For as long as cars have been running around test tracks, most have warned against reading too much into the pre-season. It is, after all, just that, a test. Teams truck their way to European race tracks with their new cars and set about an examination and assessment of what exactly the engineers and designers have rustled up.
The first roll-out of the cars is closely observed by millions of fans who scour the internet and fervently stalk their favourite forums for the most minute updates and details. Sky F1, for example, sends a whole team of journalists to these sessions to document every move that the teams make. Yet, the warnings that the times at the end of the day don’t mean anything subsist.
These warnings though aren’t necessarily always applicable. For one, should the goings-on from Jerez be disregarded you would fail to notice that Ferrari has made an enormous improvement from last year. Okay, it wouldn’t exactly be hard to build a better car than last season’s F14T which was a colossal waste of carbon fibre. But Sauber, who also runs with Ferrari power, has confirmed that the new power unit is a substantial step forward from the Italian manufacturer’s first attempt at the hybrid-turbo engines.
What’s more, Kimi Raikkonen has said that he finds the handling of this car much better and to his liking. Let’s be honest the ever aloof and not-so-media-friendly Raikkonen will hardly be the type of guy to provide a sound bite just for the sake of it. Now, Ferrari hasn’t suddenly transformed into world beaters but they may just be on to something with the SF15T.
The telltale, good, signs from testing would be stacks of laps and reliability. Here the Mercedes W06 is still way ahead of the curve. Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton both completed nearly two full race simulations a day at Jerez. They set about completing their testing program in an ominously reserved manner. There were no proclamations that they were, again, going to blow-away the competition. There was just lap after lap of a car which can seemingly keep going forever.
Even in testing where the laptimes don’t mean that much there is still the odd team/driver who’ll take out the fuel and set a flashy time. It happens for various reasons not least of all to attract a bit of media attention and please the suits that put up the sponsorship cash. The longer runs are what you want to pay attention to. The consistency in laptimes is an important barometer. The more consistent the time, the more it suggests a predictable car. The reasoning then is that the more confidence a driver has in the car’s behaviour the more assured he’ll be in pushing it around the lap.
While what happens at testing isn’t an out-and-out pecking order for the season there is much to learn from it. The next area is the press statements made by drivers. Yes, they get coached to the hilt but sometimes they do reveal a kernel of telling information. At Toro Rosso the engineers and owners are completely infatuated with Max Verstappen who they have dubbed the next Ayrton Senna. It’s noticeable in the Verstappen-obsessed chatter that they don’t talk much about their car which looks a bit of a handful.
The most entertaining and puzzling statements have come from McLaren. New-old driver Fernando Alonso has declared himself impressed with Honda’s “scientific approach.” What did Ferrari use, witchcraft? Once more we see an attempt to deflect from what has been a pretty poor start for the McLaren-Honda alliance. Better that this be the headline than the handful of installation laps they were able to complete at Jerez.
So, there is after all much to glean from testing. Pay attention to the press statements and what they try to detract attention from. Forget about the flashy-headline-grabbing-laptime and instead study the longer runs and determine how consistent the laptimes are. The second test takes place at the Barcelona circuit from the 19th to the 22nd of February.
