F1 Winter Testing

[Exfso (Peter)]

For those F1 geeks like myself, winter testing is over and as suspected it appears as though the Mercs have the wood on everyone else again. From what one can tell it appears as though Ferrari have made inroads on last seasons dismal car but Renault whilst it supposedly has increased its engine power does still appear to be dragging its feet.
McLaren with the new Honda Power Plant has had teething problems and is not expected to show its full potential for a couple of months, at least according to McLaren.

Of course there could be a degree of "sandbagging" going on, Melbourne in just under 2 weeks will give a definite indication of who is doing what.

I can't wait for Melbourne

[photosinferno (John)]

It should be an interesting race, the Ferrari might be the 'dark horse' and potentially spring a surprise on the chasing Redbulls/Williams teams
Can't wait!

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Yes, I think it’s pretty apparent that Mercedes have been keeping their real speed hidden – just enough show-off laps to keep everyone guessing! It looks like a repeat of last year (at least at the start of the season), but at least it looks like there will be some real competition for the title of “best of the rest”.

Good to see Williams and Ferrari showing some real form. I would guess McLaren won’t start to catch up until several races in, but it sounds like they have a good platform once they get the reliability sorted. Red Bull is interesting – they’ve been running heavy fuel and seem to have been deliberately NOT doing fast qualifying laps, and they sound surprisingly happy with how they’re going. Force India was very impressive, given they only got their car to the track on Friday!

[ralph1]

Williams as well kept their speed quite hidden. Not quite a match for Mercedes, but fast enough to be best of the rest. Ferrari looks much better and Kimi Raikkonen seems much more comfortable. I was surprised by the Force India's reliability after just two days of running. Hopefully, Manor Marussia will make the same sort of impression. Red bull though looks like they'll have a tricky time beating Williams and probably Ferrari as well.