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[CookinFlat6]

Overall fastest times from second pre-season test, Bahrain 19-22 February:

1. Nico Rosberg (Ger) Mercedes one minute 33.283 seconds
2. Lewis Hamilton (GB) Mercedes 1:34.263
3. Kevin Magnussen (Den) McLaren-Mercedes 1:34.910
4. Jenson Button (GB) McLaren-Mercedes 1:34.957
5. Nico Hulkenberg (Ger) Force India-Mercedes 1:36.445
6. Fernando Alonso (Spa) Ferrari 1:36.516
7. Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Ferrari 1:36.718
8. Felipe Massa (Brz) Williams-Mercedes 1:37.066
9. Esteban Gutierrez (Mex) Sauber-Ferrari 1:37.180
10. Valtteri Bottas (Fin) Williams-Mercedes 1:37.328
11. Sergio Perez (Mex) Force India-Mercedes 1:37.367
12. Felipe Nasr (Brz) Williams-Mercedes 1:37.569
13. Pastor Maldonado (Ven) Lotus-Renault 1:38.707
14. Daniil Kvyat (Rus) Toro Rosso-Renault 1:38.974
15. Daniel Ricciardo (Aus) Red Bull-Renault 1:39.837
16. Kamui Kobayashi (Jpn) Caterham-Renault 139.855
17. Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Red Bull-Renault 1:40.340
18. Adrian Sutil (Ger) Sauber-Ferrari 1:40.443
19. Jean-Eric Vergne (Fra) Toro Rosso-Renault 1:40.609
20. Romain Grosjean (Fra) Lotus-Renault 1:41.670
21. Marcus Ericsson (Swe) Caterham-Renault 1:42.130
22. Max Chilton (GB) Marussia-Ferrari 1:42.511
23. Robin Frijns (Ned) Caterham-Renault 1:42.534

The fact that the Mclaren and Ferrari drivers were very very close on different days suggests both cars were at some limit. Button has admitted the McLaren was all maxed out, although Im sure his teammate could get another 1/2 sec out of it given more laps.
Ferrari are either having reliability issues keeping them from turning up the wick, or they are maxed out and the cars has to be setup to go faster

[Hammer278]

Nico's time would've landed him 9th last year in Bahrain, and he wasn't even on supersofts this time around and I bet he didn't make this time with only 3 laps of fuel on board. Merc at least could actually beat last year's times when the circus reaches Bahrain this year. All these cars will undergo thorough modifications between now and Melbourne.

Except Redbull maybe, they need to sign a deal with a dry-ice manufacturing company lol

[CookinFlat6]

Red Bull would not have made the 107% cut at all

but its only testing, RBR could still turn up in Aus and blitz the field, we cant count them out after they won the last 4 years on the trot, that would be foolish

[Hammer278]

Renault admits to being a long way behind schedule

Renault has admitted it is now at a point with its V6 turbo power unit that it had hoped to be at midway through the first test, after another week of problems for its customers in Bahrain.

Renault completed 619 laps between its four teams this week compared to the 1147 completed by the four Mercedes-powered teams. However, after major issues with its power units in Jerez, deputy managing director Rob White said it was starting to make small steps of progress.

"We have made some good headway, in terms of PU [power unit] performance and operation in the car, we are now in a situation we could have accepted mid-Jerez. We have solved some problems and revealed some others.

"We are not back on schedule but we are moving in the right direction - the running we have done is very valuable. The challenge is to improve the rate of progress, because the gap to where we wanted to be at this stage remains substantial. We are some weeks behind where we wanted to be, and we acknowledge it will take time to unlock the full performance of the PU.

"We are working hard to get there and we are determined to succeed. We remain confident in the PU and its sub systems, we are just not at the level of operation and performance we want to be. The immaturity of the PU combined with the time lost to incidents, means the chassis work to prepare for the season is also behind schedule. From this point on we must pursue and accelerate an upward curve."

White said one of the problems was that small issues were taking a long time to fix.

"We have had some set-backs, but we have definitely made progress and have taken several steps forward. The changes have improved the PU behaviour in the car and we are have accumulated valuable mileage. There have been stoppages, on our side and on the chassis side as well, but we have ironed out some important faults and allowed the teams to gain crucial experience of the car as a whole.

