While last week’s Valencia tests were a much-needed injection of Formula 1 into the lives of the sport’s more obsessive fans – I know I’ve been suffering from withdrawal – the nature of the Ricardo Tormo circuit is such that not much could be gleaned from the tests.

The Valencia circuit is considerably shorter than the tracks on the 2010 calendar, and lacks the high-speed corners that provide a real test of the car’s aerodynamic capabilities. In a sense, the three days at Valencia were more extended shakedown than testing proper.

This morning at Jerez, on an initially dry track that grew wetter as the day went on, 2010 winter testing began in earnest. The seven teams present at Valencia have been joined by three new cars – Red Bull launched the RB6 trackside this morning, and Virgin Racing and Force India are running their 2010 challengers for the first time (not counting last week’s Silverstone shakedowns).

As testing began in earnest, so too did the rumour mill. Jenson Button was seen running the MP4-25 with a bizarre addition designed to monitor the aerodynamic flow. This news, coupled with last week’s reports from Valencia that saw the team using flow vis paint in the first round of testing, has sent the gossips into a tailspin. Is the car beset with the same aerodynamic failures that saw the Woking squad follow the pack for the first half of the 2010 season? Will Lewis and Jenson spend 2010 battling it out for 25 and 26-place finishes instead of the championship we were anticipating?

Maybe. It’s far too early to tell. McLaren’s press office have come up with a perfectly reasonable explanation for the extra aero work currently being done by the team, but the cynics claim it’s classic PR damage control. Judge for yourself: "Given the limited amount of testing that teams have been permitted over the past two seasons, as a team we feel it's necessary to put as much emphasis as we possibly can on accurately measuring the flow structures we encounter at the track so that we can match them to the flow structures we are able to simulate in CFD and the windtunnel back at the factory."

Button hasn’t been top of the time sheets at any point in the 2010 pre-season tests, a fact which is adding fuel to the gossips’ fire. In fact, he’s spent most of his time languishing in the bottom to mid-field. Is this a problem with the McLaren, or with the man behind the wheel? Until Ross Brawn gifted the Somerset lad with the BGP001, his career had been spent primarily in the mid-field, so it is entirely possible that the champion’s current test results show nothing more than a return to form for the driver.

That said, when this morning’s wet times are extracted from the timesheets, Jenson was second, running at 1.27.793s, behind Red Bull’s Mark Webber, who posted 1.27.086s.

While many British journalists have argued that Button needs time to settle in to the McLaren, pointing to the issues with his seat that were widely reported last week, that doesn’t allow for Spanish driver Fernando Alonso’s performances. He also swapped teams in the off-season, but the Spanish champion was immediately at home behind the wheel of the Ferrari, topping the timesheets in Valencia.

Alonso’s Jerez performances have yet to match up to the times shown last week – in the dry, he posted the fourth fastest lap, coming in behind Nico Rosberg, Sebastian Buemi, and Nico Hulkenberg with a time of 1m22.895s. In the wet, his time of 1.29.602s put the Spaniard near the bottom, with only Kamui Kobayashi behind him.

There are, of course, the usual caveats relating to unknown testing strategies and the fuel weight mystery. Until we have seen enough testing to establish who’s been working on tyre management and fuel loads vs who’s been working on maximising speed on low weights, analysis is more fantasy than reality. As ever, Friday practice in Bahrain will tell us more about competitiveness than our best guesses now. (Are you as sick of reading that as I am of typing it? I want to know if the cars I’d like to be fastest really are!)

The first lap of the VR-01, with Timo Glock behind the wheel, was heavy on the oversteer. It is far too early to determine whether this is a damning indictment of the team’s decision to abandon windtunnel work for a CFD-only design – not much can be read from a single installation lap, unless the car falls to pieces in a scene more suited to Wacky Races or a sequel from the Herbie franchise.

Given that the launch of the RB6 has been one of the most hotly anticipated moments of the off-season (or are we now in the pre-season? Who decides these things?), it is a shame that the car’s first outing saw an oil leak that led to the test session being red flagged. After 47 laps, Mark Webber’s car stopped on the track. Like the good team player he is, Webber’s first move was to block photographers’ views of the car’s rear end and the double diffuser therein. According to Red Bull, stopping the car was a precautionary measure, and the team will now fix the leak and clean the car before allowing Webber back out on track. In his limited running, Webber set a best time of 1m26.502s.

While it would be nice to be able to squash rumours with certainty, the mill is going to be in constant overdrive from now till the end of the season. We will get a better picture of relative competitiveness as time goes on, but for the moment any firm predictions will soon be as soggy as the Jerez track. Kate Walker for Girlracer Magazine 

• Add New
• Search

Comments (0)

Write comment

Your Contact Details:

Name:

Email: do not notifynotify

Website:

Comment:

Title:

UBBCode:    ' />     -color-aquablackbluefuchsiagraygreenlimemaroonnavyolivepurpleredsilvertealwhiteyellow -size-tinysmallmediumlargehuge

Message:

Security

Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 4.0 beta1

!joomlacomment 4.0 Copyright (C) 2009 Compojoom.com . All rights reserved."