The best is yet to come: F1 pre-season testing is a wrap, and the two-week countdown to the first race of the season, in Australia, is on.
It’s shaping up for a huge year at the pinnacle of single-seat circuit racing, and while the headline stats are looking good for the Silver Arrows, with the team having topped the time sheets on more than one occasion, what else can we take away from the past two weeks of F1 in Spain? Speed and reliability.
The entire of the F1 grid, including the Mercedes AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team, has spent the majority of their time pounding the blacktop of the Circuit de Barcelona Cataluña in an effort to lock in exactly these two key basic areas of performance.
On the reliability front, the Silver Arrows undeniably lead the way – dominating the mileage charts. Only rival team Toro Rosso came within 245 laps of Mercedes marathon 1294 count, with every other team unable to break the 1k-lap mark. In fact, come the second week, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were forced to split the driving duties to safeguard the pair from injury while toughing out the punishing cockpit schedule.
“We have to describe it as we are trying to build a pyramid, and you can`t start by building the top part,” Lewis Hamilton told waiting media after the test. “You have to build the base, and the long runs are building the base – the stability and the endurance of the car. Then you can start putting the pieces on top of it. The bigger the base, the higher the top can be, that`s what we`re working on. I`m super ready for the race, in terms of doing the distance, managing the tyres, the fuel, the systems. I can`t wait for the race – I`m excited about that.”
The positive and confident vibe is echoed on the other side of the Silver Arrows garage too. On his penultimate running day of the test, Nico finished as the quickest driver on track. The German was faster than his nearest rival, Valtteri Bottas in the Williams.
Don`t be fooled by the slender 0.207 difference between the two either. Rosberg`s time was set on the Pirelli soft tyres, but Bottas was using the new purple-coloured ultra-softs. While we will leave the true number crunching to the strategists, its generally accepted that there is a 0.5 second difference between the ultra-soft, super-soft and soft tyres.
“This afternoon was probably the best the car has felt for me all the way through winter testing, so that was a really positive way to finish testing here in Barcelona.” Nico told us. “We have done so many miles in the past two weeks, so we can feel well prepared for Melbourne, and the team has done an incredible job to build such a reliable car. Of course, we haven’t seen the full picture yet in terms of performance, and everybody will be excited to find that out in Australia. But I feel ready to go for 2016.”
The action gets going in Melbourne on the 20th March, but in the meantime check out the round up of stats from Barcelona below, which could be the ultimate teaser to a third consecutive Silver Arrows championship domination.
Credit Monster