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[sagi58]

 wrote:">Barcelona F1 Pre-season Test [2]: Barcelona - F1 testing results II [Tuesday 5pm]

Full testing times from the first day of the second F1 test of the 2016 pre-season from the Circuit de Catalunya – Day 1 5pm.

1. Nico Rosberg Germany Mercedes-Mercedes 82 laps 1m 23.022s*
2. Valtteri Bottas Finland Williams-Mercedes 100 laps 1m 23.229s
3. Kimi Raikkonen Finland Ferrari-Ferrari 53 laps 1m 24.836s
8. Daniil Kvyat Russia Red Bull-TAG-Heuer 46 laps 1m 25.049s
4. Fernando Alonso Spain McLaren-Honda 79 laps 1m 25.252s
5. Max Verstappen Netherlands Toro Rosso-Ferrari 127 laps 1m 25.356s
6. Kevin Magnussen Denmark Renault-Renault 98 laps 1m 25.760s
7. Nico Hulkenberg Germany Force India-Mercedes 113 laps 1m 25.954s
9. Esteban Gutierrez Mexico Haas-Ferrari 23 laps 1m 26.661s
10. Felipe Nasr Brazil Sauber-Ferrari 85 laps 1m 26.821s
11. Lewis Hamilton Britain Mercedes-Mercedes 71 laps 1m 27.043s**
12. Rio Haryanto Indonesia MRT-Mercedes 34 laps 1m 29.331s

*denotes morning session only
**denotes afternoon session only

[myownalias]

To be honest, I gave up following winter testing years ago, hardly any of the top teams run to their full potential, we hear headlines like Williams tops timesheets or Ferrari matching Mercedes when in reality we won't know anything until we go racing in anger in Australia.

[sagi58]

Of course, you're right, MOA!!

But, it is "fun" to speculate and wonder "what if"!!

[track1]

i have this from a save source, one team (which is not a backmarker) is in deep s***.

[sagi58]

Welcome, track1!!

Care to expand on your comment?

[myownalias]

Psst... Sagi... it's Ferrari...

[sagi58]

Figured that was the insinuation; but, I didn't want to assume.
Besides, there really is no reason to play "hide'n'seek" with opinions, is there?

[myownalias]

I may not be a Ferrari fan, but I really hope they have improved enough to at least make a reasonable challenge against Mercedes. Personally I would love Williams to be the team to challenge Mercedes, but I don't expect that to happen and McLaren are still too far off the pace to challenge Mercedes this season. I general we need a system that allows for teams to be more equal, in the last six years, we've had 4 years of Red Bull dominance, 2 years of Mercedes dominance and a likely third year this season, our only hope is the rule shakeup in 2017.

[overboost]

[overboost]

[Paul Pearson]

That's a good time for Kimi on hard tyres !

[sagi58]

Andrew Benson wrote:">Formula 1 testing: Sebastian Vettel set to chase down Mercedes

...What did testing reveal?

The teams spent eight days over two weeks preparing at Spain's Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

But how to divine the truth from the thousands of laps in the face of so many variables - tyres, fuel load, track conditions, engine mode, etc?

As Vettel put it: "Before it was always a question of how much - or little - fuel everybody was running. Today there are 10 other things that have to be considered when looking at the time sheets.

"So in the end it is all guesswork when making statements about who is where in the pecking order. The feeling is good - and that is what is important for me."

The teams have ways of eliminating many of these variables. But they are always reluctant to give too much away. Partly this is because even the teams, with their mountains of data, cannot be absolutely sure where everyone stands.

From the outside, though, it is possible to have a stab at it.

We know the tyres the time was set on. And we can eliminate the effect of fuel weight to a certain degree by looking at how long was the run on which the time was set.

In other words, you might not know the exact fuel load, but you know the minimum the car must have been carrying and can off-set the lap time against that.

It is far from an exact science and any attempt to "correct" the lap times is inherently flawed.

Nevertheless, apply these "corrections" to the list of times and quite often it turns out that a driver's best lap was not the headline fastest at all.

The best lap of the winter, for example, appears to have been one done by Rosberg on the medium tyre on an eight-lap run on Thursday. Hamilton did an almost identical time on Friday morning

So, take each driver's fastest time on each type of tyre throughout the second test and apply these factors corrected to a soft-tyre time, and you end up with a list of the fastest lap for each team that looks like this:

Mercedes (Rosberg) 1:22.6
Ferrari (Raikkonen) 1:22.9
Williams (Massa) 1:23.4
Red Bull (Ricciardo) 1:23.7
Toro Rosso (Verstappen) 1:23.7
Force India (Hulkenberg) 1:24.0
Renault (Magnussen) 1:24.4
McLaren (Alonso) 1:24.6
Sauber (Nasr) 1:24.8
Haas (Grosjean) 1:24.9
Manor (Wehrlein) 1:25.6

That's just single lap times. But Ferrari and Mercedes also did race-simulation runs, albeit on different days. And the average lap times for those are:

Hamilton 1:29.1
Rosberg 1:29.3
Raikkonen 1:29.4
Vettel 1:29.5

If those figures are right - and it's a big "if", with all the caveats and so on - then that suggests Ferrari have about halved the gap to Mercedes over the winter.

At that sort of margin, the difference between the two cars could be small enough to ensure that the typical vagaries of an F1 season were enough to make a proper championship battle between two teams.

Hamilton v Rosberg v Vettel and maybe Kimi Raikkonen, too, if he can get his act together. Sounds pretty enticing, doesn't it?