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Formula 1
COOPER: Barcelona Test Notebook
After Wednesday in Barcelona we are half way through the second of the three pre-season tests...
Romain Grosjean, Lotus F1 Team, shown testing at Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain February 21st, 2012. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
With the close of Wednesday’s action in Barcelona we are half way through the second of the three pre-season F1 tests, and are thus half way through the entire 2012 program, which is comprised of just 12 days in total.
The first session in Jerez was all about data gathering, systems checks and preliminary set-up work at a track which is a bit quirky and which does not host a Grand Prix, so this second test in Barcelona was always going to be a bit more representative as teams began to stretch the legs of their cars, although the focus is still very much on trying all four types of tires and doing race stint runs.
The final session in Barcelona – which commences March 1 – will tell probably us more, but the bottom line is that the real picture won’t emerge until Australia, and then only on qualifying on Saturday afternoon.
Some trends are already clear, however. Among the top three teams Red Bull seems to be effortlessly fast, McLaren is quietly confident and in much better shape than a year ago, and Ferrari still has a lot of work to do with the F2012, which is such a radical departure from previous designs.
It’s way too early to suggest that the Italian team is in big trouble – the car is so different that it was always going to be a case of taking one step back to take two forward. And what matters is not the pace in February testing but the potential to develop the car into the summer months and beyond, which is when the championship is won.
One team which is most certainly in trouble is Lotus. After showing so well at Jerez, the team did just a handful of laps on Tuesday morning before it was forced to park the car. Romain Grosjean reported that the new 02 chassis felt strange, and the team equally quickly discovered a failure, which speculation has suggested is either a front suspension pick-up or engine mountings.
The initial plan was to send out another chassis – the 01 used in Jerez – but on further examination the problem proved serious enough to force the team to head home. This is a massive blow in every way, for relative to its rivals it has lost something like 400 laps of running. And both Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen have each missed out on two days of priceless mileage.
The team said yesterday that it will be back in action on March 1, but there have been suggestions that it might not be possible to resolve the problem in time – and if the team has to do a chassis modification that triggers a fresh FIA crash test, it really is a problem.
The Lotus saga took the attention off the other big story of Tuesday, which was the first public appearance of the new Mercedes W03. The team has firmly been struck in fourth place since the Stuttgart manufacturer bought and re-badged Brawn GP. It’s thus been easy to overlook the obvious true potential of the team, should it hit the sweet spot that it found under its previous guise back in 2009.
Aware that changes were needed Mercedes went on a shopping spree for technical talent, adding Bob Bell, Geoff Willis and Aldo Costa to its roster – three guys who have all been technical directors elsewhere. It was an acknowledgement by Ross Brawn that he had too much on his plate to be on top of all the car issues.
After such a major shake-up it was always takes time to for everything to gel and for a pool of talent like that to reach its full potential. But neither Michael Schumacher nor Mercedes have time to waste, and the team to make a major step this season – and at the very least, win a race.
The thing is that the team knew exactly what was wrong with the W02 and thus what had to be improved.
“It was a bit of everything,” Brawn told me at the end of last year. “First of all we had too many problems at the beginning of the season with cooling and a few other things, which took up a lot of effort and soaked up a lot of resource to fix. That was the first part. And then we really didn’t get on top of the exhaust technology until quite a bit later.
“We then perhaps realized the magnitude of the performance that could be achieved. And it was really in reacting to problems at the beginning of the year, trying to get the exhaust technology on the car, that perhaps our lack of resource was a price to pay. So that’s why we looked at strengthening the group.”
The team also struggled to get its DRS to work effectively: “That was a problem at the beginning of the year, I don’t know why but it seemed to affect Michael much more than Nico. We never really understood why that was. It did occur with Nico but it occurred far more frequently with Michael, we had a cooling issue and we discovered we had an issue with the front wing, so all of those things were a major distraction.
“We had some difficulties with KERS at the beginning of the season which again didn’t help. So we were just a bit too much at sea for the first third of the season, and then we started to consolidate and get our act together, and we were a bit more respectable for the second half.”
Aware of all the shortcomings, and with Bell, Willis and latterly Costa adding their experience to the pool, the team knew what it was needed.
“There are enough tools around to be able to measure and predict what you need to do, we’re a second off where we need to be, and so therefore we’ve got to improve the aerodynamics, the suspension, center of gravity, all the things that affect the car’s performance we’ve got to accumulate an improvement of at least a second – in fact more than that, because the other teams will move forward as well.
“We set ourselves a target of how much quicker we want the car to be, and if we achieve that target and no one else does anything dramatic then we’ll be nearer the sharp end. If there’s some concept out there that we’ve not thought of that instantly is a second quicker, like the double diffuser, then we’ll have to take a deep breath and sort ourselves out.
“Most of what we’re doing is the fundamentals. You have more downforce and a lower center of gravity, you go quicker. You get the tires working more effectively, you go quicker. And those are the things that we are working on...”
All those issues had to be addressed for this season. The team stopped working on W02 very early, and subsequently devoted its R&D efforts to the W03. While the lack of a title showdown last year meant that other top teams didn’t have to develop their cars to the very last minute and could also make an early switch, Mercedes was nevertheless ahead of the game.
Ross did a similar thing in 2008, in effect writing off the year and putting the mighty resources of Honda into the following year’s RA109. A car that, following a change of engine supplier and team ownership, eventually emerged as the Brawn BGP001.
