izzy wrote: ↑22 Feb 2020, 01:45
godlameroso wrote: ↑21 Feb 2020, 16:29
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERTHDP9WsAA ... me=900x900
If you look at this at face value it seems that Mercedes is .7 ahead of Red Bull.
However this is slower than last year's pace by Verstappen, and we already know conditions are both better and this car is faster. How easy is it to just top off the fuel tank between stints and hide your pace?
The delta between full and empty tanks is over 3 seconds, yet Verstappen never really breaks into the 19's.
This is quite scary, the difference is so consistent, all the way through. I don't see why they'd deliberately mess up the data from their race sim by refuelling, just to try and kid another team who have the GPS anyway and won't do anything different in any case
Probably they were turned down and can go faster, but why would Mercedes be running harder? It's not conclusive obviously but it's not a good sign at this point. But perhaps Honda are being more conservative than HPP with having that bit less experience. And perhaps there's a Spec2 car coming next week? But god if you charted those times the lines would almost never cross, lap after lap
They may be just killing the tires, see how they degrade, maybe the drivers get better feel for the car when they train with low grip tires. Low grip tires make you work harder to go faster, so probably a good training tool to find the limits. Furthermore, the consistency could be due to running a test program. Who knows what devices are on the car that affect aerodynamics, or weight distribution. Remember that this is the only week that teams can just collect raw data. Data is evolutionary voltage, in other words, more data means more development, so sticking to the program is key at the moment.
The car is very fast, it's obvious, they're not showing their hand, but it's impossible to hide their speed, so impossible to peg where they are relative to Mercedes, Or where they'll end up come Melbourne. Mercedes is the most worthy opponent in this era, no bigger dragon to slay so to speak. I just enjoy how high the stakes are this season.