24/02/2022
NEWS STORY
Charles Leclerc sets the pace on the second day of testing Spain, as McLaren continues to impress.
As previously reported, the buzz word at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya today was porpoising despite the hope that the phenomenon had been relegated to history, much like the thought of one country needlessly invading another.
The ground effect related phenomenon, together with concerns over weight and a number of other issues, including cars bottoming out under braking, mean that no clear picture is yet emerging, a situation not helped by the likes of Mercedes and Red Bull not showing consistent form.
Despite stoppages for Sergio Perez (gearbox) and Mazepin (fuel pump) it was another busy day, with the 16 drivers on duty completing 1,169 laps.
Though there remains a question mark over one aspect of the rules overhaul, a number of drivers have given the thumbs up in terms of dirty air. Today, like yesterday, we saw a number of examples when drivers deliberately shadowed a rival in order to check out the disturbance when following closely, and the early signs are that it is looking to be less of a problem.
The day after Max Verstappen completed 147 laps in the Red Bull, former teammate Pierre Gasly completed the same distance in the AlphaTauri as the Italian outfit continues to show good form.
One of the teams seemingly most affected by the porpoising factor is Alfa Romeo, and while Valtteri Bottas' trials and tribulations continued this morning, this afternoon teammate Guanyu Zhou was able to complete 71 trouble free laps on his way to posting the tenth best time of the day.
Haas also had a better day of it, for although Mazepin lost track time this afternoon with his fuel pump issue he was able to add a further 42 laps to the team's tally on his way to posting the 8th best time of the day - Schumacher having completed 66 laps this morning.
As made clear from the beginning this week isn't about outright speed but rather reliability and in that department a number of teams are already showing promise whilst others are not.
While Leclerc was quickest today, the Ferrari driver was unable to beat Lando Norris' best from yesterday, and no doubt the Briton, who is back in the MCL36 tomorrow morning, will be keep to maintain the status quo.
Earlier predictions of rain tomorrow appear to be wide of the mark, however tomorrow afternoon the track is being artificially dampened to allow some wet weather testing, something not entirely possible in Bahrain next month.
As was the case yesterday, a key objective was for the Ferrari drivers was to continue to familiarise themselves with the new car, while also enabling the pit stop crew to get used to dealing with the new 18 inch tyres. Sainz and Leclerc also began to work on fine tuning the car, running various set-ups.
Sainz jumped into the car at 9:00, leaving the garage a few minutes later. The Spaniard did 71 laps, running the C2 and C3 compound tyres, using the latter to set his best time of 1:20.546. Over the two days, he has done 144 laps, or 673 kilometres.
Leclerc went out on track shortly after 2pm and ran the C1, C2 and C3 tyres completing 79 laps. His best time was a 1:19.689, on the softest C3 compound, that was also the fastest of the day. Over the two days so far, he has completed 159 laps, or 743 kilometres. The F1-75 itself has therefore racked up 303 laps (1416 km) the most of any car on track.
"A pretty good afternoon," said the Monegasque. "We completed a lot of laps again, which is what counts the most at testing. Our aim is to drive as many kilometres as we can, to complete as many different tests as possible and that's exactly what we did.
"Again, we should not get ahead of ourselves, because P1 doesn't mean anything at this stage. We have to keep working extremely hard. Tomorrow is our final day at Barcelona and we have to make the most of it before we turn our attention to Bahrain."
"It was another productive day in which we were able to complete the whole run programme, which at this stage is the most important thing," added Sainz. "We ran both the C2 and C3 tyres and that allowed us to further assess those compounds while trying different set ups in the car. Our 71 laps this morning were a good asset and also allowed me to start working a bit more on the driving style, gaining confidence with every lap. I'm satisfied with the work we've been able to do so far and I look forward to continuing this trend."
"I must say I am super excited to be back," said Pierre Gasly who took over from Yuki Tsunoda today. "It was good to understand a bit more about how this car works and so far, it's been really positive.
"Straight out of the box, I've felt quite confident inside the car, and it has responded the way I wanted. Obviously, there's still a lot of work to do, but it's been a pleasing start to the year.
"Personally, I'm trying to focus on how the car feels when I'm driving it and what I need to do myself to improve. Tomorrow we will continue to explore some different directions in terms of set-up, we have some good ideas that we would like to try and I'm sure we have more performance to come. There's still so many unknowns so we'll be looking at everything tonight with the engineers and then pushing for more tomorrow."
