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Susie’s test (15:48)
Pirelli new tyres consistent (15:48)
Interesting stats from Silverstone (Provided by Pirelli) (15:48)
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Susie’s test
Yesterday Susie Wolf joined the list of women who took part in an official Formula 1 event, and the second one to do so for Williams F1 (Lella Lombardi being the first one). It is difficult to judge how she did as her work focused mostly on development work and pit stop practice. Add to this one of the least competitive cars built by the Grove based team; 9th best is probably the nest she, and we, could have hoped for.
According to Xevi Pujolar, Chief Engineer for Williams, Susie did a great job, “Susie did a great job for us today. We did some aero tests this morning while she familiarised herself with the car and then we moved onto some performance and development work with her.” He goes on to say how they did pit stop practice and she was great because she stopped on the mark every time… ok then.
Susie was grateful for the team’s support to get her through the day and added, “In hindsight it would have been good to run the new tyres later in the day after I’d had more time in the car as I don’t think I got the best out of the medium tyres. Physically it wasn’t easy, but it was what I was expecting“. She also had some issues with her seat not fitting well.
Could she have gone faster, she missed her target time of 1:34:06, the time set by Daniel Juncadella, by about 4/10ths? And was the reason for doing pit stop practice in the afternoon to help her get through the day… in a physical way? Regardless, she still managed to do 89 laps, and apparently not much difference between Susie going through Copse compared to others… bar Vettel. Hmmm… when…
Pirelli new tyres consistent
The drivers that have tested Pirelli’s new tyres have said they are more consistent. Pastor Maldonado said, “The reliability has improved – and also the performance“. He continues, “they [tyres] are not what we had in the past, but they are very consistent, which is good“.
This bodes well for Massa who have been struggling with the tyres and also the Mercedes’ of Hamilton and Rosberg, and let us not forget Red Bull.
After the test Paul Hembery said, “We think that everybody achieved their objectives from these three days of running at Silverstone. From our point of view, we made the most of this opportunity to gather data that will help us best meet the needs of the Formula One teams in the future.
While modern-day simulation is extremely advanced, there are some things that you can still only find out from running on a track with a representative car, so we would like to thanks all the teams and the governing body for their cooperation in helping us to achieve this. The tyres all ran reliably throughout the three days of the test, although of course you cannot compare the times to those seen in the British Grand Prix because the track conditions and other car parameters were different.
The established performance of the 2012 structure, consolidated with the speed of the current compounds, is set to provide an interesting mix of strategies for the races ahead. The teams already have a lot of information about the shape and deformation of this tyre from the previous season, and the three days at Silverstone was useful to assess the effect that this will have on the 2013 cars, with positive results.”
Let us see what happens in Hungary then…
Interesting stats from Silverstone (Provided by Pirelli)
The teams are usually allocated 100 sets of tyres per year for testing purposes (although an additional 12 sets were granted for Silverstone) with all the compounds in the range available to test. It is up to the teams to choose the number of sets and compounds they would like to evaluate per test.
In addition to this, a new prototype hard compound was available for testing in Silverstone, for use by the current race drivers only. This harder version of the hard compound was tried out during free practice for the Spanish and British Grands Prix.
Testing numbers:
Total number of sets brought to Silverstone: 344 sets which equals 1,376 tyres
– of which soft tyres: 29 sets
– of which medium tyres: 105 sets
– of which hard tyres: 139 sets
– of which prototype hard tyres: 25 sets
– of which intermediate tyres: 30 sets
– of which wet tyres: 16 sets
Total amount of sets used: 224
– of which soft tyres: 18 sets
– of which medium tyres: 84 sets
– of which hard tyres: 107 sets
– of which prototype hard tyres: 15 sets
– of which intermediate tyres: 0 sets
– of which wet tyres: 0 sets
Longest run:
17 laps on the hard compound
18 laps of the prototype hard compound
16 laps on the medium compound
11 laps on the soft compound
Lowest / highest ambient temperature over three days: 19 °C (Day 2)/ 28 °C (Day 1)
Lowest / highest track temperature over three days: 27 °C (Day 2/3) / 45 °C (Day 1/3)
Testing Times:
Day 1
| 1. Kevin Magnussen (McLaren) | 1m33.602s | Medium New |
| 2. Paul Di Resta (Force India) | 1m33.774s | Prototype Hard New |
| 3. Antonio Felix Da Costa (Red Bull) | 1m33.821s | Hard New |
Day 2
| 1. Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso) | 1m32.972s | Medium Used |
| 2. Carlos Sainz Jr. (Toro Rosso) | 1m33.016s | Soft New |
| 3. Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull) | 1m33.187s | Hard New |
Day 3
| 1. Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) | 1m32.894s | Medium New |
| 2. Adrian Sutil (Force India) | 1m33.242s | Medium New |
| 3. Nicolas Prost (Lotus) | 1m33.256s | Medium New |
Considering it was the first time in the current car, except for some meaningless straightline tests, I think Susie did really well. A lot of people were saying she’d be absolutely rubbish, but she wasn’t. 89 laps is a lot of mileage and – more importantly – at 524K significantly more than the 300K needed for FIA’s minimum requirement for a super license. Who knows, we might see her in free practice after all.
