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 2013 Season Predictions

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Lotus E21

2013 will be one the most competitive years in the history of Formula 1, no question about it. The best part is that 6 or 7 teams will be fighting for podiums, and perhaps even wins. What makes 2013 also unique is that it will be an end of an era, the V8 era, forever. With 2014 switching back to Turbo V6's, and bigger electrical energy recovery systems, 2013 will be a tricky year. All teams need to direct a majority of their resources toward 2014, to ensure that they remain competitive. So most of the updates and development of the car will take place quite rapidly towards the beginning of the year, and will tail off midway, and most teams will shift almost all resources to develop the 2014 car.


The 2014 car is so different from the previous cars that the team have to design the cars from scratch. The cars will bear almost no family resemblance to the current cars. It is a huge change. So 2013, with the newPirelli tyres which promises more tyre wear and faster lap times make this one the most challenging seasons in Formula 1 history. Changing the regulations dramatically might actually ruin the racing and we might see only the top teams dominate. The resources required for 2014 are too much for smaller teams to handle. As a result, Timo Glock was fired so that Marussia could get a pay driver just to survive. So only the bigger teams will be competitive in 2013 and in 2014 as well, as they can afford to develop both cars at the same time. I don't think this massive change is a good idea, as it will ruin the competitive racing we've seen lately. If the FIA had proceeded stepwise, they could've have made it work, but then again, the FIA had to do something to justify Formula 1 in current climate of Global Warming, and with various conference being held around the world to save the environment.

McLaren MP4 28

The 2013 season will be a difficult season to predict. Caterham and Marussia will barely have an impact on the proceedings of the race, and are simply trying to survive 2013 for a competitive car in 2014. Sauber and Williams might try to score a few points this year so that they get sponsorship and prize money to help develop the 2014 car, so I expect them to be very competitive this year. Torro Rosso will continue to be average this season, and will finish just ahead of Caterham and Marussia in the contractors standings. They will serve as training program for future Red Bull drivers, and Jean Eric Vergne will probably get Mark Webber's seat in 2014. Force India might surprise everyone and be challenging for podiums this year with Paul Di Resta committed to put in a good performance to impress the bigger teams and will have a good year. Mercedes will have an average year as well, but with Lewis Hamilton committed to prove to everyone that he made a right choice, they might just win a few races, and a handful of podiums.

Force India at Silverstone

Lotus will be a very competitive team. The have a lot of potential. James Allison's car and with a fast and consistent Raikkonen along with Grosjean who is looking to prove his worth adds up to a team which will probably finish in the top 3, with Raikkonen in the mix for the drivers championship. The problem Lotus faces is that, in this hyper competitive top 4 teams of McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull, they cannot make a single mistake. Red Bull, and McLaren will have the fastest cars from the word go, and Ferrari will be up there as well, with Fernando Alonso as motivated and consistently quick as ever. It will be brutal in the fight for wins between the top 4 teams, and the championship will be won by the team which keeps developing till the very end. It will be very very exciting to see what happens and the fans will have fun.

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McLaren MP4-28 Launch

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McLaren MP4-28 launch

Today's McLaren launch gave the outside world a good look into McLarens preparation for 2013. This year McLaren celebrates 50 years of its existence, and I suspect they will have a fantastic year. Jenson Button drove into the McLaren Technology Center in the P1, their new road car, and he was simply oozing confidence as he stepped out of that car and into the glare of the cameras. This the Jenson whom we saw back in 2009. Now that the team, and crucially the car is his, he knows he has a fantastic advantage, and a good chance to win the championship. He stressed on the fact that the new car is not only more consistent but also faster than last year. And McLaren did end the 2012 season with the fastest car.
The car itself has undergone a few changes, so it's not radically different, and it still does not carry a nose step as seen on other cars.

Martin Whitmarsh also stated that 2013 was every bit as important as 2014, so this will be one very competitive year, and they will be aiming to win that championship. Sergio Perez meanwhile was simply pleased to be with McLaren and will be looking to make an impact. But there's no doubt that Jenson Button will be in a class of his own if the car is quick and more importantly consistent. 2012's MP4-27 was the quickest car by far, by poor reliability was a sore point and effectively took them out the running for the championship.

2013 is going to be epic. The best drivers, all in the best teams with good cars, fighting for the championship. This will be one of the most competitive seasons in Formula 1 history, and never will a season start will atleast 8 drivers each of which has a fighting chance to win the championship.

