Mark Webber was confirmed as the fastest driver on day one of testing at Barcelona after Sergio Perez’s best time was deleted.
Perez was originally credited with the fastest lap. But his time of 1’21.176 was deleted after it was discovered he had cut a corner in his lap.
His actual best time of 1’24.117 put him fourth.
Webber set his benchmark time in the morning, lapping two seconds faster than the other cars on the track. The test began on a damp but drying track.
Jenson Button put his McLaren second fastest after running with an unusual lump on the car’s nose early on in the test.
There were eight teams running and three of them switched drivers during the test.
Renault made an unplanned change as Vitaly Petrov took over from an unwell Nick Heidfeld during the day.
Lotus ran GP2 drivers Davide Valsecchi and Luiz Razia, having abandoned their original plan to run Jarno Trulli in the afternoon. The former brought out the red flags with a spin.
Nico Hulkenberg started the test for Force India before handing over to Paul di Resta.
The session was stopped two minutes before it was supposed to end as Razia’s Lotus came to a stop on the track.
| Driver | Car | Best time | Laps | Difference | |
| 1 | Mark Webber | Red Bull-Renault RB7 | 1’22.544 | 97 | |
| 2 | Jenson Button | McLaren-Mercedes MP4-26 | 1’22.910 | 74 | 0.366 |
| 3 | Vitaly Petrov | Renault R31 | 1’22.937 | 27 | 0.393 |
| 4 | Sergio Perez | Sauber-Ferrari C30 | 1’24.117 | 90 | 1.573 |
| 5 | Nick Heidfeld | Renault R31 | 1’24.735 | 20 | 2.191 |
| 6 | Paul di Resta | Force India-Mercedes VJM04 | 1’25.039 | 38 | 2.495 |
| 7 | Davide Valsecchi | Lotus-Renault T128 | 1’25.406 | 50 | 2.862 |
| 8 | Sebastien Buemi | Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR6 | 1’26.004 | 48 | 3.460 |
| 9 | Nico Hulkenberg | Force India-Mercedes VJM04 | 1’26.030 | 31 | 3.486 |
| 10 | Luiz Razia | Lotus-Renault T128 | 1’26.723 | 29 | 4.179 |
| 11 | Jerome d’Ambrosio | Virgin-Cosworth MVR-02 | 1’32.060 | 57 | 9.516 |
2011 F1 testing
Image © Red Bull/Getty images
just.daz (@nemo87)
8th March 2011, 16:24
That ‘lump’ on the McLaren was crazy looking..!
DeadManWoking
8th March 2011, 16:30
They were prepping the car for Saturday when heavy rain is expected…
http://photos.gpupdate.net/large/170634.jpg
http://www.theoriginaldolphinwatch.com/images/dolphin1b.jpg
just.daz (@nemo87)
8th March 2011, 16:32
lets hope its as good in the wet as that Dolphin ;)
DeadManWoking
8th March 2011, 16:42
Yeah but let’s hope it’s not a “Flipper”
David A
8th March 2011, 18:20
Yeah, leave the flipping to Mark Webber ;)
Henry
8th March 2011, 16:41
The lump was possibly the ugliest addition to any car I have seen in a while…hopefully they were just using it for testing…but you never know, they may get desperate and add it on to the car! The more radical looking the better it doesn’t matter whether it works or not!
eternalsunshine
8th March 2011, 16:58
The bulge is a measuring device to help with front wing development, not an addition to the car.
LHJBFTW (@lhjbftw)
8th March 2011, 16:59
are their any better pictures of the mclaren
-A-
8th March 2011, 17:03
From my understanding of it, it’s a measuring device to get data on front wing loads. The interesting thing here, to me, is that unlike other teams who have been using the same kind of tool, McLaren actually went as far as making a cover for where it was attached atop of the nose and paint that to go with the livery.
bosyber (@bosyber)
8th March 2011, 18:25
Maybe they plan on taking it to races too, to help evaluate new front wings?
Or it could just be that Dennis wouldn’t let them leave the factory with the original lump and had them make a cover over the weekend! Keeping up the corporate image and all.
Michael
8th March 2011, 17:16
The new MCcar is called MCporpoise
ad3
8th March 2011, 16:26
“jenson button put his car third fastest”- shouldnt that be second fastest?
Fixy (@)
8th March 2011, 16:43
I think he wrote that before Perez was punished and didn’t correct it.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
8th March 2011, 16:45
Yes it should – have changed it.
BasCB (@bascb)
8th March 2011, 16:34
So in the end, we still know not much, another day tomorrow. McLaren is measuring everything again. They were pretty quick today with the conventional exhaust for part of the day (or was it the whole day) although they were reported to have some heat problems on the floor.
Red Bull as expected, Renault thereabout.
bosyber (@bosyber)
8th March 2011, 18:28
According to Button they had conventional exhausts all day.
With renault I wondered if Petrov had to rush over to the track to make sure the car would at least do some more running after lunch, with Heidfeld apparently ill, it cerainly seemed that way.
BasCB (@bascb)
8th March 2011, 19:30
I would imagine they might be doing 2 days with the conventional exhausts and 2 days with the U bend ones, so they can rebuild the car in between and have a bit more extra parts to replace burnt ones and do a good back to back comparison.
Petrov was in the garage, just they had to change the seats and probably a bit more, as Heidfeld is a lot smaller and I think he uses different braking as well.
LuvinF1
8th March 2011, 16:42
What happened to Razia’s better time? Did he “lose it” as well?
LuvinF1
8th March 2011, 17:00
I notice it has now been corrected.
Robbie
8th March 2011, 16:54
So glad to see the McLarens up to speed. That lumpy nose is quite miraculous.