The lot of pitstop practice makes sense in several aspects:
a) As an aftermath of the pit accident in Germanyland, I’m pretty sure that all teams practiced pitstops a little more than initially planned.
b) Susie has been doing DTM pitstops for 7 years. In contrast to F1, they are pedestrian at best, so she needs to get used to the more hectic ways of F1 pitstops.
c) She isn’t only a marketing tool and while Toto might have had a hand in her signing, it isn’t just to keep her off the street. She does a lot of simulator work, but to compare it to the real car, she needs to experience it in all situations, including pit stops.
All in all, I think it was a good showing.
I quite agree. She was new to the car, which is not the fastest, and was only just over 2 seconds slower than Vettel, in a car he drives all the time. I hope she gets some time in the car in the future, in free practice, to highlight her abilities.
Susie was good in the lower formulae, not vintage, but good. Her 6 years in DTM though have made people doubt her abilities. In a way you could put her career versus Di Resta and you can see that the F3 season she missed due to injury and the less than impressive years in DTM haven’t convinced people. Maybe its her race craft that lets her down.
Would be good to see her in a Friday practice. Would be better to see her in a race seat next year. She can’t be slower than Max :p
I would also agree that she did a good job – and I’m very pleased about that, and not surprised. It’s impossible to know exactly HOW good, because there are too many variables, but it would certainly b good if this opened some doors to other women as well as her.
Danilo, one point – I don’t agree with your point “b”. I can’t imagine that she’s actually going to “need” to be any good at F1 pitstops – at 30, I would have thought it EXTREMELY unlikely that she has any F1 career ahead of her other than as a test driver (which, perhaps I’m wrong, but I would assume doesn’t require F1-race-style pitstops…).
But overall, a good test.
I tend to agree with you, that it is probably too late for Susie. But…some lower ranking team in need of sponsorship money might think she is worth it. There are a lot of female orientated companies who would be interested, I am sure.
Sorry folks, but Susie’s just 30. It might come as a surprise to you, but women at 30 have more uses than being shagged violently in a disgusting porntube video in the MILF section.
30 might be unusual for a debut, but she could well have 5 to 6 years to go before the age question even comes up. Mansell became champion at 39.
I was not being sexist in any way, and I take exception to your comments.
When other drivers are being said to be getting too old at 33, when they have been driving in F1 for 13 years already, then how can 30 be a good age to start? I am just repeating what is said about drivers of that age group, whatever their gender. However, I think it would be good for the sport for Susie to race in F1, and I think she would bring significant sponsorship to any team for which she raced.
Women generally degrade slower than men as they age. There are several examples of women, who were very competitive in high-demand sports well into their 40s. Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann, Claudia Pechstein spring to mind. Jeannie Longo became double french cycling champion at the age of 50. It’s us men, who fall apart at 30, not the women.
We also forget that 15 years ago it was rather unusual for people to come to F1 before the late 20s. I think 30 is not too old to start.
“Sorry folks, but Susie’s just 30. It might come as a surprise to you, but women at 30 have more uses than being shagged violently in a disgusting porntube video in the MILF section”.
Looks like someone has intimate experience of cataloging videos. TJ13 public information service 🙂
Define “disgusting”.