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Formula 1 2013 Season Preview

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Lotus F1 launched the new E21 on the 28th of January. And perhaps Kimi's only hope of winning his second WDC title. James Allison, technical head of Lotus F1, who is perhaps even better than Adrian Newey, states that the E21 is an evolution of the E20, as the 2013 rules are similar to the 2012 ones, so it's not a major change. Which is good for Lotus, as the E20 was a fundamentally quick car and managed it's tyres well. With Pirelli claiming their new 2013 tyres will suffer even more degradation, this could be Lotus's year. If the E21 is anywhere near quick relatively as the E20, then they will definitely be winning races, and challenging for the championship, both drivers, and constructors. With Kimi back upto 100% race fit, 2013 looks good for Lotus. Actually, now that Kimi has become older and wiser, not only is the fastest driver on track, but also one the smarter ones. Aiming for consistent podium finishes has also become one his priorities, apart from winning, so he will definitely be in the contention for the championship. Lest we forget, James Allison and his team are geniuses as well, rocking up in 2012 with a ride height control system not seen in Formula 1 since the Williams of 1993. But Newey started crying so it wasn't allowed. This year, James has come up something but he hasn't disclosed what it is yet. Their DDRS system is not banned by the current regulation unlike Mercedes's and Red Bull's so they have that advantage as well.





Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes, a car plagues by rear tyre wear will suffer this year, and even with Lewis ability to adapt to any car, they certainly will not be up there fighting or wins as the new 2013 tyres will make them suffer. Jenson Button in the McLaren will be a strong contender as well, with his smooth and classically quick driving style along with a quick McLaren which critically will be his team for 2013, makes him a strong contender. Alonso will be brutally quick as ever in his Ferrari which also will be his team, with Massa playing a supporting role. Vettel and his Red Bull, the defending champions will be quick from the word go as they had a quick car as well last year, winning all the races in Asia. And Red Bull of course is again Vettels team, with car designed for Vettel's driving style and the fact that Vettel worships his team. Quite a deadly package.


Because the 2013 rules are relatively same as the 2012 ones, we will see one unique spectacle. The top tier of drivers standing out and standing head and shoulders above the second level drivers. The top level drivers drive at the cars limit, while the second level drivers drive at their personal limits. This makes a huge difference on the development of the cars as well as the top drivers can tell the engineers how the car behaves at the very limit, as a Formula 1 car should be driven.

The top level drivers according to me are as follows,

• Kimi Raikkonen
• Fernando Alonso
• Lewis Hamilton
• Jenson Button
• Sebastian Vettel
• Valtteri Bottas

Valtteri Bottas, another Finnish driver on the grid, is insanely quick. He was consistently quicker then Maldonado in FP1 in 2012 , and by a large margin as well, so with a quick car he will be in the equation in every race. His race craft looks good as well, considering his wins in junior categories.

The rest have either to show their skills or are just not as good them. Romain Grosjean has potential and   all eyes will be on him in Australia. He did win the Race of Champions in 2012, so he is bloody quick.

2013 will be one of the best seasons in Formula 1 history, perhaps even more exciting than 2012. This is the year that drivers will battle it out, not the teams. This will be a good year.

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McLaren vs Drivers

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Lewis leaving McLaren for Mercedes shocked the F1 world. Not me though. With McLaren's properly crap reliability record, it really is no surprise.

Lewis and the McLaren were a formidable force, just like Kimi Raikonnen was in a McLaren in 2003 and 2005. Lewis won his World Championship in 2008, but he achieved that on a last lap of the last race of the season. Cutting it very close indeed. He has had fantastic race wins since 2008, but McLaren's reliability hasn't helped. He could've potentially won another championship this year, but mechanical failures in Singapore and Abu Dhabi put paid to his ambitions. Lewis-McLaren was the fastest driver-car package ever since Kimi Raikonnen left McLaren in 2006.





This is again reminiscent of the Kimi Raikonnen-McLaren era, where Kimi and McLaren were the fastest package on any given track and they had Adrian Newey as well. How could they not win a championship or two? YouTube clips of the 2005 season clearly show that Kimi was always the fastest man on track in any given grand prix, but he still failed to win the championship. I bet the only reason people loved to watch Formula 1 in 2005 was to watch Kimi carve his way through the field for a podium finish after yet another engine failure penalty. Or watch Kimi suffer a mechanical failure after dominating the race in the first half.

Magazine article highlighting McLaren's mechanical failures.

After another disappointing season with McLaren in 2006, he went to Ferrari and instantly became world champion. Lewis-Mercedes for champion 2013? Who knows. But McLaren really did suffer. They lost the best drivers in Formula 1, Kimi and Lewis.

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