Testing
It’s been a couple of days since pre-season testing ended so I thought you might like a graph or two of some of the data I collected during that time. Each F1 team is allowed to complete a total of 15,000 kilometres of testing during the four group tests held earlier this month. With 13 teams entered for the 2010 season that equates to a whopping 195,000 kilometres available to the teams, or 165,000 if you count the 11 teams who finally took part.
In all, the 22 race drivers and 3 test drivers managed just 56,668 km, or 34% of the available allowance. On average, each team completed 5,152 ± 1,696 km (SD) but there was huge variability in the distance completed as some teams chose to concentrate on improvements back at the factory whilst others suffered from lack of suitable spares.
Ferrari did the most testing, having completed 7,344 km (490 km per day) followed by Williams, Mercedes, Toro Rosso and McLaren. At the other end of the scale was Virgin Racing, the team who chose to exclusively use CFD in the design process. Virgin completed just 1772 km, (148 km per day) in the twelve days they tested; this equates to less than half the 300-310 km race distance in most circuits and places their reliability in question for the first race. Fellow new entrant Lotus managed a respectable 2852 km, (356 km per day) in the eight days of testing they completed.
During the 15 days testing, three reserve drivers completed sufficient distance to earn themselves super licences. Those drivers were Paffett (McLaren) who drove 344 km, Di Resta (Force India) 474 km and Fauzy (Lotus) on 690 km. Test drivers’ are excluded from race drivers’ statistics in the graph below although their mileage is included in their teams overall totals above.
Which driver completed most distance?
That honour goes to Ferrari driver Felipe Massa with 3,720 km of driving behind him; team-mate Fernando Alonso was just 96 km behind. The top four testers by mileage list were rounded off by the Williams duo of Barrichello and Hulkenberg whilst Kovalainen, Di Grassi and Glock and Trulli did the least mileage, less than a third of the top performers.
But it’s not just the amount of miles that count; the speed at which those miles were driven is also a factor in how well testing went. Of course, no-one other than the teams knows exactly which strategies were used during testing. On any given day some concentrated in improving downforce levels whilst others may have practiced pit stops or tested the various tyre compounds on offer. At some stage, most teams will have driven simulated race distance to see how their cars handling adapted to the changing weight from fuel. You can find some excellent technical analysis from Maverick for each of the four days’ of testing at Barcelona, elsewhere on the blog.
By looking at the number of times a given team appeared in the top three of a session we can begin to get an idea for how fast they should be during low fuel and during qualifying. Top of the list of “top three” placements was McLaren on eight sessions whilst Ferrari and Sauber both managing seven. First place finishes were evenly spaced out with McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari on 3 of 15 sessions each.
As for the drivers, did any one of them dominate the proceedings? It would appear not, as Hamilton, Rosberg, Webber and Massa all topped the time sheets on two sessions each. If we look at second and third place finishes the picture remains a mixed bag with no one dominant team. With such a varied field we can look forward to a cracker of a season.
Brilliant stuff. Clears up a few grey areas. F1heaven(Quote)
Cheers salti, a good summary of the state of play – they really are spoilt with a 15,000 km allowance aren’t they? Maverick(Quote)
Excellent analysis & presentation salti
You should compile all these excellent articles into a nice, 2010 pre-season PDF brochure?
Between you; Maverick, Rubbergoat, & scarbsF1, I feel I’m entering the 2010 season, more informed, than ever before!
Thank you.
Regards,
Slowflow Slowflow(Quote)
Thanks for the compliment Slowflow
Hmm… interesting idea about the brochure, I’ll give it some thought though I don’t know if I have the ability. saltire(Quote)
Great analysis Salti.
Interesting to note that teams have managed to give their 2 race drivers pretty even mileages (weather and reliability permitting), with the exception of Renault where Kubica seems to have done around twice as much as Petrov.
Now I know Kubica is new to the team and is expected to be their star driver this year, but as Petrov is a total rookie shouldn’t he have been given more miles, at least equal to Kubica, or possibly more?
Renault followed this same pattern with Piquet Jr last year – he was given around half the pre-season testing mileage as Alonso – and look how well he performed in 2010, and how may crashes he had. Lack of mileage must have played some part in that.
Contrast that with Hamilton when he started at McLaren in 2007. He had more testing miles that Alonso – who, like Kubica this year, was also new to the team – and it was probably one reason why he was ready for F1 from the very first race. Could Renault have made a mistake again here?
I don’t recall any major reliability incidents that would have caused Petrov to lose so much mileage to Kubica – yes there was rain some days, but everyone else managed to get their mileages pretty even, so it must have been a deliberate choice by Renault, right? Pitmonster(Quote)
They had a pretty even share of days, Kubica did one more day at the first test. But Petrov seemed to spend a lot of time sat in the garage with little reliability problems. There was also the wet day were Renault swapped the two drivers around – maybe driving in the wet was a helpful lesson for the Russian but it didn’t help his overall track time and I’m sure Renault were only thinking about Kubica doing the development work in the dry. Maverick(Quote)
Graph-tastic! An interesting graph would have been to graph each drivers race distances completed.
For example Massa has done 3,720km. That’s over TWELVE race distances. Kovalianen has done just TWO. str8y(Quote)
But Kovalainen hasn’t done two race distances, he’s done a load of short runs interspersed with a few hours sitting around the garage. Maverick(Quote)
Yeah, I know.. but you get the idea. str8y(Quote)