Brought to you by TheJudge13 contributors Vortex Motio and Mattpt55

Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris

…therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne- Meditation XVII

And thus is Renault kicked to the kerb, properly in the eyes of many as having gotten it completely wrong in the V8 era and being given permission to play catch up, they naturally expected the same treatment in the V6 era, which they pushed hardest for. And that relief is now officially denied them, for the moment.Of course, larger questions loom, such as who will keep watching once Red Bull go up in a ball of flames or Lotus are forced to circulate at 75% pace in order to hopefully make the finish. And it is amidst all the spectacle and trauma that FOTA has given it’s last breath, ensuring a total lack of cooperation amongst constructors in these most challenging of times and confirming the opinion of many that F1 has truly stopped being a sport and become merely an entertainment and a business.

Despite the grim news from officialdom, Red Bull were having none of it and ran Ricciardo for a good 66 laps today, and into the 1:35’s, by far the fastest any Renault has gone in testing thus far. In the morning they decided to go with the flow and take advantage of the need to box every few laps for some much needed pit stop practice, so rest assured RB fans there is at least one race they will be in the running for come Melbourne, fastest pit stop. Further, by the afternoon they were running longer stints which must have been very encouraging given the battering they have taken thus far.

Red Bull’s junior partner, too, had a thoroughly unremarkable day, completing 61 laps and being almost invisible to the live feeds, which can be nothing but encouraging for the mileage starved drivers trying to come to grips with the new regulations.

As if to further emphasise the good news, Mercedes encountered some issues today,whilst still managing too complete 89 laps, including a full race distance. First, in the morning they inexplicably decided to have Lewis test the new floor by driving it into the gravel traps. Apparently they wanted an even more realistic simulation. Then, in the early afternoon, Lewis managed to break the gearbox for good and that put a early end to his day. It’s not all sad news as the Mercedes is above 3800 km, so if those were original parts they have far outlasted the requirements the season will impose on them.

Nico Rosberg, meanwhile, having been stung by Hamilton’s quote from yesterday, decided to show off his work ethic by skulking about the Red Bull pits for a bit of reconnaissance on his day off. Unfortunately though he is a far better driver than spy and was almost immediately spotted by AMuS who put up entertaining photos of the event.

Unfortunate too were Lotus, when Pastor Maldonado decided early on in the day to turn his car into a mobile churrascaria by catching the exhaust on fire. Rumour about the paddock that Lotus switched the exhaust out because the old one was better seasoned is entirely untrue, they both taste about the same. It was another dismal day in the lap count for Lotus with just 31 trips round the circuit.

Not to be outdone in the flambé department, Caterham, too decided to catch fire under the watchful eye of Ericsson, though being less prepared than the Venezuelan the best he could manage on short notice was a brief fondue. Still, though they were much better off than Lotus on total laps, managing 55, they are ominously off the pace and the 107% rule must look like rather like Everest at the moment to them.

Also having a bit of a dodgy morning were McLaren,who were knocked out of the running early on with drive issues, managing to eke out 52 laps once all was said and done with. Still, the paddock has them on even odds to be the pick behind the Mercedes, and though no doubt it will make Macca fans nervous, they are still in a strong position for Melbourne.

Marussia, on the other hand have made a strong comeback from the travails of last week, racking up 75 laps for Bianchi and causing Caterham employees to start hitting their address books again looking for new jobs come the end of the season, as Marussia’s fastest time today was nearly 4.5 seconds clear of the Caterham.

Marussia, was not the only Ferrari powered outfit having a good day, Sauber knocked off 106 laps today in thoroughly unremarkable fashion. Ferrari themselves topped the charts at 122 laps for Alonso, though Force India did manage to eke out fast lap. Conspiracists mourning the departure of Webber can rejoice, however, as thus far it “seems” as if Alonso has had all the luck (or is it on purpose?).

With the resurgence of Ferrari and the sudden weakness of Mercedes and McLaren, it fell to Force India and Williams to defend the honour of the Mercedes PU and they both did so with gusto, FI stealing fast lap for a second day and Williams again running a trouble free 103 laps and edging ever closer to the times of FI.

Massa, too, seems to have a new spring in his step and should Williams manage to avoid the inevitable problems of being collected by crashes in the midfield at the start, they may well be able to run the score up early on and insure against being out developed late in the season by teams with greater resources.

The one thing today shows is that nothing is certain come Melbourne, and that until they light the fires in anger the landscape will remain uncertain, particularly at the top.

