F1 Testing Day 6 | Bottas Takes It - But Who's Sandbagging?

Paul Jeffrey

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The final day of Formula One testing is complete, and with 1000's of km completed by the ten teams, you'd have thought we have a clear picture of the running order by now... or maybe not.

Plenty of sandbags would be seen around the Barcelona circuit this week - and it was nothing to do with the rain, as the 2020 Formula One field continue to play an intriguing game of cat and mouse ahead of the first real day of the season in Melbourne, just two short weeks away.

With this year seeing the most condensed period of pre-season running for many a year, just six days of track action would be all the teams are allowed before hitting the Australian Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit at Albert Park early next month. Thanks to the now superb reliability of modern Formula One cars, each team would achieve an astounding number of laps at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya these past two weeks, and at the conclusion of running today, Valtteri Bottas and the new Mercedes W11 would take top honours for the final time - albeit almost a second shy of his overall quickest time from the test.

Here's an interesting graphic produced by F1.com - the fastest times from each team during the test:

Fastest Lap by Each Team F1 Test 2020.jpg


Ferrari have been low profile, Racing Point consistently rapid, Renault performed a late surge and the Alfa Romeo keeps popping in table topping runs... but who is genuinely quick, and who has been keeping their powder dry ahead of round one?

Only 2 weeks left to find out...

F1 Test Day 6 Times:

F1 Testing Day 6 Times.jpg
 
I think that Mercedes is purposefully trying to look weak when anyone who has watched the sport for the past 7 years knows that they aren't. You can count Mercedes DNF engine problems over those years on one hand. I don't count the 2016 as they threw Hamilton's car aside that year to ensure Rosberg's championship win.
 
What Max said, and every body laugh.
(He had the balls to say it) the FIA is weak in politics.
Monkey business. Binotto Corleone :)

they should lose all their points from 2019
F1 is a kind of Formula Ferrari... and Ferrari is so incompetent that they loose on their own game... like the dumb fatso that the rich daddy built a calcio field on his mansion and owns the ball, but even them get owned by all the neighbors every time they play.
 
Wasn't there some best of all sector lap stitched together? Maybe just in the commentary but I remember hearing them talking about the best theoretical would be:
1:14.2xx

So everyone is sandbagging massively...
They are clearly bagging, that's for sure but I think the theoretical time is an unreliable measure for this. Teams can setup their cars for certain sectors (and the sectors on Barca are majorly differing from each other) to get that quickest sector time and see how their car performs at high speed (S1), medium speeds (S2) or low speed (S3).
 
Lewis will surely dig deeper than before this season, given that 2021 is still unknown. Kudos to everybody else who adapted to narrow nose concept. Though the pink merc will take all the cake! LOL! F1 is more like a circus comedy nowadays.
 
What Max said, and every body laugh.
(He had the balls to say it) the FIA is weak in politics.
Monkey business. Binotto Corleone :)

they should lose all their points from 2019

This is pretty big.....either way it doesn't look good for Ferrari or FIA, surprised this hasn't got its own thread. I guess the power of Ferrari is here ;)
 
One thing i do not understand about testing is there are no scrutineers. I would make it a rule that each car gets looked over and ensured to be to the rules in the concord agreement. (As if it where a race) Teams must run the same car or a evolution (With added parts) throughout the season.
I heard on a podcast Ferrari had to give in last years engine to FIA and have engineers explain how it operates. Something about ruing additives in cylinder to make knock. To raise horsepower. Hense they where sandbagging ruing high fuel long runs in testing this year. To avoid susspision.
You see Ferrari had good relations with Bernie and Max Mosley. So they could pull tricks of back in the day. But the FIA wont let them play games under Libertey Media's banner. And are they cheating that bad if they lost the championship.
 
One thing i do not understand about testing is there are no scrutineers. I would make it a rule that each car gets looked over and ensured to be to the rules in the concord agreement. (As if it where a race) Teams must run the same car or a evolution (With added parts) throughout the season.
I heard on a podcast Ferrari had to give in last years engine to FIA and have engineers explain how it operates. Something about ruing additives in cylinder to make knock. To raise horsepower. Hense they where sandbagging ruing high fuel long runs in testing this year. To avoid susspision.
You see Ferrari had good relations with Bernie and Max Mosley. So they could pull tricks of back in the day. But the FIA wont let them play games under Libertey Media's banner. And are they cheating that bad if they lost the championship.

Cheating and winning isn't necessarily synonymous. Maybe they cheated and still came up short. Maybe Silver Arrow cheated and didn't get caught. Who knows... I just wish there was more parity from team to team. I hate seeing drivers like Riccardo being stuck in the race for the best of the rest. Alonzo running in the rear last year... just kind of sucks going into each race and being able to assume its going to be a Ferrari v Merc challenge, and that maybe Red Bull can get lucky and upset things.
 
News : Formula 1: Teams formally object to Ferrari engine settlement

7 out of the 10 Teams

Not hard to guess...

"Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren, Renault, Racing Point, Alpha Tauri and Williams all released identical statements Wednesday morning.

They say they will "pursue full and proper disclosure" and "reserve our rights to seek legal redress."


Its like everyone has been hypnotised and think this is normal in modern day sports to have an investigations and end it with an undisclosed Settlement.. That's how things run now... Forget transperancy
 
"Teams formally object", is that formally like just for the sake of doing it. That's how it sounds. :roflmao:

Anyway, this was bad timing since they had covered this 1-2 weeks by people talking about testing and netflix. Then FIA should have added that announcement to cover next few weeks. This way, they just left this and netflix for talk at the same, and testing in any case didn't leave anything unknown.
 

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