Tango (@tango)
8th March 2011, 17:04
I don’t believe they are. Looking at the lap time break down, it doesn’t seem like Renault posted a quick lap, and their pace on medium runs was quite impressive (so was, on another level, Lotus’). If anything, it’s quite worrying.
Vishy
8th March 2011, 18:27
Where did you get the lap time break down from? Can you please point to any links?
tuta
9th March 2011, 3:03
you ae wrong,according to some reports, he ade the fastest lap in a run of only 3 laps ,which mean that this is probably as fast as that car seemsto go, the renault is not even trying and i’m pretty surethe red bull is sandbagging
minimihkel
8th March 2011, 17:07
Still no word about HRT?
VXR
8th March 2011, 17:28
Yep. Apparently some women have this done when they get older.
Brandz
8th March 2011, 17:28
they start testing tomorrow for the next 4 days :)
VXR
8th March 2011, 17:32
I think that they might surprise some people.
Ollie (@olz21)
8th March 2011, 18:11
how, by offering them a drive?
US_Peter (@us_peter)
8th March 2011, 22:31
:-)
mike_f1_fan
8th March 2011, 17:16
Does anyone have a list of average laps today on long and shorter runs?
Snow Donkey
8th March 2011, 17:23
Does anyone have info regarding weather this contraption on the Mclaren was attached to a 2010 spec wing or if they finally brought out some 2011 parts?
VXR
8th March 2011, 17:31
I would say, looking at it, that the McLaren MP4-26 is mostly 2011 parts. Although, you would have to hope that they are holding some back.
KarlJMalone
8th March 2011, 17:32
It was only a load sensor mate, will not be on the car come race time. They are testing just how much downforce they are getting with the wing.
KarlJMalone
8th March 2011, 17:35
See here, this is what i mean:
http://photos.gpupdate.net/large/170627.jpg
DaveW
8th March 2011, 18:29
Or, they are testing how far they can get the wing deflect to gain ground-effect and the related loading. McLaren was schooled on materials science last year by the RBR in relation to the flexi-wing, and I should hope they have done some homework over the break.
Patrickl
8th March 2011, 20:50
They were schooled on the new wind in FIA that flexing is now allowed. At least in the front wing.
Rahim.RG
8th March 2011, 17:31
Red Bull looks reliable this year
Steph (@)
8th March 2011, 18:05
So far but Ferrari were so reliable in testing last year and then had a mini engine crisis.
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
8th March 2011, 20:30
Wait until a race situation, particularly somewhere hot! See how everything copes then…
BBT
9th March 2011, 8:05
They did last year until they started racing
Steph (@)
8th March 2011, 17:32
I don’t think Mclaren have suddenly jumped up. Testings so hard to read they may not be struggling that much anyway but I don’t know what programme they were running(or the other teams) and Ferrari wasn’t testing today. It’s good for them that they’re second quickest as it shows they don’t have a dog of a car but to be honest I’ve still no idea what to expect from them come Australia.
McLarenFanJamm (@mclarenfanjamm)
9th March 2011, 9:00
I would expect possibly 3rd or 4th quickest in Melbourne. Can’t see them challenging RBR or Ferrari, despite Webbers claims that RBR aren’t the fastest and time are are pretty much in race spec already.
danielbts
8th March 2011, 18:32
Why go to the effort of blending the lump into the livery is its just a test device?
ad3
8th March 2011, 18:44
for an f1 team its probably very easy to do- it looks neat and conveys professionalism? I dont know if there’s anything more to it, if there is im sure someone’ll say so.
kinz
8th March 2011, 18:51
still need to think of airflow of the car even if its just a test device.
ad3
8th March 2011, 19:05
the colour-scheme of the device isnt going affect the airflow :) Besides, when they ran the device, their concern was the performance of the front wing, since the device would have disrupted airflow in other places.
DaveW
8th March 2011, 19:24
RBR’s approach was to use a mast/fin to attach the cables. Much different to this, and so I think something else is on order:
Note that the bump apparently is not just housing a hard-point for cables and a device for measuring strain. Those are not cables coming out of of them, but solid rods. And the rods appear to have articulated joints at either end, with an electrical lead running down each.
My speculation is that the rods are used actively to reposition the wings in different attitudes of bendedness by telescoping up and down, via a mechanism in that bump. Even if its only passive, they aim to collect a whole lot more data on wing deflection than just displacement from a fixed point on the nose.
But whatever it’s use, that thing is exquisite. It’s a rather obvious example of the incredible attention to detail and depth of skills on an F1 team. How much engineering, design, and sophisticated fabrication went into that thing alone, and this is just one thing we can see plainly.
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
8th March 2011, 20:32
Well it’s kinda ironic that the lump meant to measure aero would be the very thing throwing all the figures out!
Cornflakes
8th March 2011, 18:50
Lotus seem to be up there this year. Might get a couple of points which would be an achievement.
graigchq
8th March 2011, 19:39
yeah, only THREE seconds off the pace in this test, rather than six last year (note the small amount of intended sarcasm).
I want lotus to do better, but 3s off the pace is a long way in F1
US_Peter (@us_peter)
8th March 2011, 22:39
You’re right, 3 seconds is a very long way, and they’ve improved 3 seconds in a year. Pretty good I’d say.
wasiF1 (@wasif1)
9th March 2011, 6:01
Among the new teams last Lotus seems to be the best with technical support,this year with Red Bull & Renault support I believe that they will do a lot of good.
wasiF1 (@wasif1)
9th March 2011, 1:58
I guess this time tells everything that Red Bull are the challenger of 2011.Ferrari is close second but I don’t think any other team will match them.Will be nice to see how Ferrari fight from today with Mercedes with them.