#F1 Inseason Testing: Red Bull Ring, Day One, Morning Session

· by · in F1 Features, F1 Testing, Live Commentary. ·

Logo_for_Red_Bull_Ring

Hello and welcome everybody to the first part of our live coverage of the last in-season test. This is Hippo typing and like always, this page will be updated every 15 minutes. If you have questions, feel free to put them in the comment section and we’ll try to answer them.

ManorGP are missing and most teams give their reserve drivers a crack at it. This is Today’s exepected line-up

Mercedes: Nico Rosberg
Ferrari: Antonio Fuoco
Red Bull: Daniel Ricciardo
Williams: Susie Wolff
McLaren: Stoffel Vandoorne
Lotus: Romain Grosjean
Force India: Pascal Wehrlein
Toro Rosso: Max Verstappen
Sauber: Raffaele Marciello

The session has started at 08:30 local time, but torrential rain means, nobody is going out yet, even though it would be a good chance to test Pirelli’s wet wheather tyres. They haven’t been used very often.

Mercedes have put their test and reserve driver Pascal Wehrlein in the Force India again. He will take over the Mercedes tomorrow. That makes Wehrlein the driver with the most test mileage by a good margin.

Scratch that

Due to the weather Mercedes has announced that Wehrlein will drive the Merc today and Rosberg tomorrow. Esteban Ocon sits in the Force India today and tomorrow Wehrlein.

green Red Flag

Due to the rain and the resulting track conditions, the start has been postponed. No word about a new starting time yet.

Not much to report at the moment, as the track is still red flagged.

Not sure how much I will get to report. Toro Rosso are not exactly optimistic.

green Green Flag!

The track is open, but so far no action yet. Not only is the track soaked, the Red Bull Ring is also considered a low-grip track. Still, one has to wonder why nobody wants to collect data on the rarely used wet weather tyres.

Always look on the bright side of life…

We have a grand total of exactly one lap, driven by Antonio Fuoco in the Ferrari. The youngster could probably have thought of easier conditions for his first drive in an F1 car.

Stoffel Vandoorne has completed an installation lap in his McLaren, but that’s it so far. Force India report that it is simply too wet to drive, especially since mostly inexperienced drivers are scheduled. With Ricciardo, Verstappen and Grosjean, only three regular drivers take part in today’s test – if it is going to happen that is.

Since we’ve barely seen any track action, here’s the corrected line-up

Mercedes: Pascal Wehrlein
Ferrari: Antonio Fuoco
Red Bull: Pierre Gasly
Williams: Susie Wolff
McLaren: Stoffel Vandoorne
Lotus: Romain Grosjean
Force India: Esteban Ocon
Toro Rosso: Max Verstappen
Sauber: Raffaele Marciello

green Red Flag

The session is stopped due to the weather.

Force India tweets about starting a poker game and the test could end up being cancelled for good as the weather looks likely to get even worse.

10:30 The session should be two hours old by now, but instead the track is still soaked and it continues to rain.

Not looking good…

The first morning was a complete wash-out and teams are discussing about extending the test to thursday.

It’s lunch-time. Should the session be restarted, look out for the second part of our commentary. For now it’s bye bye from the Hippo.

16 responses to “#F1 Inseason Testing: Red Bull Ring, Day One, Morning Session”

  1. Vandoorne was scheduled to be doing only aerodynamic tests. So I can believe mclaren don’t consider going out in the rain.

    • I can’t believe any of McLaren’s focus is on aero when they can’t keep them running for a race distance. Maybe they aren’t able to gather proper engine data on a wet track, but you would think Honda would want every minute of track time they could get.

      • I don’t make the game plan. I just read in an interview with vandoorne that the focus would be aero

        • to be cruel we could say that one installation lap is about as much as Macca could hope to achieve anyway, and they can now calmly pack up and head home 🙂

          ah well, now I’m stuck with an image of Eric singing, “the sun will come out, tomorrow……”

  2. In addition to my ‘Hamilton v Rosberg’ and ‘Schumacher v Barrichello’ teammate “stat snapshot”, I became curious as to Vettel v Webber…

    http://s13.postimg.org/mwkunvz4n/image.jpg

    interpret the stats how you will; however it’s clear Vettel crushed Webber, though not quite as badly as Schumacher did Barrichello.

    Webber – by a bee’s dick – remained above 40% in terms of the proportion of points he contributed to Red Bull over the five seasons that he partnered Vettel. Logically, Vettel then contributed the lion’s share with a contribution of just under 60% of the teams points.

    The rest is pretty self explanatory and hardly surprising. Not as crushing as Schumacher v Barrichello, not as close as Hamilton v Rosberg.

    What does all this mean regarding a potential Vettel v Hamilton? Who knows. Let’s allow Fat Hippo and Fortis tell us… I jest; I love you guys.

    Aaaaaaaaaaaand go….

    • Yeah but webber had the bad car. And vettel was the favoured son and bla bla like that 😂

    • If there’s one thing I’d love to see, it’s Hamilton vs Vettel in the same car.. It would be like 2007 if Vettel is at his 2011-2013 peak speed!

      • I would love to see that too. That’s the Holy Grail of F1. I hope that one day the Formula One planets align sufficiently so as to answer the question; Hamilton v Vettel. Until then, we just have to hope Ferrari make more progress and we see a proper Vettel-Ferrari v Hamilton-Mercedes title fight.

        • I agree.. but much like Schumacher and Hakkinen, I think these two are destined to have always battled each other, from juniors to F1, yet always as the no.1 of the two top teams and never in the same one.

  6. I wonder why on earth they didn’t just postpone the test until after the Silverstone race.. There’s a 3 week gap there now with no German GP and it’s much closer to home for most of the teams (read: cheaper), maybe Manor might even bother to show up..

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