Of course it’s still too early to judge just how much of a step the team has made with W03, but so far the drivers seem pretty pleased with what they’ve discovered. Now we have to wait to see some evidence on the stop watch...
Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
The first session in Jerez was all about data gathering, systems checks and preliminary set-up work at a track which is a bit quirky and which does not host a Grand Prix, so this second test in Barcelona was always going to be a bit more representative as teams began to stretch the legs of their cars, although the focus is still very much on trying all four types of tires and doing race stint runs.
The final session in Barcelona – which commences March 1 – will tell probably us more, but the bottom line is that the real picture won’t emerge until Australia, and then only on qualifying on Saturday afternoon.
Some trends are already clear, however. Among the top three teams Red Bull seems to be effortlessly fast, McLaren is quietly confident and in much better shape than a year ago, and Ferrari still has a lot of work to do with the F2012, which is such a radical departure from previous designs.
It’s way too early to suggest that the Italian team is in big trouble – the car is so different that it was always going to be a case of taking one step back to take two forward. And what matters is not the pace in February testing but the potential to develop the car into the summer months and beyond, which is when the championship is won.
One team which is most certainly in trouble is Lotus. After showing so well at Jerez, the team did just a handful of laps on Tuesday morning before it was forced to park the car. Romain Grosjean reported that the new 02 chassis felt strange, and the team equally quickly discovered a failure, which speculation has suggested is either a front suspension pick-up or engine mountings.
The initial plan was to send out another chassis – the 01 used in Jerez – but on further examination the problem proved serious enough to force the team to head home. This is a massive blow in every way, for relative to its rivals it has lost something like 400 laps of running. And both Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen have each missed out on two days of priceless mileage.
The team said yesterday that it will be back in action on March 1, but there have been suggestions that it might not be possible to resolve the problem in time – and if the team has to do a chassis modification that triggers a fresh FIA crash test, it really is a problem.
The Lotus saga took the attention off the other big story of Tuesday, which was the first public appearance of the new Mercedes W03. The team has firmly been struck in fourth place since the Stuttgart manufacturer bought and re-badged Brawn GP. It’s thus been easy to overlook the obvious true potential of the team, should it hit the sweet spot that it found under its previous guise back in 2009.
Aware that changes were needed Mercedes went on a shopping spree for technical talent, adding Bob Bell, Geoff Willis and Aldo Costa to its roster – three guys who have all been technical directors elsewhere. It was an acknowledgement by Ross Brawn that he had too much on his plate to be on top of all the car issues.
After such a major shake-up it was always takes time to for everything to gel and for a pool of talent like that to reach its full potential. But neither Michael Schumacher nor Mercedes have time to waste, and the team to make a major step this season – and at the very least, win a race.
The thing is that the team knew exactly what was wrong with the W02 and thus what had to be improved.
“It was a bit of everything,” Brawn told me at the end of last year. “First of all we had too many problems at the beginning of the season with cooling and a few other things, which took up a lot of effort and soaked up a lot of resource to fix. That was the first part. And then we really didn’t get on top of the exhaust technology until quite a bit later.
“We then perhaps realized the magnitude of the performance that could be achieved. And it was really in reacting to problems at the beginning of the year, trying to get the exhaust technology on the car, that perhaps our lack of resource was a price to pay. So that’s why we looked at strengthening the group.”
The team also struggled to get its DRS to work effectively: “That was a problem at the beginning of the year, I don’t know why but it seemed to affect Michael much more than Nico. We never really understood why that was. It did occur with Nico but it occurred far more frequently with Michael, we had a cooling issue and we discovered we had an issue with the front wing, so all of those things were a major distraction.
“We had some difficulties with KERS at the beginning of the season which again didn’t help. So we were just a bit too much at sea for the first third of the season, and then we started to consolidate and get our act together, and we were a bit more respectable for the second half.”
Aware of all the shortcomings, and with Bell, Willis and latterly Costa adding their experience to the pool, the team knew what it was needed.
“There are enough tools around to be able to measure and predict what you need to do, we’re a second off where we need to be, and so therefore we’ve got to improve the aerodynamics, the suspension, center of gravity, all the things that affect the car’s performance we’ve got to accumulate an improvement of at least a second – in fact more than that, because the other teams will move forward as well.
“We set ourselves a target of how much quicker we want the car to be, and if we achieve that target and no one else does anything dramatic then we’ll be nearer the sharp end. If there’s some concept out there that we’ve not thought of that instantly is a second quicker, like the double diffuser, then we’ll have to take a deep breath and sort ourselves out.
“Most of what we’re doing is the fundamentals. You have more downforce and a lower center of gravity, you go quicker. You get the tires working more effectively, you go quicker. And those are the things that we are working on...”
All those issues had to be addressed for this season. The team stopped working on W02 very early, and subsequently devoted its R&D efforts to the W03. While the lack of a title showdown last year meant that other top teams didn’t have to develop their cars to the very last minute and could also make an early switch, Mercedes was nevertheless ahead of the game.
Ross did a similar thing in 2008, in effect writing off the year and putting the mighty resources of Honda into the following year’s RA109. A car that, following a change of engine supplier and team ownership, eventually emerged as the Brawn BGP001.
Of course it’s still too early to judge just how much of a step the team has made with W03, but so far the drivers seem pretty pleased with what they’ve discovered. Now we have to wait to see some evidence on the stop watch...
Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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