F1Sport (Italy) have written an interesting article claiming that Ferrari were tricking the timing system in Bahrain. The theory is that there are multiple transponders around a circuit that provide precise times. Instead of using the official timings, Ferrari apparently had their own software to use the delta between transponders, and to select their own starting/end point for a lap which they could move from lap to lap.
Sounds a little too elaborate for my thinking to simply hide lap times. However, they did provide one interesting piece of information and that was that the F14-T had the highest speeds recorded at all three speed traps in Bahrain.
I read something about that. It was also alleged that their transponders were faulty.
However the big question is how a car that is fastest through the traps can be so far off the lap pace. Is it really giving up so much in the corners or is it so hard to extract performance in the corners?
Last years the Force India and saubers were very fast top speed but still slow compared to RBR on the lap because of a lack of downforce.
So is the Ferrari lacking a load of DF or is it the engine thats not delivering the most efficient torque curves lower down and in the corners?
What do you think is going on with that?
Well, I think you know I don't place much value in lap times. Simple because there are just too many variables for us to make any sense out of them. I think I pointed out previously that simply changing one variable, fuel load, could make nearly 8 seconds a lap difference. And there are a multitude of other variables. So, lap times don't mean much. Number of laps, and therefore amount of testing and setup you do is critical IMO.
On the "theory" of tricking lap times. Well, it is possible to make an official lap time look worse than a lap taken using different starting/ending points - and if you have software to do that, you can change every laps start and end point. But, that would take so much work to get working and for what? Other teams already don't know your real lap times anyway cause they don't know your variables (fuel load etc). So, IMO in theory it works but I doubt they'd go to that much trouble for such little benefit.
Ferrari have been very handy on the straights recently too.