Originally Posted by
Silent Bob
Every year I try to pick the same spots around the Circuit de Catalunya at Barcelona to watch the pre-season tests. It's a great track to walk around and watch at close quarters because you can see a whole range of corners and areas where cars show their strengths and weaknesses.
Fast corners, slow corners, changes of direction, braking and traction - they can all be judged by your eyes and ears and, pretty much every year, my list matches up with the lap times because there's nowhere to hide.
F1 2018 might depend on Bottas
Last year Ferrari looked like it was a real match for Mercedes in pre-season testing, and when we got to Melbourne that proved to be the case. This year, however, the Brackley squad seems to have taken another good step forward.
Visually the car is a logical update on 2017's championship winner, but it's obviously had all the right changes to make it much more user-friendly. Watching Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas out on track, they are able to metronomically hit the same line lap after lap with remarkable consistency. And speed.
Mercedes has been very smart about not showing its hand with the faster tyres, but make no mistake, a quick look at the race runs shows very clearly that the W09 is a step ahead of the pack. I reckon the gap is about 0.4 seconds at the moment. Unless Mercedes has some dramatic chassis imbalance when the softer tyres get bolted on - highly unlikely - it is unquestionably on top.
Watching at the very fast Turn 9 right-hander, Bottas carried an unbelievable amount of speed through the apex on the medium tyres, with fuel on board. In contrast, when watching either the Ferrari or the Red Bull on the long run, the drivers just didn't have the grip to carry the same speed through.
The change of direction with the front end seemed to be a good step forward from last year. When you watch either Mercedes driver between Turns 2 and 3 or further around the lap in the final sector, they are able to change direction incredibly sharply when they have a sequence of corners. This allows them to just open up the line to the second part of a sequence and carry more apex speed than anyone else.
This is particularly worrying for the opposition as the opportunities they had last year were on slower, twistier circuits. Clearly that area of weakness has been focused on and dealt with.
From a power-unit standpoint, the driveability seems extraordinary. Not once do you hear of the drivers struggling for traction, despite trying to put an estimated 1000bhp onto the ground. Mercedes continues to be the gold standard in reliability terms, with an incredible 201 laps on the final day of testing to just drive the point home.
For the sake of Formula 1 and the show, I really hope that Bottas can take the fight to Hamilton this year.
Ferrari is closer to Red Bull
The headlines from the last week of testing show that Ferrari and Red Bull shared the quickest times across the four days. But come qualifying in Melbourne, I think the entire paddock will be pretty shocked if anything other than a Mercedes is on pole position.
Watching the Ferrari out on track, it's clearly a fast car. Last year in pre-season testing, it looked like an easier car to drive than the Mercedes, but this time around, every time the drivers try to lean on it a bit more and extract some more speed, it just doesn't seem to be there.
At Turn 4, for example, Kimi Raikkonen would charge in and try to get the nose to bite, but it just doesn't dig in and pivot in the same way the Mercedes does. The rotation that they need mid-corner to get the car to turn while carrying the apex speed they want isn't there in the medium and slow-speed corners. Watching at Turns 11 and 12 showed the stark difference between the lazier Ferrari and the sharper Mercedes in changes of direction.
Red Bull and Ferrari are very evenly matched but both need a big step forward with updates to catch Mercedes
Red Bull looks like it has carried on its progression from the end of 2017, when the chassis was working brilliantly. It's hard to fault the RB14 in the slow and medium-speed corners, and the braking stability into T1 and T10 looked excellent.
But in the faster corners the Mercedes still looks like it's got a bit of an advantage. When I looked at T9 on the race runs, I noticed Daniel Ricciardo had a much bigger lift than Bottas and, every time he would have a go at just a bit more apex speed, he would just run out of road.
Red Bull's main weakness could still be in the power department. Renault seems to have made good progress on the reliability front, with some good testing mileage being banked by Red Bull and the works Enstone team. I hope that this means the power can be turned up a bit more in qualifying, but insiders still reckon Renault is going to be about 40bhp down on the Mercedes.
