F1 winter testing is not as difficult to judge as one assumes. All you have to do is take last year’s pole position lap, use it as a reference point and compare it to winter test times. So last year Lewis Hamilton set a time of 1m16.1s at the Spanish Grand Prix.
So far during the 2019 pre-season tests at Barcelona many of the teams have set times between 1:20s – 1:17s.
Obviously when someone goes into the 1m16s territory then we are seeing representatively fast times.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc set a time of 1:16.2s on the penultimate day of testing.
So if we consider he was probably running more fuel, about 10-15kg then we are seeing a fast time indeed.
So we could see a new lap record in the 1:15s territory come the Spanish Grand prix proper.
Meanwhile Mercedes have been low key, not going for headline grabbing times, preferring to go for long fuel runs.
More laps mean more data. But I think Mercedes is struggling to get heat into their
A Mercedes struggle still translates into the second quickest car on the grid.
I believe they will struggle on qualifying runs. But on race distance Mercedes will be competitive.
How do we know that? Insider information.
However Lewis Hamilton was in upbeat mood telling the press during an interview:
“Today has been a good day – lots of mileage, which is great for us. It has probably been one of the most positive days for us, we’ve really learned quite a lot”.
“Our understanding of the W10 is continuously growing so it was definitely a positive day.”
Cautious or just cautiously optimistic. With the Australian Grand Prix just around the corner only then will we definitively know what is what and who is who.
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