NOTES FROM THE TRACKSIDE AT FINAL BARCELONA TEST
There are two more days of testing left before the start of a new F1 season. An ideal time to get close to the action and look for indications and clues as to the season ahead.
Along with JA on F1 technical adviser Dominic Harlow, we’ve been trackside in Barcelona checking out the new cars and speaking to teams, drivers and engineers.Today Nico Rosberg let the Mercedes stretch its legs and set a time of 1m 22.792, some 1.2 seconds faster than Valtteri Bottas had managed in the Williams on soft tyres and 0.8s faster than Felipe Massa’s time yesterday. This broadly aligns with what figures from the top teams are saying, that the Mercedes is 0.8s to 1 sec per lap ahead of Williams and Ferrari in underlying pace, which are very close indeed to each other.
Ferrari has struggled for a number of years for qualifying pace, whereas Williams last year had a series of front row and second row starts. It will be interesting to see whether Ferrari has managed to rectify that problem in addition to all the work they have done on chassis and power unit.
Rosberg did another lap shortly afterwards that was barely a tenth slower. The Mercedes seemed to be using more revs in certain parts of the circuit. Mercedes certainly look set to control the championship again from the start with pace and consistency and they have plenty of development steps through the season on chassis and engine.
However behind them is a very close battle; Ferrari and Williams both look very purposeful and the cars work well and the feeling is that there is not much to choose between them. The Ferrari, driven by Vettel today, is very responsive at the front end and turns in very precisely and consistently, which should suit Kimi Raikkonen well. It has clearly improved enormously in the power unit department, as shown by the improvement in the customer Sauber team’s performance as well.
The straight line speeds are much more competitive and the power delivery is clearly much better; it’s a car that Vettel and Raikkonen should be able to rack up plenty of points and some podiums with this year. Reliability looks good for Ferrari in particular, they’ve done a high mileage, as they did again today.
Williams are bolting on performance parts this week, like a new front wing and starting to stretch the car a bit. It looks nimble and responsive, perhaps a bit more understeer today than the Ferrari; Bottas’ quick lap on softs looked imperfect from our position at Turn 5, where he locked the inside front wheel.
The Red Bull team was working on aerodynamic measurements today, carrying a double kiel probe device on Daniil Kvyat’s car for measuring aerodynamic performance first thing this morning. To run one of these on both sides is quite an ambitious thing to do, in engineering terms, because it requires a great deal of time and effort to plumb it in and derig and to process the data. There is no doubt that the Red Bull is losing time on the straights compared to the other front runners, especially now that Ferrari has raised its game in that area. Rosberg was the slowest Mercedes engined car on the straight today, meaning that they have a lot of downforce. He was half a second faster in both Sector 2 and Sector 3, which are the ones that indicate downforce levels. So they are in a luxurious position, while Williams is still a little skinny on downforce in low to medium speed corners.
http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2015/02/note...barcelona-test/
J'aimerais bien que Lotus tente un tour de qualif en soft aujourd'hui pour voir où ils en sont.
Perso, je pense que ça va se régler à coup de dollars, mais s'ils doivent choisir entre Ericsson et Nasr, j'espère qu'ils vireront le premier vu son niveau de merde.
) et qui va s'élancer en plein milieu du peleton, ça peut faire des étincelles demain au départ 
