Monday, March 1, 2010

What testing tells

The just-concluded winter testing tells us that it is very close between four teams this season—Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes. For a while it looked like Ferrari were going to wipe the floor with the rest of them and then suggestions came out that McLaren were actually looking a little faster. While Ferrari and McLaren seemed to be slugging it out, Adrian Newey’s team did not seem bothered to grab the headlines. Then Mark Webber slams in just that—a headline lap time. So the Milton Keynes team is there in the mix too? You bet. Michael Schumacher went from being slightly lukewarm about Mercedes’ chances for the start of 2010—not totally surprising, as he has not been known to play up his or his team’s chances in the past—to concluding it is looking positive after all. The Saubers and the Williamses look to be behind the leading bunch and it looks like Force India are going to go after them. The Silverstone squad are talking about taking their aero package, which was very good last year in terms of low-ish drag, and adding a healthy helping of downforce to get the car working in corners. The downforce/drag ratio is a difficult thing to nail and it should be quite exciting to see how much Force India have improved in this area. More championship points this season? It could be easier this time given the changes to the points system. I think a good measure of Force India’s improvement this year will be lap times rather than points. It is also worth noting how their in-season development changes after James Key’s departure to Sauber.

1 comment:

Srivaths said...

Welcome back and happy to see you blogging again.

I am waiting for developments from Force India. Let us see what happens.