this last year too....

[gibells]

@JET and Marcush.

I can see car performance being less of an issue than in the past. Guys like Button, Alonso and maybe Heidfeld could benefit from not having to come in to change tyres quite so often, or at least delay their moves until clear gaps in the traffic open up. You'd be able to make up 25 seconds by missing out on a stop. And when you consider Hamilton's engineer's blunder in Melbourne last year, going faster on the tyres doesn't mean you'd just be able to overtake when you want.

As much as the drivers are complaining, it's going to make for some fascinating viewing.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I think fast cars will still be able to make a big difference. It will just have to gentler on its tyres, as will the banzai specialists like Kobayashi and Hamilton.
There also seems to be a link that the faster cars are better on their tyres ie red Bull and Ferrari.

My view is that these two will have a titanic struggle between them, with the rest squabbling for the spoils. The difference though is that If anyone slower wants to bang in a pole on the softer options, they can do so now and spoil the frontrunners race a bit.

[marcush.]

let´s hope we will not see too much of conservatism and reluctance to try something .Rememebr 2010 ,when tyres could last the complete distance and still for the first half of the season almost nobody tried a bit different strategies .Even people in p10 to 15 almost universally put on soft rubber ...for what ? And not a sinle Q3 participant went NOT out in Q3 ...and that would have got him a brand new set of tyre to start the race.....hmm .No those F1 guys are not very creative in their strategies methinks...I´d love to have some NASCAR seasoned crewchiefs at the pitwall.

[samstre]

Hi Guys... I was sick and tired of looking at msfree.gr, copying the laptimes into excel and doing a graph, so I just wrote a little script doing something like that for me.

It's a little script using PHP, jpgraph and the laptimes from msfree.gr.
I'm not quite sure if I'm allowed to "download" the msfree laptimes. So maybe this is not allowed?!?!

Cause I'm using JpGraph - This thing is OpenSource (JpGraph is QPL - So you can use it as long as your things are OpenSource and non commercial - which this tiny little thing is).

Feel free to download, edit, host and redistribute the code as much as you like!!!
You can download it via http://laptimes.jawa.at/util.tar.gz

And you can try it under http://laptimes.jawa.at
Per default you can see Schumachers lapchart. You can change it via posting the msfree.gr drivername in the url.

e.g.:
http://laptimes.jawa.at/?driver=MASSA
http://laptimes.jawa.at/?driver=WEBBER
http://laptimes.jawa.at/?driver=PEREZ

have fun!!!

[Alexgtt]

What I do accounts for 80% of my predictions. And that method usually works.

Murky crystal ball gazer?

Sauber looking good! Seems they may need extra sponsors...im only being a bit cynical as they did this last year too....

Yes they did. Low fuel glory run means nothing. However, I'd be very happy to be proved wrong by the first race.

Aside from reliability issues the McLaren looks a lot better this week. With the tyres dropping off like this I think it'll really play into the hands of drivers like Button, provided he can get balance right.

But, it really looks like RB are the guys to beat. If their reliability carry's over to racing I can see the Championship done and dusted by half way.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Schumacher has posted a 1m22.981s, his best so far today. It was another one-lap run for Schumi , who returned to the pits right after his flyer.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Norbert Haug on Mercedes times.
"So far here we have not run on lighter fuel loads. The decent thing to do is to have a set-up that is like the middle of the race, and then you can roughly guess where you are weight-wise.

"It is a compromise between full and empty, and it is a base from which you can work. Then probably later you try to do a lighter fuel load to simulate qualifying. But this is later on the agenda."

[raymondu999]

Interesting comment by Autosport: “@autosportlive: The Red Bull may be so good it actually makes the tyres newer after every lap..”

[747heavy]

Hi Guys... I was sick and tired of .....

nice work - thank you for posting it here.