"We have seen that minor incidents can cause downtime that is difficult or impossible to recover. In particular, we lost more time than anticipated on the final day. While we are not at the level of operation and performance we would want to be, we have a more solid basis to work from, and we are moving in the right direction."

_________________________________________________

Plot twist: BMW announces a comeback in 2015 and grabs all current Renault teams bar Lotus.

[Nin-Chin]

Button said Merc are ahead in terms of downforce and Rosberg played it down....I know you guys are Merc fanboys like me but it's a bit early to start making predictions, anything could still happen...a Merc could break down on the warm up lap at Oz. Anyway apart from that Merc FTW!

[CookinFlat6]

You don't need to make predictions if you don't want to

[What's Burning?]

This has to make you feel better yes Spanky?

ESPNF1 Mercedes has led the way this week and on the final day Rosberg trimmed the best part of a second off Lewis Hamilton's benchmark lap to go within a second of his pole position time at last year's Bahrain Grand Prix.

[LiamCatterson]

This is just too sweet. Looks like Mercedes has this in the bag...

[Jabberwocky]

Please don't let this season be another bore fest with a 2 second car out front

Sent using NCC-1701

[CookinFlat6]

There will be 2x 2 sec cars racing each other, just like when Prost and Senna were at McLaren, that wasnt too boring. We wont be getting a RBR style fairy tale with one driver prevented from racing the other

[spankyham]

This has to make you feel better yes Spanky?

ESPNF1 Mercedes has led the way this week and on the final day Rosberg trimmed the best part of a second off Lewis Hamilton's benchmark lap to go within a second of his pole position time at last year's Bahrain Grand Prix.

I'm guessing my team is pleased to know Mercedes has declared their hand. It's clear Mercedes will be a serious contender. Although I still believe the main criteria for the start of this season will be reliability. My count for Mercedes was 4 failures for this round of testing.

For Lewis it might not be such great news seeing his team mate half a second faster in Q sim.

[Hammer278]

This has to make you feel better yes Spanky?

ESPNF1 Mercedes has led the way this week and on the final day Rosberg trimmed the best part of a second off Lewis Hamilton's benchmark lap to go within a second of his pole position time at last year's Bahrain Grand Prix.

I'm guessing my team is pleased to know Mercedes has declared their hand. It's clear Mercedes will be a serious contender. Although I still believe the main criteria for the start of this season will be reliability. My count for Mercedes was 4 failures for this round of testing.

For Lewis it might not be such great news seeing his team mate half a second faster in Q sim.

Lol...and somehow you know that their setups/fuel levels/mappings were exactly the same on different days when they made their runs? It seems you know more about what happens in the Mercedes garage than "your own teams" garage.

Mercedes had 4 stops on track, 1 of those was Nico stalling the car. Driver error. 2 others were electronic glitches which can be solved in minutes, 1 unknown.

[CookinFlat6]

For Lewis it might not be such great news seeing his team mate half a second faster in Q sim.

Irrelevant, its only testing and the cars might have been set up differently on both days. Also the track will have rubbered in even more making it faster.

Most importantly though is that we have factual evidence that Lewis is faster over 1 lap than Nico. Therefore if anything we can safely say the speed of the Merc should be even faster in Lewis' hands, that could bring it up to a 4 sec gap over what Ferraris fast drivers have both been able to squeeze out the car.

Or put another way can Ferrari really be hiding 4 seconds?

[spankyham]

Lol...and somehow you know that their setups/fuel levels/mappings were exactly the same on different days when they made their runs?

So we agree - time differences are irrelevant when setup/fuel level/mappings are unknown.

[Hammer278]

Lol...and somehow you know that their setups/fuel levels/mappings were exactly the same on different days when they made their runs?

So we agree - time differences are irrelevant when setup/fuel level/mappings are unknown.

We most certainly do agree....but if Lewis did end up about 4 seconds behind Rosberg on the same day (or even 1 day apart) I'd be inclined to think that Lewis might want to learn how to drive.