| By Ben Anderson | |
| Grand Prix Editor | |
When you glance at Formula 1's new breed of super-fast, big tyred cars, the visual impression is overwhelmingly positive. The tyres look like a throwback to the 1970s or '80s - big and fat, and more befitting of cars that are now stylistically more aggressive. In short, they look fast.
We are told these cars are meant to achieve lap times five seconds quicker than those managed in 2015 around Barcelona's Catalunya circuit. They are not just meant to look much faster, the enhanced aerodynamics and new-spec low-degradation Pirellis are meant to make them lap much faster too.
Heading trackside to watch the cars on the first morning of pre-season testing, I was expecting them to look much faster than they used to. I was hoping to be utterly blown away by the corner speed the drivers could carry. But the overriding impression was slightly underwhelming.
All the cars look inherently more stable - under braking, and accelerating up the hill from the Turn 1-2 complex through the fearsome Turn 3 right-hander, which now looks easily full throttle for everyone.
There are some subtle variations in line for the lesser cars - Kevin Magnussen takes a more expansive approach in the Haas than that required of Valtteri Bottas in the Mercedes - but generally there is little to choose between the cars visually, apart from an impression some are travelling slightly faster overall than others.
I guess the extra mechanical grip produced by the wider tyres is masking a lot of the variable handling traits we used to see. And the tyres don't seem to be degrading nearly as quickly as they used to, which is perhaps giving the drivers less inconsistency to think about.
It takes Marcus Ericsson an age before his Sauber suffers a wobble through Turn 2 as he tries to accelerate up the hill on full throttle, after a long run on mediums. The Williams and Force India pounded around lap after lap in the morning, almost with impunity.
The drivers are under greater strain from G-forces inside the cockpits - Lewis Hamilton estimated 2g - but they don't seem to have been "destroyed" by them as Sergio Perez predicted. Their sensation of speed will be markedly different (Bottas said as much), but the drivers don't look as though they are having to work particularly hard.
Visually, the behaviour of the cars on track does not constitute a 1970s oversteer throwback.
This is the deception of F1's new regulations - faster cars with more grip that are supposed to be more challenging to control actually look like they are on a Sunday drive. Cars that lack grip, for whatever reason, will generally look more spectacular, even though they lap slower.
The initial lap times were also slightly disappointing, with Lewis Hamilton lapping 3.246 seconds quicker than Pastor Maldonado managed for Lotus on day one of 2015's second pre-season test (the first being at Jerez), on soft Pirellis. Second fastest Sebastian Vettel was 3.061s faster than he managed in topping the times on day one of testing last season, on mediums.
The best cars were ultimately a few tenths under Hamilton's 2016 pole time at this track, but the best like-for-like comparison we have (pre-season to pre-season) is barely more than three seconds (so far) on a circuit where the cars are meant to be at least another two seconds quicker than that.
So what's going on? Perhaps the Pirelli tyres are not quite right at the moment. Pirelli admitted it was making an educated guess with the compounds it would bring to Barcelona, not knowing for sure the exact loads the new cars would produce. The wider tyres look to be providing more stability and lower degradation, but perhaps peak grip is still lacking, so the drivers are not yet able to lean on them properly.
"There is still a lot more to come from the cars, and it is cold," reckons Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo. "The tyres are still not in their optimum temperature [range], but already you see the times - Lewis's was already quicker than the qualifying here last year, so it will be faster. I think we will get a lot quicker from where we are now."
It's a fair point. Pre-season testing has barely started - the drivers are focused on reliability and understanding the initial behaviour of the tyres; the cars may be running fat with fuel, with engines massively turned down. The anticipated development arms race under these new regulations has not yet got into full swing.
"In testing, at the moment, you don't put everything on the car to push," explains Toro Rosso's Carlos Sainz Jr. "First of all, you're down on everything, so you don't get to find the proper limit of the car. But in a few runs, I started pushing and you could already feel it, compared to the first test of last year, from where we were to now we are a lot faster.
"The car feels similar to last year, in terms of handling, but you are just quicker through corners. For me, I'm still driving a Toro Rosso of 2016, with massive wings and massive downforce through the corners, and enjoying it a lot more."
Magnussen was more cautious after his initial running in the Haas.
"It feels different," he says. "The first impression is that there is a lot of grip, and initially in the high-speed there is a lot more grip and stability in the car than with the last generation of cars.
"[But] I still need to push the car a bit more and properly get a feeling. Now it is just about getting more kilometres on the car and seeing if everything is working. Today is about a little bit of problem testing."
When "problem testing" is over, proper 'race-spec' aero packages are bolted on, engines turned up, softer tyres fitted, and fuel dumped out, these cars may suddenly blow us away with what they can do.
Or perhaps they never really will - perhaps the extra grip and stability afforded by bigger tyres and enhanced aerodynamics will always make the cars look as though they are running on rails, with the visual sensation of speed additionally harmed by the lack of noise produced by the V6 hybrid turbo engines.
Cars that sound fast tend to look fast too, and these F1 cars certainly don't sound fast, as Hamilton - who also predicts less overtaking and fewer pitstops once the racing starts keeps reminding us.
And they don't yet look particularly fast on track either. It's still early days of course, but F1 2017 already has some work to do to find the necessary speed to match its new style.
"The cars have potential," says Ricciardo. "We still have a lot to learn from them.