"After some aero rake running first thing this morning - to characterise the mappings - we got straight into set-up work and explored a number of different directions," added chief race engineer, Jonathan Eddolls. "The baseline car was already in the right ballpark, but we learnt some more from the larger changes.
"The wind picked up over lunch and the track was slower, which combined with the harder C1 tyre made the grip and balance at the start of the afternoon more difficult than the morning. However, with some set-up tuning we improved this and by the time we switched to the softer tyre in the last hour Pierre was happier with the car in general. We closed the day with some pitstop practice, which is particularly pertinent for this year as the wheels are much larger and heavier than the 13" variety we have become accustomed to.
"Other than a few small niggles the car remained reliable, and this allowed the team to focus on performance. Although there remains a mountain of work to do before race one, we are making good progress and look forward to ticking off further items tomorrow, including the wet running in the afternoon."
"A good day from many angles," said Daniel Ricciardo who finished the day third quickest having completed 126 laps. "I think reliability was great. That's on the team and everyone who's worked hard to put this car together, so massive thank you to them. They're pretty awesome to build a whole new car, put it on track and have it run so smoothly, so big thanks to them again.
"Both days have been over 100 laps, which for me and Lando gives us more opportunity to learn the car and push ourselves, so really pleased with that. We've got some good strengths and we just need to keep working on a few of the areas where we can improve."
"Our second day of testing has been very productive," said Andrea Stella, the Woking outfit's Executive Director. "With Daniel in the car today, we were able to put together a lot of laps with no particular problems, either from an operational or a reliability point of view. We've completed a series of tests and acquired a lot of information on tyre performance, set-up and aerodynamics.
"We're learning more about this new car with each run, and this is helping us extract the most from the MCL36 in preparation for the season ahead."
At Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton was in the cockpit for the morning, clocking up 40 laps of set-up learning before his session was curtailed by a sensor issue. George Russell got to work in the afternoon, completing a number of test procedures and continuing to further the team's understanding of the harder tyre compounds.
"We had a difficult morning with Lewis, experiencing a data logging issue that delayed our start and in general, we were struggling a bit more with the balance," admitted Andrew Shovlin. "Some of that may have been setup items that we were trying and some of it the harder tyres that we were running today. We managed to get a few runs completed then unfortunately had a sensor issue that prevented us doing further performance work so we stopped early for lunch in order to fix it.
"George had a more productive session in the afternoon and we got through some useful setup scans and completed some of our tyre programme. We've still got plenty of issues to work on from a performance point of view but we are continuing to learn with every run which in turn will make us faster. We've got a busy day planned for tomorrow, plenty more setup work and a first look at some of the softer rubber compounds for this year."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Barcelona, here.
Day two saw Sergio Perez take over the wheel of the RB18, and though the Mexican driver's first taste of running in anger ahead of his second season with the team was interrupted by a late morning gearbox issue, he still managed to complete 78 laps during a productive session for the team.
"We took some good learnings from today," said the Mexican, "and I'm pleased with that. We are trying some very different things and we have a lot of information to work through, so I think in the meetings it is important to go in-depth and give the engineers as much feedback as possible.
"The issue with the gearbox took a little bit longer to fix than we expected, but it is fine, it's expected that these things happen at testing. I'll be back in the car tomorrow and I hope the weather stays dry."
"Checo got up to speed pretty quickly this morning," added the team's Head of Race Engineering, Guillaume Rocquelin, "and his feedback is pretty much the same as Max's, which means we know where we are going and everything is fairly settled. Every time the car comes back to the garage we're making changes and fine-tuning the direction so, all in all, I'm happy.
"We had a small issue today, which meant we lost around half a day's running but we aren't particularly worried about the problem itself, it is just a pain that we lost that time. However, it shouldn't affect things in the long-term, as we have a solid platform and we're happy with the progress we're making."
Mick Schumacher was back behind the wheel of the Haas. Following limited running yesterday, the German was out early in the session on a set of C2s for his first outing. After 23 laps, he switched to the C3 compound, where he set his fastest lap time of 1:21.949.
As winds picked up in the final hour of the morning session, the 22-year-old set about making up for lost time from the day before, accumulating 66 laps in total – a full race distance of the Spanish Grand Prix.
Nikita Mazepin returned to the track in the afternoon, starting the session on the C2 compound. Seven laps into his first run, a red flag was brought out after he stopped on track with a damaged fuel pump. With the team working fast and efficiently as ever to fix the issue, the VF-22 was once again on the road, this time on the C3 compound. Mazepin set his quickest time of the day on the penultimate lap of running (1:21.512) and managed to bring the total lap count for the day up to 108.
