F1 Testing | Day 1 - Mercedes On Top

Paul Jeffrey

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Formula One action is back! The opening day of the new Formula One season has begun, with the 2020 Grand Prix teams hitting the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for pre-season F1 testing!

New cars, new colour schemes, same tyres and much the same in terms of driving line-ups, Formula One racing 2020 style is here! Wednesday morning at 9am marked the first on track action of the new racing season, and with Barcelona once again playing host to the teams and drivers for what is sure to be a hectic six days of sandbagging and fine tuning, it was left to Mercedes driver Lewis Hamiltin to top the running at the conclusion of the opening day, the 35-year-old brit amassing a total of 94 laps on his way to quickest time, over three tenths ahead of Valtteri Bottas in second, himself a further four tenths in front of the Racing Point of Sergio Perez.

F1 Test Day 1 - Kubica.jpg


Robert Kubica would be on driving duties for his new team Alfa Romeo in the morning session, the newly minted ART Grand Prix DTM driver getting a first opportunity to sample the C39 before hand over to race drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi for the rest of the day. Kubica would total 59 laps on his way to 13th quickest time, performing the bulk of the system checks and exploratory laps in the brand new car.

F1 Test Day 1 - Alfa Romeo.jpg


Further down the field Williams would have a much better start to the season than this time last year, the Grove squad making it out on track first of all the cars, in the much more attractively liveried FW43, joining the action on time as first George Russell and then Nicolas Latifi took turns behind the wheel of the new car. With the former multiple championship winning outfit hoping for better things from 2020, it would be a solid start for the recovering squad, with both Russell and Latifi managing a combined 136 laps on their way to 9th and 12th places respectively in the final standings for day one.

F1 Test Day 1 - Williams1.jpg


As is always the case in pre-season testing, little genuine insight into the form-book can be gathered from the times set today, but its still fun guessing!

Pre-season testing continues tomorrow.

Formula One Pre-Season Testing Times (Day 1)

F1 Test Day 1 Times.jpg
 
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that last chart must look sweet for Williams, fingers crossed they will pass the red lantern to someone else.

I hope so.
Also about Ferrari speed trap, I've watched most of the test session and during the major part of what i've watched, the Ferrari car had Flow-Viz on the rear wing's main plane to monitor the aerodynamic flows around that area, so they didn't use DRS as it seems they wanted to run and monitor the flow on their rear wing at maximum downforce performance.
charles-leclerc-ferrari-sf1000-1.jpg
 
That time (set on mediums) by Russell would have taken him to Q2 at Barcelona 2019. Seams like they've gotten something right this year, and they might be able to fight for some points :D

Yes I'm wondering if that as a team they've taken a strategic decision to just work on last years design and improve 60% of it rather than the huge expense of a new car.

More points, equals more prize money, means more budget for the all new 2021 car. Would make sense in the overall big picture for the team.

Great to see them in a much better position for this year though, no-one liked to see them struggle like that last year.

Interesting the onboard vids of Hamilton, I'm trying to figure out what he's doing. Movable aero is not allowed (apart from DRS). Dynamic ride hide adjustment? That would generate a huge downforce advantage, but again I'm not sure if it's allowed under the spirit of the rules.
 
Will probably reduce drag, wear and other things

Yes it would reduce rolling resistance through the front tyres (slightly more top speed I would imagine) but maybe what Merc are trying to achieve is less wear on the fronts. Maybe their setup requires quite an aggressive toe setting and this is an idea to get round it.

I suppose the other idea is purely aero. If you angle the front tyres a certain way, would that help direct the airflow a different way around the car?

Nothing is ever a single effect on these cars now, it's all cumulative, so one small change has effect all down the car.

Clever idea, as mentioned above will be interesting to see how long it's on the car before it's banned, lol.
 
We're on top of the F1 news :) Let the season begin. But first next week Drive to survive Part Deux. Looking forward to that too.
Haha yeah, the Drive to survive 2 will be great.

Finally some new tricks, will probably got banned soon, but we see this kind of big mind blow not very often these days. I find it brilliant!
Will probably reduce drag, wear and other things.^^

Well, there is [it seems] a loophole
10.4.1 Any steering system which permits the re‐alignment of MORE THAN two wheels is not permitted.
and they are re-aligning two wheels, but
an expert is saying that it can affect POU system and change the ride height and then banned by "changeable/active aero" rules
the whole concept it seems is based on having a good(or even extreme) toe for cornering(the normal steering wheel position) and one near zero degree toe(driver pulling the steering wheel toward himself) for maximum straight-line speed, so they don't need to compromise their setup for both corners and straights.
maybe it is just a concept test in a testing session without worrying about being DSQed in an official session.
 
According to Mercedes this is 100% legal system and they will use it. A so called 'developing story'.

Edit: At 1:30PM (CET) Mercedes Tech Director James Allison will comment on the new steering mode.
 

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