Yeah Russel has just thrown in a fairly quick lap
F1 2022 Season
- Thread starter pauldyson1uk
- Start date
Sandbagging, taking it easy, not wanting to show all thier cards, call it what you want.
Teams have upgrades ready, some are using , some have some coming up.
I take very little notice of testing times.
That's why I said at times, Russell is 0.4 off, Lewis has not been near all 3 days.
It could be problems or like you say they already know what the cars can do.
Russell Merc stil porpoising.
Badly, maybe the worst off all the teams.
Mercs have the angle grinder out, that’s not something you’d normally say in F1
McLaren having cooling problems.
Testing is the place to find out, but a week before the first race is worrying for then.
Testing is the place to find out, but a week before the first race is worrying for then.
If Mercedes have the car right, you would expect them to, throw in some P1 times in this ladt hour, just to let the other teams see, look we are fast.
Max is looking petty fast, still .2 behind LeClerc
Bottas throwing in a P4 time, 0.5 off P1
And then Bottas has a problem, car stuck in 4th gear.
I'm not so sure. I'd let everyone else get confident and leave them no time to react on race weekend.
There is that also, Lewis is not even close to pushing his times.
Not sure I would trust my multi million £££ car, to stewards with a fork lift
Max bangs in P1 time on a used set of C5s, tge fastest set.
1.31.973.
Car looks good, running low, no porposing.
I think Toto might be sweating or he is not bothered.
1.31.973.
Car looks good, running low, no porposing.
I think Toto might be sweating or he is not bothered.
Pretty notable so far that the Red Bull seems the least affected by porpoising I'd say. Feels like that'll be a huge obstacle for teams to overcome, especially when choosing a setup for qualification.
Can someone explain me in simple terms what 'porpoising' is?
Repeated loss and then gain of downforce which causes the car to oscilate in vertical direction.
Basically the car being sucked to the ground through the new undercar tunnels and then releasing causing a bounce back up only to start again
On the fast straights, the air flow causes the car to bounce up and down quite violently sometimes.
Air goes under the car, pulling it down, pulls it down so far the floor of the car touches the road causing the air to stop running underneath, allowing the car to rise back up.
What’s the benefit? Everyone will be trying to go as fast as possible next week regardless or whether Merc bang in a fast lap or not.
Sky have Mercedes 3rd behind Red Bull and Ferrari, I would say that's fair.
Red bull just looks so much more graceful and dialed in. I don't think Hamilton was bluffing with his statements.
Suspect different teams will have different porpoising problems at different tracks... But right now red bull seem to be in the best place
Still not sure, mind games from Lewis ?
Russell is or was close, Lewis with a poor testing for me, he has not even been close to P1.
I think the purpose of Sandbagging is to give your opponents a false confidence that means they think they have nothing to do. And no time to adjust anything.
In reality Mercedes are either in big trouble or are sandbagging. With the new design - half sidepods if you were a Merc or Hamilton/Russell fan you'd have to be hoping that this should be all about giving you a new massive improvement I'd have thought. We might see a Merc with sidepods on race weekend or not.
If they don't fix that porpoising issue can you see a driver making it to race distance?
the problem is that merc car just doesnt look right going around the track and they still clearly cant lower it enough without it bobbling all over the place. even if they have it on a low engine mode that wont change the fundamental issues the car is currently experiencing. Im not really speaking to times even though russell was a second off max at the end . Car just looks exactly like hamilton described it. Maybe they can fix it for next week
Having listened to Gary Anderson on this a few times it's apparently difficult to mimic the porpoising in test conditions (i.e. you would damage your wind tunnel if you bottomed out on the belts)
So I'm not sure it's going to be that easy a fix ... That said it could be they were not trying to fix it this test and getting as much data as possible about it.
There was a lot of talk about the new minimal side pod car being significantly faster in the simulator but we have not seen that in this test.
Quali3 will perhaps be the first time we really see these cars pushed for a full lap so that's gonna be interesting ... As well as to see any developments between the tests and the race
Yeah good point. The quality of the surface at Bahrain is almost certainly not helping.
yeh I listened to Garry and a bunch others about the ability to have it correlate in the wind tunnel. Would be a bit weird to not fix a fundamental issue with the car instead of adding on entire new aero bits that only made the issue seem worse though. Most other teams have gotten a handle on it . Red bull is slammed to the ground no issue after having it initially in Barcelona
They do have the best in the game on there team when it comes to car design in Adrian Newey.
Yes but considering Merc brought essentially a new car (at least new sidepods and floor) between the two tests I wonder if they had time to work on that as well between the tests
I’m up to episode 4 on drive to survive. feck Mazepin is such a cock. Glad he is gone.
red bull also brought a " new car" , so much so they had to be dremmeling the body work an hour into running to make it fit properly . anyway again as was the case last year, mercedes are on the back foot . They are a fantastic team and have fantastic people working for them that will get to the issues sooner or later but they are not sandbagging as crazy as people may think in my opinion
My understanding is that the floor for this test was designed and fabrication started prior to the first test... So probably no real changes possible from the first test to this one
Will be telling if they have significantly reduced porpoising in the qualifying
I think as well with a few different side pod and front wing designs (and nobody really knows what's going on with the floors as you can't see them) we are going to see different teams do better at some circuits than others as their car will be naturally better suited.
Red bull and Ferrari both look good at the moment though I think the Merc times through the slow sections were pretty notable so that could be something to keep an eye on.
Think it will be a few gps till we have a real insight but would be great if we could have a season with three or four teams in with a shout of winning
So Mercedes look like they have work to do, well on the surface they do, maybe they are holding back, maybe they did not need to push because they already know all they want too.
Both Lewis and George have said there is work to be done, are they playing mind games ?
Will they start with first race with the zero side pods ?
First race is looking more exciting.
Both Lewis and George have said there is work to be done, are they playing mind games ?
Will they start with first race with the zero side pods ?
First race is looking more exciting.
just hope nobody is too far in front, a 3 way battle for the championship would be epic