Originally Posted by
gvera
AUTOSPORT PLUS
False dawn or real hope for F1 testing's silent star?
Ferrari topped the times on day two of Formula 1's first pre-season test of 2017, raising hopes of the Scuderia legitimately challenging Mercedes this year. And the positive signs extend beyond the timing screens
By Ben Anderson
Coming into 2017, all the talk has been of whether Red Bull can build on the genuine momentum it gathered last season and utilise the aerodynamic potential offered by the new regulations to properly challenge Mercedes for the Formula 1 title.
Ferrari has not exactly been an afterthought - the grandest and richest team in F1 could never be that - but there hasn't exactly been a swell of expectation that the Prancing Horse is going to be the one galloping through Mercedes' prize orchard and snaffling its best apples.
That's understandable. Ferrari took a significant step backwards last season, after the promising mini-revival of 2015, when its much improved engine powered Sebastian Vettel to three opportunist race wins, unravelled.
Last year's SF16-H was meant to be the car that carried Ferrari back to the top. Company president Sergio Marchionne pretty well declared as much. Italy expected, but Ferrari didn't deliver. The car was inconsistent, results were too. Ferrari failed to make progress, seemed to crack under the pressure of expectation, made mistakes, threw away chances. Star technical director James Allison fell out with his bosses and left the team mid-season.
It very much looked as though Ferrari might descend into a recreation of a dark past, where chaos reigned and scapegoats lay strewn across the corridors of Maranello. Further darkening the mood, Ferrari has seemingly withdrawn into a skulking silence since - saying very little publicly at the launch of its new car last week; saying nothing publicly so far about the performance of that car in pre-season testing.
After the embarrassment of failing to deliver on last season's bold predictions, the message from on high this time around appears to follow the opposite approach - say nothing, keep schtum; don't talk a good game, play one instead.
The very early signs suggest Ferrari is reaping the benefits of that new focus. It appears to have begun the 2017 pre-season strongly - far from a team embroiled in crisis and shambles.
Sebastian Vettel lapped only 0.113 seconds shy of Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes on day one of pre-season testing at Barcelona's Catalunya circuit, despite running only medium compound Pirellis compared to Hamilton's softs, before team-mate Kimi Raikkonen managed to beat Hamilton to top spot on day two, trumping the Mercedes' 1m20.983s super-soft best with 0.023s using soft tyres.
Ferrari has been right on Mercedes' pace so far, despite using harder tyres than its rival. OK, it's only testing, only the first week of testing in fact, and those who are easily excited should remember that Ferrari has topped the timesheets on three of four days at each of the opening pre-season tests of the past two seasons, yet come nowhere near mounting a serious challenge to Mercedes' hegemony.
But some of those previous test-topping efforts, particularly last season, involved bolting on much softer tyres than Mercedes used. This time, Ferrari seems more methodical in its approach, and certainly doesn't seem interested in the false idol of morale boosting glory runs to appease senior management. What's more, the car looks genuinely impressive out on the circuit.
"You don't know the fuel loads everyone is running, and out on the track what gives you an indication of that is how the car accelerates off the corners, but it didn't look that lively so I don't think it was running on the sniff of an oily rag," reckons Autosport technical consultant Gary Anderson. "I would assume they were running 50-80kg of fuel in the car - that's where you would normally test at.
"For me the Ferrari looked consistent, it was doing the same thing all the time. Obviously the lap times show it was pretty quick, it was on the soft tyre and close to Hamilton's time. OK, Hamilton's time was on the super-soft, but it would have been pretty similar for him on the soft, because Hamilton screwed up the last section of the lap.
"Lewis tried to do a better lap time on the softs and the super-softs, and it didn't work out for him, so it's not as though Mercedes is sandbagging. On the super-softs he probably should have done a 1m20.2s or 1m20.3s lap, and on the softs he should have matched his 1m20.9s best.
"Hamilton may go out tomorrow and do a 1m18.9s, but Vettel might do an 18.8. Time will tell, but as we're going through the stages the Ferrari out on track looks quite good.
"The Mercedes on that long run Bottas did looked nothing special - it went away from him fairly quickly and he had a lot of understeer to start with, and some oversteer later. He really had to drive it.
"All you can do is compare like-for-like, and the Ferrari and Mercedes don't look miles apart. But the most important thing is the Ferrari didn't change lines, it was doing the same thing through a run, which is a very good baseline."
The general feeling is that Ferrari has produced a strong car out of the box, with particular attention paid to the design of its bargeboards, sidepods and floor. Early indications are that this focus has paid off, giving the SF70H a great deal of aerodynamic stability and decent downforce. The car has also looked particularly strong under braking, an area in which supplier Brembo has paid particular focus coming into this year.
Ferrari has also paid attention to details, beefing up a gearbox design that proved unreliable in 2016, while new technical director Mattia Binotto is hoping an organisational revamp within Maranello will improve Ferrari's pace and consistency of development during the expected arms race to come.
With the basic aero concept seemingly working well, attention should shift towards refining parts of the car that still resemble last year's design more closely - such as the nose and front wing.
"The way you develop a car is a bit of a strange way around," explains Anderson. "Basically, the rear of the car makes it work, and actually that flow structure makes the front wing work.
"You get the rear of the car into a basic condition that's reasonable, then start with the front wing, wash that through to the bargeboards, the leading edge of the sidepods, and floor.
"But you've got to be careful if you've got the bargeboard concept Ferrari has, because that's operating around an airflow regime that's coming off that front wing. So if they do anything dramatic to the front of the car they could easily screw up the part of the car is actually the most complicated but seems to be functioning correctly.
"If I was looking at the Ferrari and saying, 'What areas are developable?' - areas that won't affect the main focus I've had so far, which is that bargeboard area - I'd be going for the diffuser.
"It's relatively naive beside what Mercedes has. The diffuser is something you can get a pretty good run at with someone else's design, because the airflow coming off it you don't care about - you're leaving it behind, whereas the front wing your car has to deal with, so taking a Mercedes front wing and putting it on a Ferrari could cause you great grief.
"The Ferrari bargeboard package is built around a different front wing concept to Mercedes, but all you can do is look around Barcelona, which is a very aerodynamic track, and it seems to be functioning to a pretty good and consistent level. We've had a lot of wind today and it doesn't seem to be dramatically affected."
So could this be the start of something big for Ferrari - a genuine revival after a stuttering season of mixed results and internal recriminations? Or is this just more of the same - false hope; another false dawn for a team that has consistently flattered to deceive in pre-season testing in recent years?
"Ferrari spent a lot of time here on the medium tyre, which is a good tyre to get your car sorted out on," adds Anderson. "Last year it threw itself a lot, because it kept on firing on soft tyres and super-soft tyres and ultra-soft tyres, and at some point in time within the team people start to believe the lap times you're doing - and they're not really true.
"I think Ferrari as a team this year is doing a much more professional job than it's done in the past. It's not got frustrated with the car, it's stuck to a plan of focusing on the right tyre to get the car sorted out, which is the medium, and the Ferrari seems to respond quite well going from the medium to the soft.
"Before Ferrari always tried to be quick, but this test it isn't necessarily trying to be quick; it's just trying to do the job.
"I like what I see with the Ferrari, but is it game on? Who knows..."
If Ferrari can get itself properly back into the game this year, it will be great news for F1.
Bookmarks