2018 Pre-Season Thread

[NRS]

Vocal Minority said:

Yes people know the difference - but then will use that information to indulge in the mugs game of trying to divine out and out pace....

Looks like the top 3 are as expected.

FI seem to have slipped back massively this year.

Honda engine is massively improved, looks like they will be fighting for mid-table positions.

Sauber as expected near the back.

[Bradgate]

i know it's only the first day of testing, and that it's cold, and all the rest of it but Mclaren aren't looking good, are they?

[Vocal Minority]

Bradgate said:

i know it's only the first day of testing, and that it's cold, and all the rest of it but Mclaren aren't looking good, are they?

As above - I know its been a long winter and we are all desperate to draw a conclusion...any conclusion. Because we are bored.

But you may as well pick it out of the hat today.

[HustleRussell]

As always you can’t really deduce a thing from day 1 of test 1 with certainty.

The cars have been remarkably reliable so far. Mclaren, despite Renault, have still managed to end the day with the wooden spoon for reliability.

Unsurprisingly the Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull look the most sorted.

NRS said:

FI seem to have slipped back massively this year.

Honda engine is massively improved, looks like they will be fighting for mid-table positions.

Sauber as expected near the back.

Waaaaay too early to say. Force India have Nikita Mazepin in the car. Toro Rosso Honda might simply be trying harder than everybody else- the PU might be as inefficient, underpowered and undrivable as ever for all we know. At least it hasn’t shaken the Toro Rosso to pieces yet.

[Dr Z]

Well, first impressions do give an idea.

Renault powered cars are doing a lot of mileage. RB and works Renault cars were putting in quick times without even trying. I'm sure McLaren will be thereabouts.

Honda is running reliably in the TR. Ferrari look good too, while Mercedes don't look as good. I'm getting a deja vu to last year's pre-season test.

As ever, the bullst stops at Melbourne in a months time.

[Vocal Minority]

And Christian Horner is bhing about Renault already...

The genuine piece of information we have is that the Honda has run reliably. We don't have any information about where the wick is turned to though.

[Car-Matt]

Vocal Minority said:

Yes people know the difference - but then will use that information to indulge in the mugs game of trying to divine out and out pace....

Nope

Was just wondering if the delta between compounds had lessened with the advent of the hyper soft .......

[CraigyMc]

Car-Matt said:

Vocal Minority said:

Yes people know the difference - but then will use that information to indulge in the mugs game of trying to divine out and out pace....

Nope

Was just wondering if the delta between compounds had lessened with the advent of the hyper soft .......

Montmeló was resurfaced 3-4 weeks ago (primarily for MotoGP: the FIM wouldn't homologate the track without it!). The tyre behaviour consequently won't be exactly the same as it was before, even accounting for the temperature deltas (freezing now, hotter before).

It's quite feasible that in those conditions, the softer tyre isn't in its workable temperature window, consequently it will not perform as well as the ones towards the harder end of the range, which have a lower, wider working range.

I'd like to see an event somewhere warm, which I think will probably have to wait until Australia on the 23rd March, unless the weather gets a lot better in Northern Spain quickly. For the record, it was 32C air temperature in Melbourne today.

The forecast for Spain this week and next is that it's supposed to get warmer (from 8C to more like 17C) on Thursday and stay that way through next week.

[Car-Matt]

CraigyMc said:

Car-Matt said:

Vocal Minority said:

Yes people know the difference - but then will use that information to indulge in the mugs game of trying to divine out and out pace....

Nope

Was just wondering if the delta between compounds had lessened with the advent of the hyper soft .......

Some Stuff

We Dont Know

Some more stuff

.

Thanks anyway, i wasn't sure if the tyre manufacturer had issued any guides etc

[NRS]

HustleRussell said:

As always you can’t really deduce a thing from day 1 of test 1 with certainty.

The cars have been remarkably reliable so far. Mclaren, despite Renault, have still managed to end the day with the wooden spoon for reliability.

Unsurprisingly the Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull look the most sorted.

NRS said:

FI seem to have slipped back massively this year.

Honda engine is massively improved, looks like they will be fighting for mid-table positions.

Sauber as expected near the back.

Waaaaay too early to say. Force India have Nikita Mazepin in the car. Toro Rosso Honda might simply be trying harder than everybody else- the PU might be as inefficient, underpowered and undrivable as ever for all we know. At least it hasn’t shaken the Toro Rosso to pieces yet.

Sorry - I hoped it would be obvious enough having quoted a post saying important not to make conclusions too early but people would do so anyway...

Was just a list wildly over-interpreting the time from the best laps.

Not that surprising McLaren can end up with the reliability issue table - it was the 3rd least reliable engine last year. That said, wheels falling off are not the engine maker's responsibility!

