This page will be updated throughout the day with images and video content from the trackside. Discuss in the comments below and please feel free to copy paste links there to any updates you find.
16:30
15:15
Check out what Gene Haas is wearing today!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5wmQaHWgAAsbAA.jpg
14:00
13:30
11:20
9:30
How useful are pre-season testing lap times and lap counts for predicting in-season performance?
Ordering teams by the fastest lap they did overall in testing and comparing them to their final ordering in the constructor’s championship shows a surprisingly good correlation. This is very crude as I’m ignoring factors such as drivers and tyres and only comparing team performance, so take the results with a pinch of salt. The main outlier is RB, who did very poorly in pre-season testing with loads of engine and cooling gremlins, but ended up second in the championship in 2014. NB: In 2014 there were three tests: two in Bahrain and one in Jerez. I’ve used an aggregate of only the Bahrain times, as obviously the Jerez times aren’t comparable. Also note that I’ve used consistent names for teams across all years for simplicity (eg Renault=Lotus, Manor F1=Marrusia etc).
9:25
9:15
A bit more information from McLaren after Vandoorne stopped this morning. As he entered the pits, the Belgian suggested stopping the car as a precaution because he felt something unusual and the team agreed. The team does not believe it was a reliability problem. After seven laps, none of them timed, he’s in the garage now but expected out again shortly.
9:00
Honda is an effin disgrace. How can you bring such a PU to the track in the third year? Sure they can redesign stuff and change the engine in whatever way they like. But at this moment McLaren is again 100 laps of testing behind Mercedes. The engine has not been ran to its full potential yet (well in fact is has been and it broke down twice). I can see it happen that McLaren has to abandon testing because Honda has ran out of engines.
If you approach F1 like Honda do, you better get the f out. Now.
If I were the boss at McLaren, I’d rip the whole Honda deal in pieces during lunch and beg another manufacturer on my bare knees for customer engines.
A remarkable showing isn’t it