What to take away from testing

The Official Pre-Season Test is now complete, ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix next weekend. Lets take a look over the past few days and see what we can take away from it all.

Day 1-

Haas made the headlines. The teams freight was delayed arriving into Bahrain, but the mechanics managed to put the car together and send it out for the afternoon session giving Pietro Fittipaldi a chance in the VF22.

Mercedes talked about the most. Coming into pre-season testing after Barcelona there was rumours some teams will change their cars to try new things and see what works, one of them being Mercedes. The Silver Arrow grabbed attention from rival teams after they revealed a no sidepod sidepod making the car slimmer.

Alfa Romeo making up for lost time. Barcelona wasn’t good for the team, not much running making them set of on the back foot but in Bahrain on the first day they turned it round with their lap count surpassing a century.

Ferrari & Alpha Tauri dark horses. Ferrari were very pleased with their running in Barcelona appearing to have stepped up in competitiveness. They ignored the performance aspect of testing on day one and focused on set up.

Where as their Italian rivals was switching focus from aero tests to mechanical runs and testing softer compounds. Pierre Gasly topped the times and clocked up 103 laps.

Day 2-

Ferrari still a threat. The Italian team was quickest in the second day- with both Charles and Carlos pleased with the balance and how the car responds to set up changes.

Trouble at Williams? The team was top five on the mileage charts in Barcelona but it took a dive in Bahrain. Latifi managed 12 laps on the second day where he was forced to stop due to smoke and fire coming from his breaks.

Possible trouble at McLaren too… McLaren stood out in Barcelona after being one of if not the most reliable team but Bahrain brought them brake problems. Norris managed 59 laps on his second day and 49 on the first. To add to this, Ricciardo has been absent on track due to an illness, now covid.

Day 3-

Red Bull on the right path. It is a given that teams keep their cards close to their chest, especially top teams. RB waited until Saturday to show a new sidepod and waiting until the last few hours to show a front wing end plate improvement, but the world champion topped the timesheets. Obviously its only testing so there are plenty of unknowns including the programmes they are running.

Mercedes has issues! Mercedes had a productive day after getting through an intense programme with Hamilton focused on long runs and Russell running low fuel on softer compounds. Reliability has been good for the team throughout pre-season testing, its their performance which is lacking and the porpoising.

Ferrari still talked about. The Italian team look like their in the top two in the pecking order. The last day of testing saw them run through set-up work, qualifying runs and race simulations, the team did not run into any problems.

Alpine getting somewhere? We have all seen that Alpine has had a shocking pre-season, but they had their “best day” on Friday and another on the final day. Alonso focused on high fuel running in the morning before running slightly lighter to get a feel for the car on soft compounds.

My Opinion-

Well, lots have gone on over the past couple of days for testing. It definitely seems that Ferrari and RB are top two. If Mercedes sort out their problems we could possibly seem the a bit higher than third.

The same goes with McLaren once they have sorted out their front axle issue we could see them higher up because they have got the pace as we saw in Barcelona.

I would say the biggest shock for me was Haas, I believe with the pace they’ve shown in testing their somewhere in the midfield! They haven’t really had any reliability issues which is good, its all eyes on how they do next week!