Final results:

POS	DRIVER	TEAM	BEST TIME	BEST / TOTAL LAPS
1	S Perez	Sahara Force India	01:35.6	29 / 108
2	F Alonso	Scuderia Ferrari	01:35.6	37 / 122
3	D Ricciardo	Infiniti Red Bull	01:35.7	39 / 66
4	F Massa	Williams	01:36.5	95 / 103
5	J Button	McLaren Mercedes	01:36.9	5 / 52
6	J Bianchi	Marussia	01:38.1	72 / 75
7	L Hamilton	Mercedes AMG Petronas	01:39.0	57 / 89
8	J E Vergne	Toro Rosso	01:39.6	55 / 61
9	E Gutierrez	Sauber F1 Team	01:40.0	46 / 106
10	P Maldonado	Lotus	01:41.6	26 / 31
11	M Ericsson	Caterham F1 Team	01:42.5	3 / 55

Testing Analysis Bahrain Day 2

“I don’t think you can judge a car’s potential from how many laps it does in testing.” Kimi Raikkonen, after testing on Thursday, February 27^th

It’s a natural temptation for a Formula 1 spectator to want to know who went fastest during a testing session. In previous analyses of these winter tests, I’ve focused on the number of laps per day as a stronger indicator of a team’s likely performance during the first races. The reason is simple… all the teams listed endurance and reliability as a primary objective. (Plus my colleague provides fastest lap of the day info in these same analyses!)

Today, I’ll focus again on laps run. Then we’ll examine a little bit in depth two different teams, they’re stated objectives for these tests, and what they’ve accomplished.

First, some numbers!!

Here are the lap totals for today, by team:

	Constructor	P/U	Laps	Driver	% of max
1	Ferrari	Ferrari	122	Alonso	100%
2	Force India	Mercedes	108	Perez	89%
3	Sauber	Ferrari	106	Gutierrez	87%
4	Williams	Mercedes	103	Massa	84%
5	Mercedes	Mercedes	89	Hamilton	73%
6	Marussia	Ferrari	75	Bianchi	61%
7	Red Bull	Renault	66	Ricciardo	54%
8	Toro Rosso	Renault	61	Vergne	50%
9	Caterham	Renault	55	Ericsson	45%
10	McLaren	Mercedes	52	Button	43%
11	Lotus	Renault	31	Maldonado	25%

It’s interesting to see Ferrari at the top of this list. And the Ferrari powered Sauber is 3^rd in this list.

The bottom of the list is just as interesting… Lotus had a bad day at 31 laps, and McLaren at 52 laps, but compared to prior test days, it’s a positive sign overall that no team turned fewer than 31 laps. Excepting Lotus, all teams turned 52 or more laps, which is a positive sign regarding overall reliability compared to prior test days.

If we combine laps run for these first two days of Bahrain 2, we see some positive developments compared to Bahrain 1 and Jerez:

Constructor	P/U	BAH2 laps	% vs most
Williams	Mercedes	231	100%
Force India	Mercedes	213	92%
Sauber	Ferrari	195	84%
Mercedes	Mercedes	178	77%
Ferrari	Ferrari	176	76%
McLaren	Mercedes	161	70%
Marussia	Ferrari	119	52%
Toro Rosso	Renault	117	51%
Red Bull	Renault	105	45%
Caterham	Renault	74	32%
Lotus	Renault	62	27%

Two things to highlight here…

First, there is a natural separation line between the top 6 teams and the bottom 5 teams. The top six teams, starting with McLaren and going up, have 161 laps or more after two days.

The median number of laps per team per day amongst these top 6 teams is 93 laps per day.

The median number of laps per team per day amongst the bottom 5 teams is 53 laps per day.

If we look back at our summary of Bahrain 1, the bottom group, (excluding Marussia) had a median of 29 laps per day. So there is a significant improvement in overall reliability at the bottom end of this list.

Another new pattern to emerge this week is that the Ferrari power units appear to be more reliable than last week. (I’ll look at Ferrari in depth below.) Unfortunately, Renault powered teams make up 4 of the 5 bottom teams, as measured by test laps. We have two more days, but this helps us to better see the challenges of the teams using Renault Sport F1’s power units.

Test laps run is an easy way to measure the reliability of a car. But we as spectators want to know more about how these teams are likely to perform during the first few races. Today I’m spotlighting two teams, Ferrari and Williams. I’ll examine their declared objectives for these tests, and what we know of their results.

Scuderia Ferrari

James Allison is Ferrari’s new Technical Director as of September 1^st of 2013.  After the first Bahrain winter tests last week, he said that Ferrari had focused on car reliability and was reasonably satisfied. But he noted “the smallest thing (will) leave you stranded”. For Bahrain 2, they’ve organized “…every last detail to be ready for the first race.”

