F1 Test 2: Day 2 - Red Bull Get Wings

[Paul Jeffrey]

A mega day for Daniel Ricciardo with over 160 laps on the board and a new unofficial lap record cause high hopes for a Red Bull challenge in 2018...

The second day of the second pre-season Formula One test at Barcelona proved to be a very positive affair for the Red Bull Tag Heuer team and the ever smiling Australian Daniel Ricciardo, the Milton Keynes based outfit performing at an incredibly high level to score an encouraging new unofficial lap record as they pounded round the Spanish circuit for a very impressive 165 laps today, well and truly putting behind the early troubles encountered during the previous running in pre-season testing.

With Red Bull having such a good time of it at the top of the time sheets in both pace and laps covered, it would be yet another disappointing day for McLaren Renault, with double champion Alonso having to significantly cut short his running for an engine change following an oil leak, leaving the Spanish driver in the garage for much of the afternoon before venturing back out on track again late in the day to finish up on just 57 laps. Despite the troubles experienced by the Woking team, encouragement can be sought from the fact Alonso eventually clocked sixth fastest time, however with pre-season testing notoriously difficult to judge relative competitiveness amongst the teams, it could still be yet another challenging season ahead for this once great championship winning squad...

Despite being overshadowed by the stand out performance of Red Bull, Wednesday would be another encouraging day for Mercedes and Ferrari, with both teams getting running in for each of their main season drivers. Mercedes would end up on top of the duel carried over from 2017, Hamilton taking second overall two tenths ahead of team mate Bottas, with Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel almost a full second adrift in fourth, albeit running on the Pirelli Soft tyre against the Ultrasoft of Bottas and Hamilton.

Kimi Räikkönen would recover from his earlier illness sufficiently to take the wheel of the scarlet machine in the afternoon, clocking up some much needed mileage in a 2018 Formula One car on his way to ninth overall in the times with 49 laps.

With McLaren struggling despite the change of engine partner for the new season, Toro Rosso again had a reliable day with the new specification Honda, allowing 2017 WEC Champion Brandon Hartley the opportunity to clock an impressive 119 laps aboard the Italian car on his way to fifth position, one above McLaren and Alonso but with over double the laps completed... oh dear.

Testing resumes again on Thursday.

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Another bad year for McLaren in the reckoning do you think? Can Red Bull really fight Ferrari? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Bernd Graf]

Did it give itself wings?

 

[sjb266]

Well it's obvious now... Ricciardo will be World Champion...! Next....

 

[Nimas2333]

rip mclaren

 

[Thang Nguyen]

Why, McLaren??? Why???

 

[Nimas2333]

Poornando Alonso

 

[wombat999]

with pre-season testing notoriously difficult to judge relative competitiveness amongst the team

And that says it all.
But I love seeing Honda doing the biz!

 

[InsaneOzzie]

I see Daniel & RedBull clocked this mega time on hard tyres, this is a good sign compared to Mercedes times on ultra's & Ferrari's on soft's.........could be a sign of the season ahead, or are they (Merc/Ferrari) just sandbagging, one would hope not.

 

[shimon.ifraimov]

I see Daniel & RedBull clocked this mega time on hard tyres, this is a good sign compared to Mercedes times on ultra's & Ferrari's on soft's.........could be a sign of the season ahead, or are they (Merc/Ferrari) just sandbagging, one would hope not.

those are not hard tires.
for me personally those test days mean nothing, we will see the true performance of the cars on Q3 at the first race.

 

[Andrew Harper]

I think a very valid point was made in a Sky interview yesterday about the McLaren issues.

Years ago, most of the testing would have been in private and all your troubles and issues would have been kept out of the spotlight, so this is what testing is for, finding the problems. It does make you wonder though if the design of the car and it's very compact packaging contributed to some of the issues that they kept having with the Honda powerplant.

Usually though if a car is quick out of the box, it's a good car and the Red Bull certainly looks the part on the track and on the time sheets. However Mercedes historically don't show their true hand until the very final day, so we'll see. Ferrari look like they are doing the same.

