Formula 1 2013 Barcelona Test Summary

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This was a very interesting test session. There is absolutely nothing conclusive that can be derived from the test apart from the fact that the top teams are still fast, and the slow teams are still slow.

@Sutton Images

Here are the pointers, as usual.

• Marussia replaced Luiz Razia with Jules Bianchi as Luiz Razia's sponsors didn't pay up. Jules Bianchi is about a second faster than Max Chilton, so this will not be a fun year for the englishman.
• Caterham did nothing interesting, apart from proving James Allison right by removing their illegal exhaust system.
• Torro Rosso, again nothing eventful. It's got average pace. Reliable.
• Force India confirmed Adrain Sutil as their second driver, hence Jules Bianchi went to Marussia. Smart move, as they get to keep Mercedes engine, and McLaren technical support. Bulletproof car, no issues, fast as well.
• Sauber has a fast car, but their reliability wasn't impressive as they suffered small technical glitches during race simulations. Esteban racked up the highest mileage of any driver.
• Williams has a very good car as well, and Bottas thinks they will challenge the front-runners. It's a bit optimistic, but with a Finn in the cockpit, anything can happen.
• Ferrari also has a fast car, the only glitch being that the front wheel fell off once. Ferrari claim it's no biggie. Oh well.
• Lotus has a good car, but concentrated on getting their rear wing stalling device working properly. Kimi had the least running of any driver, with gearbox issues, and food poisoning. He wasn't complaining though. They did a lot of sandbagging. It's a quick car, but their real strength lies in race distance pace, which was impressive. Romain looks a different man. He's much more mature. He will have a good year by the looks of it. 
• McLaren was hard to judge, as they took a lot of time to make setup changes. They're the only team to have a completely new car. Others have simply evolved their 2012 designs. It's definitely very quick, one of the fastest. Reliable as well. They claim to have some trouble understanding the tyres. They said that many times, repeatedly. Something fishy.
• Mercedes set the fastest time of the test, but they did it on a low fuel run, so it's hard to compare with the other teams. Their race simulation timings weren't that impressive though. Very quick in wet conditions though.
• Red Bull rewrote the rules of sandbagging at this test. It's by far the quickest car, and with the most downforce. Good race distance pace as well. But they deliberately hid the cars true pace, and would constantly try to hide their car from photographers. Vettel was frustrated by the lack of low fuel runs, but the team was adamant about hiding their true potential.

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Formula 1 Spa-Francorchamps 2012 Crash Re-Analysis

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Carbon fibre galore

Earlier this year, in the Belgian Formula 1 Grand Prix, there was a catastrophic first corner pile up, and Grosjean, Hamilton, Alonso, and Perez were caught out in the whirlwind of carbon fibre. The blame was promptly put on Grosjean for being too aggressive at the start, and to some extent that is true. But looking at the race footage, I don't think Grosjean was the sole perpetrator. I downloaded the race edit, and saw the video frame by frame, and I think some of the blame can be put on Hamilton's shoulders as well.





Hamilton qualified P8, and Grosjean P9. But  Grosjean had a very good start, and Grosjean was almost a full car length ahead of Hamilton before La Source.

Red Circle: Hamilton; Blue Circle: Grosjean

Grosjean gets a good start, and heads towards clear tarmac ahead of Hamilton, as the track ahead of him is blocked by the Saubers and the Williams of Maldonado.

Grosjean and Hamilton fighting for the same piece of tarmac

So Grosjean goes for the clear track ahead of Hamilton, and this where the massive pile up started.

The stewards blamed Grosjean for being too aggressive at the start and colliding into Hamilton. This is slightly true as Grosjean gives Hamilton almost no space and squeezes him into the barrier separating the track from the pits. And this is also the point where Hamilton should be blamed for the accident which takes place just seconds from this picture.

Here you can see Grosjeans racing line blocked by the slowing Saubers behind the Ferrari, and now approaching toward the clear track ahead of Hamilton.

At this point, Hamilton still has a chance to retain track position and try to pull ahead of Grosjean. But he should have know that he only had a small chance.

Just moments before the havoc starts.

Grosjean now has a 3/4 car length advantage over Hamilton, and has, according to me gained the track position and is perfectly justified to expect Hamilton, which he should have done. Hamilton can clearly see that he has no space left, and should've lifted off and conceded track position. But he put his foot hard down, which wasn't the smartest thing to do, but even stupider on his part was holding his racing line. A collision was bound to take place. 

But Hamilton wasn't really in an ideal state anyway, having posted telemetry of his lap on Twitter!

Detailed as well....

And now as you'll see, all hell breaks loose.

BAM! and it's all over.

I really don't see why Grosjean alone is blamed for the mess. Hamilton had quite a large role to play in this pile up.

Also, Jenson Button has the best victory dance which he performed in his car itself. The man got style.

Now that, is how it should be done.

That is a superb way to celebrate. 

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