In Bahrain 1, Ferrari accomplished:

• work on balancing temperatures of cooling fluids
• Expanded operating window of ERS
• Some work on handling of chassis and tires

Ferrari’s goals for Bahrain 2 are:

• Continue work of Bahrain 1, (controlling temps, ERS, chassis & tire set-ups)
• Operate car ever closely to way it will run in race

• Test and fine tune all components
• Particular attention paid to the power unit

The daily plans will be:

1. Each morning, test runs to check all systems
2. Then continue set-up work and component testing
3. Afternoon, some long run tests, to monitor all systems and tire performance

Yesterday, after testing, Ferrari said:

• A problem caused loss of the morning
• Afternoon did aero tests
• Afternoon performed short run set-up tests

The priorities can be seen yesterday. When a failure prevented some running in the morning, Ferrari performed the set-up work (aero testing, and set-up work), instead of long runs.

Today’s stated goals were car set-up work, plus tire evaluations in the morning. Then aero component testing in the afternoon. Long runs IF things go well for component testing. Note their emphasis upon testing various things (set-ups, tires, aero components) before doing their long runs.

The emphasis on testing various components, and set-ups may be a direct reflection of James Allison’s relatively brief tenure. James Allison started working with Ferrari on September 1^st. At that time, the F14T was a two year old project. His goal then was to not change the F14T project, but instead to understand it, particularly the underlying philosophy of the design, and then to help Ferrari have the tools needed to maximize the performance of the F14T.

In his mid December interview (released by Ferrari) he noted that the aerodynamic tools of Ferrari had been in recent seasons the 4^th or 5^th best on the F1 grid. Ferrari’s newly rebuilt wind tunnel and software tools are now the best in F1.

He noted the new higher importance of the engine in performance. But he emphasised that F1 will remain an aerodynamic formula, balanced with engine performance.

So his goal is maximize the development of the F14T during the season.

If we look at the most radical car design on the 2014 grid, it would easily be the twin husked Lotus. Who guided the design of that car? James Allison did, before he left Lotus.

It was Lotus under Allison that ran their exhausts out the sides of their side pods a few seasons ago…

Point is that Ferrari’s focus on testing the performance of various set-ups, aerodynamic components, etc. over reliability reflects that Allison will want to be able to creatively, and aggressively use the new tools at Ferrari this coming season. This detailed level of testing reflects that.

Williams F1

Pat Symonds started as Technical Director for Williams on August 19^th of 2013. Similarly to James Allison at Ferrari, Pat Symonds found the 2014 FW36 project was already fairly mature at 18 months old.

In the evening of the 2^nd day of the Jerez, he had a very interesting interview conducted by Craig Scarborough, for Motorsport Monday magazine.

After a couple of brief preliminary question, the first question was surprising, as was Pat Symonds’ answer. In Jerez, on the 2^nd day, there was a palpable buzz over the cars, the new power units, the new regulations. But Craig asked Pat if they’ve solved the performance issues in the 2013 car, and Pat responded essentially, no, not yet.

First, Pat dismissed the failed coanda exhaust system as an obvious and easy fix. The he said:

“…We identified a number of areas where the car was deficient, we haven’t fixed them all… subtle problems… are still being worked on… As we go through this season we will nail them one by one. Then we will be able to put a lot more performance on the car.”

Like James Allison, Pat Symonds sees 2014 as still very much an aerodynamics game. He said, “We want to be where we were last year (on downforce) with the blown effect taken away… We aren’t there yet, but we’ll get there.”

At Bahrain 1, during an interview with Sky, Pat Symonds shared Williams view of these winter tests:

“You come to these pre-season tests and the first thing you do is get the reliability, because you’ve got to find out what it is that’s going to bite you. And only when you’ve got that can you really start working on performance.”

“…it’s not until the last test that you see the cars in their final performance configuration.”

Yesterday’s goals here at Bahrain 2 were:

• Aero evaluations
• Race simulation
• Set-up work

At the end of the day, Williams completed all those goals.

Today’s declared goals were, in general, the same: Aero evals, set-up work, and a race simulation. They completed those goals again.

So how different is Williams in regards to their testing versus Ferrari (as an example)? There are many similarities, and the differences are subtle.

One difference is that James Allison’s history indicates that he may be fairly aggressive and creative in guiding the development of Ferrari’s cars.

Williams (both Claire Williams and Pat Symonds) have been very pragmatic during these winter tests as far as the possibility of winning races this season. While their stated goal is to win races and championships, they’ve been around long enough to know it is very difficult to stand on the top step in this series, and to rise to that level of performance takes time.

In Jerez, Claire indicated that the team started implementing a plan early last spring to return Williams back to their winning ways. Pat Symonds is but one part of that plan. When we look at the performance of Williams during these winter tests, it’s obvious that Williams will be a team to watch in 2014. What is not obvious is that this is part of a new top-level down plan that started back at the end of last March.

The second difference is that Scuderia Ferrari are spending some of their time and focus on developing their motor.

For tomorrow, I’m inclined to evaluate Red Bull. I’m open to suggestions.