On the whole, I would say that Red Bull and Ferrari are very evenly matched. They even did race runs at similar times of the day, which helped us see that they were close. Both need a big step forward with updates to catch Mercedes.
Where will the other Renault teams slot in?
McLaren has been the biggest talking point of the pre-season tests. All through the winter, Formula 1 fans around the world were praying that the switch to Renault power would allow Fernando Alonso and the team to be fighting at the sharp end once again.
McLaren had a catalogue of reliability woes and, when the car was running, the team chose a strategy of testing with softer tyres than anyone else for most of the time, which made it hard to draw any conclusions about the MCL33's true pace.
On the last couple of days we saw some long runs from Stoffel Vandoorne and some decent medium and short runs from Alonso, which confirmed that, on pace, McLaren certainly has the potential to be the fourth-best team.
Is that enough for the Woking squad? That's a question that a lot of people in the paddock are asking. At the end of the day, it now has the same power unit as the Red Bull and has spent the past few years claiming it had the best chassis on the grid. The world should probably cut McLaren some slack for the first four flyaways, until it starts to gel properly with Renault. But from the Spanish Grand Prix (round five, in May) onwards, McLaren really needs to be matching Red Bull.
McLaren looks like it has the potential to be fourth best. Is it a Red Bull-beater? I wouldn't put money on it yet
At the moment, unless the team sorts out the reliability gremlins that have hurt it over the past two weeks, it isn't going to be racking up the points or getting the crucial running it needs on a race weekend to get the car set up right. What's been worrying for the team is that it's not just had the same issue again and again, but instead a whole variety of problems. There are clearly some installation issues, which are different from what the works Renault and Red Bull teams have - burned bodywork and holes cut into the engine cover were clear giveaways that all isn't well.
Out on track, the car does look balanced and confidence-inspiring. Alonso certainly wasn't shy of throwing it around straight out of the box, and the car seemed to respond well. The front end tucked into the apex of the medium-speed corners such as Turn 7 very well and, while it didn't look as comfortable over the kerbs as the Mercedes (which was frankly like a limousine on a bed of air), it still looks like it has the potential to be fourth best.
Is it a Red Bull-beater? I wouldn't put money on it yet.
The works Renault team looks like a proper factory squad for the first time in years. It has two hotshots in the cockpit, solid funding and good people on board. The car looks balanced out on track and, apart from a gearbox glitch on the final day, generally has very good reliability.
It's been a very impressive turnaround in the past 18 months - who can forget the woeful qualifying in Baku 2016 when the yellow cars were on the back row of the grid?
Renault looks like it's at the sharp end of the battle for fourth with McLaren, and about half a second behind Ferrari and Red Bull. That's a good starting point for a team that's rebuilding, and I'm really interested to see how it progresses in this fight with its orange customer.
Are there surprises in the midfield?
For the past two years, Force India and Williams have locked out the 'best-of-the-rest' territory behind the top three teams. This could be a tricky ask for the two Mercedes customers this year, as Renault, McLaren and Haas all seem to be more competitive than in 2017.
When watching trackside, the Williams looked unpredictable on corner entry, which is just confidence-sapping for the drivers. Sergey Sirotkin did look like he had a bit more consistency on the final afternoon before handing over to Lance Stroll, but the team has had a big design change and it looks like it needs a bit more time to understand how to get the most from the FW41.
The Force India also looked very tricky to drive, but the team is counting on a big update for Melbourne so we're probably better off reserving judgement.
On the penultimate day of testing, Kevin Magnussen produced a lap on supersoft tyres that made the entire paddock sit up and take note. When you applied the tyre offsets, the Haas suddenly seemed like the fourth-fastest car out there, which had the other midfield teams scrambling for the long-run sheets to gauge where the team really is.
Out on track, the Haas did look like a very good and balanced car, so it could well throw a curveball to Renault and McLaren.
Toro Rosso's Honda reliability has been the other big surprise. The team completed the third-highest number of laps, and out on track the front end of the STR13, particularly at medium and slow speeds, looked like it was working very well. I'm really interested to see where Toro Rosso is in the pecking order when engines are turned up for qualifying!
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