Testing in F1 – what’s in store next week?
This week’s testing is almost over – that is if you count Virgin Racings shakedown at Silverstone a test, otherwise it was over on Wednesday. We got our taste of most of the big names in Valencia with Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa, Fernando Alonso, Michael Schumacher and more having a day at least each.
Each of the days (one, two & three) was surprisingly similar with Ferrari topping the times, Sauber following them in second with McLaren/Mercedes next and the Williams, Renault and Toro Rosso vying for the other spots.
I think that Sauber have surprised everyone with their pace, coming in second with both drivers, including the rookie Kamui Kobayashi. It will be interesting to see whether they can continue this through the tests, it does somewhat change things for teams like Renault who had probably written off Sauber for the year.
In contrast Ferrari were fast and I don’t think that really surprised anyone. So much so that they have moved to manage expectations, they say that they are worried about over teams not showing everything, I’d be surprised as there has been so much movement over the closed season and so many people wanting to impress that I don’t see how they would be persuaded to not go as fast as possible.
Next week we have the test at Jerez where Virgin Racing will join in and both Red Bull and Force India will unveil their cars beforehand. So we should get a picture of where all the teams from last year stack up and our first taste of a new team. It will be interesting to see when the other new teams make it to a track, Lotus are set to launch their car on the 12th in London so presumably they won’t be there.
I’d expect Ferrari to stay top of the pack next week but I’d be surprised if Red Bull don’t feature in the top three times, unless of course they’ve only had four months to build a new car. Force India could also spring a surprise as they had a pretty handy car last year, Sauber may be usurped from the second spot yet.
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