"Will they be 6-7 seconds quicker as some people are saying? I don't know. I think that is pretty optimistic."
| By Ben Anderson | |
| Grand Prix Editor | |
When you glance at Formula 1's new breed of super-fast, big tyred cars, the visual impression is overwhelmingly positive. The tyres look like a throwback to the 1970s or '80s - big and fat, and more befitting of cars that are now stylistically more aggressive. In short, they look fast.
We are told these cars are meant to achieve lap times five seconds quicker than those managed in 2015 around Barcelona's Catalunya circuit. They are not just meant to look much faster, the enhanced aerodynamics and new-spec low-degradation Pirellis are meant to make them lap much faster too.
Heading trackside to watch the cars on the first morning of pre-season testing, I was expecting them to look much faster than they used to. I was hoping to be utterly blown away by the corner speed the drivers could carry. But the overriding impression was slightly underwhelming.
All the cars look inherently more stable - under braking, and accelerating up the hill from the Turn 1-2 complex through the fearsome Turn 3 right-hander, which now looks easily full throttle for everyone.
There are some subtle variations in line for the lesser cars - Kevin Magnussen takes a more expansive approach in the Haas than that required of Valtteri Bottas in the Mercedes - but generally there is little to choose between the cars visually, apart from an impression some are travelling slightly faster overall than others.
I guess the extra mechanical grip produced by the wider tyres is masking a lot of the variable handling traits we used to see. And the tyres don't seem to be degrading nearly as quickly as they used to, which is perhaps giving the drivers less inconsistency to think about.
It takes Marcus Ericsson an age before his Sauber suffers a wobble through Turn 2 as he tries to accelerate up the hill on full throttle, after a long run on mediums. The Williams and Force India pounded around lap after lap in the morning, almost with impunity.
The drivers are under greater strain from G-forces inside the cockpits - Lewis Hamilton estimated 2g - but they don't seem to have been "destroyed" by them as Sergio Perez predicted. Their sensation of speed will be markedly different (Bottas said as much), but the drivers don't look as though they are having to work particularly hard.
Visually, the behaviour of the cars on track does not constitute a 1970s oversteer throwback.
This is the deception of F1's new regulations - faster cars with more grip that are supposed to be more challenging to control actually look like they are on a Sunday drive. Cars that lack grip, for whatever reason, will generally look more spectacular, even though they lap slower.
The initial lap times were also slightly disappointing, with Lewis Hamilton lapping 3.246 seconds quicker than Pastor Maldonado managed for Lotus on day one of 2015's second pre-season test (the first being at Jerez), on soft Pirellis. Second fastest Sebastian Vettel was 3.061s faster than he managed in topping the times on day one of testing last season, on mediums.
The best cars were ultimately a few tenths under Hamilton's 2016 pole time at this track, but the best like-for-like comparison we have (pre-season to pre-season) is barely more than three seconds (so far) on a circuit where the cars are meant to be at least another two seconds quicker than that.
So what's going on? Perhaps the Pirelli tyres are not quite right at the moment. Pirelli admitted it was making an educated guess with the compounds it would bring to Barcelona, not knowing for sure the exact loads the new cars would produce. The wider tyres look to be providing more stability and lower degradation, but perhaps peak grip is still lacking, so the drivers are not yet able to lean on them properly.
"There is still a lot more to come from the cars, and it is cold," reckons Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo. "The tyres are still not in their optimum temperature [range], but already you see the times - Lewis's was already quicker than the qualifying here last year, so it will be faster. I think we will get a lot quicker from where we are now."
It's a fair point. Pre-season testing has barely started - the drivers are focused on reliability and understanding the initial behaviour of the tyres; the cars may be running fat with fuel, with engines massively turned down. The anticipated development arms race under these new regulations has not yet got into full swing.
"In testing, at the moment, you don't put everything on the car to push," explains Toro Rosso's Carlos Sainz Jr. "First of all, you're down on everything, so you don't get to find the proper limit of the car. But in a few runs, I started pushing and you could already feel it, compared to the first test of last year, from where we were to now we are a lot faster.
"The car feels similar to last year, in terms of handling, but you are just quicker through corners. For me, I'm still driving a Toro Rosso of 2016, with massive wings and massive downforce through the corners, and enjoying it a lot more."
Magnussen was more cautious after his initial running in the Haas.
"It feels different," he says. "The first impression is that there is a lot of grip, and initially in the high-speed there is a lot more grip and stability in the car than with the last generation of cars.
"[But] I still need to push the car a bit more and properly get a feeling. Now it is just about getting more kilometres on the car and seeing if everything is working. Today is about a little bit of problem testing."
When "problem testing" is over, proper 'race-spec' aero packages are bolted on, engines turned up, softer tyres fitted, and fuel dumped out, these cars may suddenly blow us away with what they can do.
Or perhaps they never really will - perhaps the extra grip and stability afforded by bigger tyres and enhanced aerodynamics will always make the cars look as though they are running on rails, with the visual sensation of speed additionally harmed by the lack of noise produced by the V6 hybrid turbo engines.
Cars that sound fast tend to look fast too, and these F1 cars certainly don't sound fast, as Hamilton - who also predicts less overtaking and fewer pitstops once the racing starts keeps reminding us.
And they don't yet look particularly fast on track either. It's still early days of course, but F1 2017 already has some work to do to find the necessary speed to match its new style.
"The cars have potential," says Ricciardo. "We still have a lot to learn from them.
"Will they be 6-7 seconds quicker as some people are saying? I don't know. I think that is pretty optimistic."