[anonymous-user]

It's looking like all week the temperatures in Barcelono will be well below the working range of any of the tyres, so using the lap times as reference will be pointless. I would expect they are having to increase static toe settings just to get the tyres warm. You will probably see a lot of tyre surface tearing and graining caused by the surface temperature being too low, which causes the tyre to tear.

So i think it will be just systems tuning and basic running this week, the performance on the limit wont be touched. It needs to warm up a lot.

[Kraken]

Exactly, At these temperatures the deltas between tyres is meaningless as they are so far out of their working range. By the end of the 2nd test I expect they will all be 4 seconds faster than now.

[suffolk009]

suffolk009 said:

thegreenhell said:

HustleRussell said:

last year's livery was a proper miss IMO. The colour grew on me but the 'speedmark' thing didn't. It needs to be solid, proper papaya like Bruce's old cars from 50 years ago. That's if these Bahrainis have got some taste and can resist the temptation to add a load of chintzy gimmicks and metal flake and st.

I didn't even realise it was supposed to be the speedmark until they said about it it in the Amazon documentary.

I know. That was the first time I got it. Papaya orange with blue text - just like the Indy car last year. That's what I have in mind.

Ta-Daa!

[Dr Z]

Car-Matt said:

Nope

Was just wondering if the delta between compounds had lessened with the advent of the hyper soft .......

I don't believe it has lessened as such. My understanding is that two compounds ('hypersoft' and 'superhard') were introduced to address the complaint, that in some tracks the delta between the ultrasoft and supersoft was too small and in other tracks the delta between the hard and medium was too big for it to encourage strategy variation between teams.

My suspicion is that last year's hard compound is now the superhard and this year's hard is an entirely new compound, as is the hypersoft. Looking the compound choices for last year and this year for the first three races:

Race	2017	2018
Australia	S/SS/US	S/SS/US
Bahrain	M/S/SS	M/S/SS
China	M/S/SS	M/S/US

The only difference between last year and this year appears to be the Chinese GP, where this year they've skipped one compound and are bringing the ultrasoft. It's quite clear the idea for Pirelli is to shorten the 1st stint in the race to encourage 2 stops as a norm which then allows teams to gamble more. I suspect the compounds are all probably tweaked to degrade a bit quicker in relation to last year but allowing Pirelli to throw in a joker tyre to mix things up on some tracks where the existing compound choices didn't work well last year.

Clearly, they are going conservative in Australia and Bahrain but are happy to bring a softer compound to China where the chance of overheating it and it completely falling apart are less than the Sakhir track.

Last year's soft and hard were the only high working range tyres which limited them on some abrasive/high speed tracks.

[Vaud]

I haven't had a chance to look at any detailed analysis.

But I am really pleased for Torro Rosso for a first day of testing vs last year... with a Honda.

[pits]

It's nice to see the Honda putting in some reliability, but won't know true pace till quali in Australia.

[Vaud]

pits said:

It's nice to see the Honda putting in some reliability, but won't know true pace till quali in Australia.

True, but I guess even if it is not 100% of power, that getting through the rest of the test programme is really critical for reliability and pit operations.

[AlexS]

Dr Z said:

I don't believe it has lessened as such. My understanding is that two compounds ('hypersoft' and 'superhard') were introduced to address the complaint, that in some tracks the delta between the ultrasoft and supersoft was too small and in other tracks the delta between the hard and medium was too big for it to encourage strategy variation between teams.

My suspicion is that last year's hard compound is now the superhard and this year's hard is an entirely new compound, as is the hypersoft. Looking the compound choices for last year and this year for the first three races:

Race	2017	2018
Australia	S/SS/US	S/SS/US
Bahrain	M/S/SS	M/S/SS
China	M/S/SS	M/S/US

The only difference between last year and this year appears to be the Chinese GP, where this year they've skipped one compound and are bringing the ultrasoft. It's quite clear the idea for Pirelli is to shorten the 1st stint in the race to encourage 2 stops as a norm which then allows teams to gamble more. I suspect the compounds are all probably tweaked to degrade a bit quicker in relation to last year but allowing Pirelli to throw in a joker tyre to mix things up on some tracks where the existing compound choices didn't work well last year.

Clearly, they are going conservative in Australia and Bahrain but are happy to bring a softer compound to China where the chance of overheating it and it completely falling apart are less than the Sakhir track.

Last year's soft and hard were the only high working range tyres which limited them on some abrasive/high speed tracks.

They've changed the compounds as well, so this years Super Soft is effectively last years Ultra.

[kambites]

pits said:

It's nice to see the Honda putting in some reliability, but won't know true pace till quali in Australia.

We wont really know their true pace until the end of the race. Mclaren weren't looking that slow in qualifying by the end of last year; they just couldn't maintain that pace for the race because their fuel economy was so poor.

[CraigyMc]

Bradgate said:

i know it's only the first day of testing, and that it's cold, and all the rest of it but Mclaren aren't looking good, are they?

No, not really.

Alonso's fastest time was set by bypassing the chicane at the end of the lap.