F1 Madness

Tag: alfonso celis

  • F1 2016: Russian GP Free Practice 1 Report – Rosberg On Top

    F1 2016: Russian GP Free Practice 1 Report – Rosberg On Top

    Nico Rosberg set the fastest time for Mercedes in the first free practice session for the 2016 Russian grand prix.

    All eyes focused on Red Bull Racing as it trialed the aeroscreen for the first time. The aeroscreen is Red Bull’s offering for head protection to be introduced in 2017. The aeroscreen was run for only one installation lap as team principal admitted that it has a “huge impact” on the car’s cooling.

    The two Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton set the early pace in the session. With Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo and Williams’ Valtteri Bottas rounding out the top four early on. Williams teammate Felipe Massa was unable to set a time due to a gearbox issue. The Brazilian did make his way out for an install lap in the second half of the session. Mass eventually ended the session with the fifth quickest time.

    Nico Rosberg set the quickest time overall, a 1:38:127 followed by teammate Lewis Hamilton on a 1:38:849. Both drivers used the red-walled supersoft tyre to set their fastest times.

    Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel set the third quickest time, a 1:39:175 ahead of the sister Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen who set a 1:39:332. The Ferrari’s quickest times were set on the yellow-walled soft tyre.

    Mexican driver Alfonso Celis took control of Nico Huldenberg’s Force India for the practice session. Elsewhere Sergey Sirotkin ran the first free practice session for Renault in place on Kevin Magnussen.

    Final Standings for Free Practice 1:

    Screen Shot 2016-04-29 at 10.33.03 AM

     

  • Raikkonen Closes off the First Test On Top

    Raikkonen Closes off the First Test On Top

    Kimi Raikkonen closed off the final day of the first pre-season test of 2016 on top of the time sheets in the Ferrari SF16-H

    The Finn set his fastest time of 1:23.477 on the Ultra Soft compound tyres late in the morning. Second fastest to Raikkonen was Daniil Kvyat in the Red Bull who was almost a second slower with a 1:24.293.

    Alfonso Celis had a good day out with some solid running for Force India which put him 3rd fastest setting his time on the super softs.

    Renault had a very good day with 153 laps completed with Kevin Magnussen at the wheel of the R.S.16. This sort of reliability from Renault is encouraging for the manufacturer and although they’re still down on power the driveability seems to have improved.

    Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen put in another solid day of running for the Faenza based team racking up 110 laps for the day and finishing 5th fastest for the day. Felipe Nasr in the 2015 Sauber C34 was 6th fastest with 121 laps to his name.

    Both Mercedes drivers were at the wheel of the W07 today with Rosberg finishing 7th fastest and Hamilton 8th. They both completed 86 and 99 laps respectively which brings the grand total of 185 laps on the day for Mercedes. Such was the reliability of the Mercedes they had to get both their drivers to keep up.

     

     

    Although conceding that they would’ve liked to have done more mileage, Esteban Gutierrez had a solid day for newcomers Haas F1 with 89 laps. He’s day was cut short after his car stopped on track an hour before the end of the session.

    “We had a productive day. In the morning we had a small problem which we sorted pretty quickly due to the team working well together,” said Guther Steiner the Team Principal of Haas F1.

    “In the afternoon after a long run we went into pit-stop practice. We had a problem with our ECU and we stopped testing for the day but it looks promising.

    “In general the first test was a fantastic four days for us, we got a lot of running in which we didn’t expect because we are a new team, we are only four days old.”

    Fernando Alonso did not set a time. He had completed three installation laps until he was confined to the garage after a coolant leak. The awkward position of the leak meant that it took longer for the team to fix the problem.

     

    POS Driver Team/Car Best lap Gap Laps
    1 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari SF16-H 1:23.477 – 78
    2 Daniil Kvyat Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer RB12 1:24.923 +0.816 94
    3 Alfonso Celis Force India-Mercedes VJM09 1:24.840 +1.363 75
    4 Kevin Magnussen Renault R.S.16 1:25.263 +1.786 153
    5 Max Verstappen Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR11 1:25.393 +1.916 110
    6 Felipe Nasr Sauber-Ferrari C34 1:26.053 +2.576 121
    7 Nico Rosberg Mercedes F1 W07 Hybrid 1:26.187 +2.71 86
    8 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes F1 W07 Hybrid 1:26.295 +2.818 99
    9 Felipe Massa Williams-Mercedes FW38 1:26.483 +3.006 54
    10 Esteban Gutierrez Haas-Ferrari VF-16 1:27.802 +4.325 89
    11 Rio Haryanto Manor Racing-Mercedes MRT05 1:28.268 +4.789 51
    12 Fernando Alonso McLaren-Honda MP4-31 No time – 3
  • F1 2016 Pre-Season Test 1 Day 1: Vettel Tops the Timesheets