Mazepin will commence running on Friday before Schumacher brings the pre-season track session in Spain to a close in the afternoon.
"There were a few more issues today but that is part of what goes with a pre-season track session," said Nicholas Latifi who completed 61 laps on his way to the 11th best time. "The key thing is for us is to gain a better understanding of what limited us today. We were still able to get in a decent amount of mileage and we are continuing to learn more. We have one more day here in Barcelona, which is another opportunity to learn, build more confidence from myself and the car and prepare ourselves for Bahrain."
"Today went pretty smoothly," added Alex Albon who finished the day 9th quickest. "We had a small hiccup that we were able to resolve fairly quickly, fortunately it didn't have a big impact on our running and so we still got good mileage in. The FW44 has been behaving well; I'm enjoying driving it and being able to push more as we get to grips with its characteristics. As a team, I'm happy with where we are and the foundations we're building over these really important days. It's a good start to the year and I'm looking forward to one final day of running in Barcelona."
"Today has been about pushing the car a little harder and working on the areas we identified yesterday as offering opportunity for improvement," said Dave Robson, the Grove outfit's Head of Vehicle Performance. "We have made some decent progress and found some new avenues to explore. Although we had a couple of minor issues, which delayed our progress at times during the day, it is good that we have been able to push the car hard enough to find these snags.
"As yesterday, both race drivers shared the workload today and both were able to learn from the other. Tomorrow is the final opportunity to exercise the car before we go to Bahrain for the back to back test and race, it should also present us with the first chance to look at the new 2022 wet tyres as Pirelli are planning wet the track tomorrow afternoon."
Alfa Romeo ended the second day of testing on a positive note as Zhou Guanyu completed more than a full race distance in his first afternoon in the C42.
In the morning, Valtteri Bottas had started promisingly before some small issues limited his running, but the team can take heart by the improved mileage achieved in the rest of the day.
Zhou will be back in the car for tomorrow's morning session, while Bottas will bring proceedings to a close in the afternoon.
"The team ended the day with a good number of laps," said the Finn, "and this has to be the main takeaway from today. We were able to do some consistent running in the afternoon, which bodes well for when I'll be back in the cockpit tomorrow. I wasn't able to run as much as I would have wanted this morning, but at least we know we addressed the issue and we can focus on making the most of the final day here in Barcelona.
"There's still a good way to go before we go racing, and we now have some data to help the team move towards the right window in terms of set-up."
"It was nice to get to drive this new generation of car," added Zhou, "it definitely feels different from what I drove in the past. I took my time at the beginning of the session, trying not to push too hard but just getting used to the car and the way it felt: towards the end, I tried a few better runs.
"There is a little bit of bouncing compared to last year's car, for sure, but I'm sure everything is going to get better as the team understands the car more. We are working in the right direction.
"All in all, I am happy with my day and with getting a decent number of laps; we were able to bring home a lot of data for our engineers to analyse, which is very good ahead of tomorrow. I'm looking forward to being in the car again in the morning."
At Alpine, it was Esteban Ocon's first proper taste at the wheel of the A522 and he continued yesterday's strong work from Fernando Alonso by accumulating 125 laps in total and ticking off large parts of the team's day two programme.
The team has so far completed 254 laps, edging over 1,000km for the week to date, equivalent from driving from the Barcelona circuit to the team's engine base in Viry-Chatillon. The strong mileage over the last two days so far leaves an optimistic feeling about reliability, albeit with the usual hiccups that testing tends to provide.
"Today was my first proper day in the A522 and it's certainly a great feeling to be back in a Formula 1 car and doing lots of laps," said Ocon. "It was good to start to get a feeling for the car on proper tyres in accurate testing conditions.
"The most important target for us today, like yesterday too, was to do lots of running so to do over 100 laps is encouraging. We tested a lot of different things and we've given ourselves a couple of ideas to work on. We definitely have a direction on the particular areas to improve, which is the main objective at pre-season testing. It's a positive start and I'm looking forward to discovering more at tomorrow's test."
"It was another solid day," added sporting director, Alan Permane, "we spent the morning doing some set up work and understanding more about the car, learning of course on every run.
"In the afternoon, we ran a race simulation which went well. The car ran reliably, and we had one small stoppage for a bracket on the floor of the car that had broken which we had to replace. Aside from that the new power unit and the chassis ran faultlessly.
"Tomorrow's afternoon session will be wet as it will be a Pirelli wet session. Fernando will jump back in tomorrow to continue his work from the first day with Esteban driving the car in wet conditions in the afternoon."