The Australian GP marks the commencement of new F1 calendar and kick off on March 26th. While there is excitement around F1 fans, there is some big news coming after eight days of testing at Spain’s Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. The news is certainly exciting for Ferrari fans who have seen their team trailing behind other teams for quite a few years.
The big headline is Ferrari look like genuine challengers to world champions Mercedes. They might even be faster.
Although the usual caveats apply – it is very hard to judge an exact competitive order from pre season testing because the teams do not reveal the specifications their cars are running in, and variables such as fuel load and engine mode make a huge difference to performance. Ferrari looked good out on track, and its lap times were genuinely impressive. Even Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton said so.
Hamilton and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel each said that the other’s team was probably in the best shape.
First of all, the list of absolute fastest times by each team over the two weeks of testing:
1. Ferrari (Raikkonen) 1:18.634 (super-soft tyre)
2. Mercedes (Valtteri Bottas) 1:19.310 (ultra-soft)
3. Williams (Felipe Massa) 19.420 (ultra-soft)
4. Red Bull (Max Verstappen) 1:19.438 (super-soft)
5. Toro Rosso (Carlos Sainz) 1:19.837 (ultra-soft)
6. Renault (Nico Hulkenberg) 1:19.885 (ultra-soft)
7. Force India (Sergio Perez) 1:20.116 (ultra-soft)
8. Haas (Kevin Magnussen) 1:20.504 (ultra-soft)
9. McLaren (Stoffel Vandoorne) 1:21.348 (ultra-soft)
10. Sauber (Marcus Ericsson) 1:21.670 (super-soft)
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen set the fastest time of the winter on the final day of testing while doing a qualifying simulation run on super-soft tyres.
The best Mercedes lap of the winter was 0.676 seconds slower. According to the official timing, even Mercedes’ best ‘perfect’ lap — i.e. with all the best sectors a driver achieved on a given day added together – was 0.406secs off Raikkonen’s time.
That list does not take into account any number of potential variables, one of which is the fuel loads in the cars. It is possible to eliminate the fuel variable to a degree by correcting for the length of the run, and therefore the minimum amount of fuel the car must have had.
Look beyond each team’s absolute fastest to other times set on other tyres, and correct the times to ones for a ‘soft’ tyre, which is the quickest one that will be used at the Barcelona race, and the list of fastest times each team achieved looks like this:
1. Ferrari 1:19.0
2. Mercedes 1:19.8
3. Red Bull 1:19.8
4. Williams 1:20.4
5. Toro Rosso 1:20.9
6. Renault 1:21.0
7. Force India 1:21.2
8. Haas 1:21.4
9. Sauber 1:22.0
10. McLaren 1:22.3
The lap times clearly show that Ferrari have certainly revved their engines and clearly look like the fastest cars on the track. One of the main reasons that Ferrari look faster is because Ferrari looked to be about 0.3secs behind Mercedes in testing – and Hamilton was 0.8secs quicker than them in qualifying at the first race in Melbourne. But historically, Mercedes go slow in testing and have ramped it up in the races. They have been quicker and certainly the team to beat.
Ferrari are said to have made a significant step forward in engine performance over the winter. Equally, perhaps Mercedes have been caught out a little by the new rules – including a clarification over the winter on the use of clever hydraulic suspension systems that help keep the cars stable in cornering and on which they led the way.
Whatever is behind it, so far the evidence adds up to the likelihood of a genuinely competitive start to the season.
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