If you compare like for like on tyre compounds the slightly more worrying aspect is the 1.7sec difference between the two leading Hypersoft times, so my guess is we will probably end up with another year of them and us. In other words Ferrari, Merc and Red Bull out in front by some margin. Midfield looks pretty tight on time again.

On purely a sidenote, I'm not sure what Sirotkin is up to, did he have more problems again? He seems stuck solidly in the 22's at the moment.

 

[wombat999]

Should have gone with Dani K!

 

[Andrew Harper]

...

 

[InsaneOzzie]

those are not hard tires.
for me personally those test days mean nothing, we will see the true performance of the cars on Q3 at the first race.

Fair enough, didn't know they had introduced or were using a Hypersoft tyre, I stand corrected

 

[farjam]

1 Vettel

Ferrari 1m17.182s
2 Magnussen

Haas 1m18.360s
3 Hulkenberg

Renault 1m18.675s
4 Gasly

Toro Rosso 1m18.758s
5 Vandoorne

McLaren 1m18.855s
6 Ericsson

Sauber 1m19.244s
7 Bottas

Mercedes 1m19.532s
8 Kubica

Williams 1m19.629s
9 Perez

Force India 1m19.634s
10 Verstappen

Red Bull 1m19.842s

today's time so far :|
top 6 were on HyperSoft except k-Mag
nico...ehm... valtteri was on mediums
kubica was on SS
perez on HyperSoft
max on soft

________________________________
Latest updates :

 

[The Arj Guy]

1 Vettel

Ferrari 1m17.182s
2 Magnussen

Haas 1m18.360s
3 Hulkenberg

Renault 1m18.675s
4 Gasly

Toro Rosso 1m18.758s
5 Vandoorne

McLaren 1m18.855s
6 Ericsson

Sauber 1m19.244s
7 Bottas

Mercedes 1m19.532s
8 Kubica

Williams 1m19.629s
9 Perez

Force India 1m19.634s
10 Verstappen

Red Bull 1m19.842s

today's time so far :|
top 6 were on HyperSoft except k-Mag
nico...ehm... valtteri was on mediums
kubica was on SS
perez on HyperSoft
max on soft

________________________________
Latest updates :
View attachment 239761

How did a HAAS do so well?

 

[Bernd Graf]

Why, McLaren??? Why???

The irony is that Honda appears to have resolved its issues...and Torro Rosso lucked out.

 

[Andrew Harper]

Times are interesting, with so many tyre compounds to choose from it's pretty tough to get a clear picture.

Yes, it looks like the top three last year are still the teams to beat, but with massively different tyre compound performance levels and fuel levels as well makes the picture a bit muddled.

However, that's half the fun of guessing on here!

 

[Martin Larsen]

those are not hard tires.
for me personally those test days mean nothing, we will see the true performance of the cars on Q3 at the first race.

I can't wait for the next seasons with tires like the Ultra-Supersoft and the Super duper hyper ultra megasoft tires

 

[shimon.ifraimov]

I can't wait for the next seasons with tires like the Ultra-Supersoft and the Super duper hyper ultra megasoft tires

ya the names and the amount of tires is getting ridiculous, id rather see one more tire manufacture to level the field a bit then this.

 

[farjam]

ok, these are the latest results from last day of testing so far :

Mclaren ****up again , another engine change for them :|

and about the times, don't forget they have resurfaced the track, so the track doesn't have the same characteristic the drivers were familiar with ,and with new aero packages they have to learn different approach, also i think in every 100 laps they have only 10-15 laps for getting the best times as they are experimenting different aero packages and carrying too much aero sensors, about the different approach for example turn 9 and 3 are completely flat out turns now(as lewis said)!
also some teams are sandbagging, i did see some time sheets in first tests and some teams had weird sector times, they are working sector by sector,if you want to sandbag, after realizing you are doing a perfect sector you will slow down slightly for the rest of it...so better times even on the same tyre compounds are not exactly because of a better car/driver at this moment (also just for more info ,in actual Spanish GP the softest compound available was soft ), Q2 and Q3 in australia will show