Formula One roared back into action this week, with the first of the pre-season tests having been conducted at the Jerez circuit in Spain.
The four-day test saw eight of the nine teams participate with their new machines for the 2015 season, some with more new bits than others.
As per tradition with Formula One testing, nothing can be read about everyone’s performance relative to each other just based off the lap times in Jerez. Testing is seen as an exercise in reliability, which for outfits such as McLaren-Honda is a necessity to teeth through the expected gremlins in their brand new power-unit.
Nevertheless, here are five relatively key observations made from the first round of testing for Formula One in 2015.
1. Mercedes AMG still the most reliable package
As stated earlier on, lap times from the Jerez test have no real bearing on where the car’s true performance is. The first Test is rather an exercise to demonstrate reliability and that is exactly what the reigning world champions Mercedes AMG did across the four days.
Over the four days, both Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton clocked up 516 laps between them, which itself is an achievement, compared to where the teams were twelve months ago with their ‘day one’ hybrid packages. They also had more laps than anyone else in during this test.
Hamilton only had one issue in which he had to stop his car on track and return to the garage, but apart from that it has been smooth sailing for the Silver Arrows.
2. Ferrari look more positive
Having made such a raft of changes over the off-season, Ferrari were more than keen to hit the ground running in 2015 and that’s exactly what it looks like at end of this first Test. The feedback from both drivers Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Räikkönen has been positive thus far, however they’re still sensitive regarding their performance relative to the others.
Räikkönen reflected after the test that:
“Over the winter, we have made a good step forward and this car is definitely an improvement over the 2014 one, it’s the whole package that has progressed, but there is still a lot of work to do.
“We are not comparing ourselves to the others; we just got on with our own job, without looking at what they were doing. Times are of relatively little importance; what matters is that we have put together a good number of laps without having any real problems. We now have a good basis from which to start the development work.”
With 348 laps in total and having the fastest time set on three of the four days, Ferrari does seem to have greater optimism heading into second Test, in reflection to twelve months ago.
3. Sauber look more positive
On a similar path as the factory Ferrari squad, the Ferrari-powered Sauber team have looked to have improved their fortunes too from twelve months ago. Their simple, albeit very neat looking C34 chassis, showed greater reliability overall than most of their competitors during this test.
Between them, Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr tallied up 383 laps across the four days, trumping even the factory Ferrari team in terms of mileage. However, with positive signals coming out of the Swiss team in comparison to the package last year, there is still a need for caution having not experienced the full breadth of the rest of the field’s performance.
4. Is McLaren-Honda on the right track?
Well, in accordance with the boffins inside of the legendary Woking team, they are heading in the right direction, apart from a myriad of “annoying” niggles.
The team did make a significant jump from just six laps completed each on the first two days to having 32 laps run on the third and 35 on the final day, despite their lap times being nowhere near the rest of the competitors.
McLaren’s engineering director Matt Morris explained that their “prime objective coming away from this test was to ascertain that the main car architecture worked”.
“Today (day four), we had a couple of stoppages, but we were still able to get on with our aero programme – obtaining correlation data for the guys back at the factory, just so we can check that everything’s working as we expected.”
Nevertheless, if McLaren are positive on their progress at this first Test with the new Honda powered MP4-30 then it is only acceptable to look forward to how they fare at the next test.
5. The engines sound louder?
After the noise that was made in 2014 about the new engine and power-units not having enough decibels, there has been some indication from Jerez that the power-units sound a lot louder this year. However there has been no official explanation to this, and fans who are active on social media or that were trackside have disseminated that these cars sound much louder than they did twelve months ago.
This means the prayers of those who wanted to have a louder sound from their Formula One cars has perhaps come to fruition, however that remains to be seen until the teams all hit the track for the first race on March 15.
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