    F1 2016 Pre-Season Test 1 Day 1: Vettel Tops the Timesheets

    Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel finished the first day of the first pre-season test of 2016 on top of the time sheets ahead of defending champion Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes W07 Hybrid.

    The German set his best time of 1:24.939 on the medium compound tyres just before lunch to take the top spot for the day. For the rest of the day it was testing as usual for Ferrari which seen Vettel rack up 69 laps.

    A few doors up the paddock, Lewis Hamilton racked up an astonishing 156 laps on the day. That’s 698km, which is just a little over two race lengths. “It’s good to be back. It really had felt like a while – but now it feels like home already,” said Hamilton. He finished second fastest on the day with a 1:25.409.

    Daniel Ricciardo finished third fastest clocking up 87 laps on the day after a bit of a slow start. This, in contrast to the previous season’s testing, seems like a big improvement from the team. “First impressions are positive but it’s still too early to say much more. We had a good day and I’m ready for more,” said Ricciardo at the end of the day’s running.

    Valtteri Bottas ended his day 4th fastest for Williams completing 80 laps. Bottas’ first impression of the car was that he feels many of the issues they’ve had last year have been fixed but he thinks its too early to say where they are in relation to the other teams.

    “Valtteri has been complimentary about aspects of the FW38 which is good start,” said the Chief and Test Support Engineer Rob Nelson.

    Carlos Sainz_2016 Pre Season Test 1“We are just building up our run lengths and doing our due diligence on reliability, and as the test goes on we’ll feed in more and more performance items. Overall it is a reasonable start to pre-season testing for us.

    Mexican Alfonso Celis was in the VJM09 for Force India. He finished 5th fastest with 58 laps to his name. Not far off his pace was Jenson Button in the McLaren MP4-31 finishing 6th fastest with 84 laps on the board. Button’s best time of 1:26.735 came courtesy of a late run on the soft compound tyres.

    Carlos Sainz was out for Toro Rosso today. The team chose not to have a big reveal in the pits and instead just emerged from the pits when the green flag dropped for the start of the day. Sainz finished 7th fastest with 55 laps under his belt. His session was cut short when the team saw something strange in the gearbox oil system. The team decided to stop their session as a precaution.

    Sauber, who ran an updated livery but a 2015 car, had Marcus Ericsson at the wheel of the C34. He placed 8th fastest on the day ahead of Manor driver Pascal Wehrlein. Wehrlein, on his first outing for the new look Manor team, clocked up 54 laps.

    New comers Haas F1 had a good start to their debut test until a front wing failure brought out the red flags. The team say that they have a fix for the wing and will have a replacement by Tuesday. The wing failure put Grosjean out for most of the day. He did, however, emerge from the pits with an hour left in the session to complete a few laps.

    Jolyon Palmer was 11th fastest for Renaul in the R.S.16. He had limited running owing to software issued on the car.

    POS Driver Team/Car Best lap Gap Laps
    1 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari SF16-H 1:24.939 – 69
    2 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes F1 W07 Hybrid 1:25.409 +0.470 156
    3 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer RB12 1:26.044 +1.105 87
    4 Valtteri Bottas Williams-Mercedes FW38 1:26.091 +1.152 80
    5 Alfonso Celis Force India-Mercedes VJM09 1:26.298 +1.359 58
    6 Jenson Button McLaren-Honda MP4-31 1:26.735 +1.796 84
    7 Carlos Sainz Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR11 1:27.180 +2.241 55
    8 Marcus Ericcson Sauber-Ferrari C34 1:27.555 +2.616 88
    9 Pascal Wehrlein Manor Racing-Ferrari MRT05 1:28.292 +3.353 54
    10 Romain Grosjean Haas-Ferrari VF-16 1:28.399 +3.460 31
    11 Jolyon Palmer Renault R.S.16 1:29.356 +4.417 37

     

    Photo Credit: Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1, Scuderia Toro Rosso Formula 1