Kobayashi on top as second test ends in Barcelona

33 comments on “Kobayashi on top as second test ends in Barcelona”

1. 

   Magnificent Geoffrey (@magnificent-geoffrey)
   24th February 2012, 16:07

   Feels good, man.
2. 

   Le Jimster (@lejimster82)
   24th February 2012, 16:09

   The key to Sauber and Kamui’s success is obvious.. https://twitter.com/#!/OfficialSF1Team/status/173028366646128640/photo/1 The other teams are jealous.
   1. 

      Broxter (@)
      24th February 2012, 20:37

      Platypusception.
3. 

   diego.liv (@sun_diego)
   24th February 2012, 16:10

   why no Mercedes infos?
4. 

   Colm O Neill
   24th February 2012, 16:10

   caterham seem to be the only one of the new teams making progress this year
   1. 

      Le Jimster (@lejimster82)
      24th February 2012, 16:18

      HRT are a joke team, they don’t have any sponsors and treat their drivers so bad. And Marussia are re-building from scratch so I expect them to be way behind. We won’t see either of their cars until the final test, and it wouldn’t surprise me if one of them misses the test and HRT drops out this year.
      1. 

         Infected Crayons
         24th February 2012, 16:30

         So, anyone worried about 107% rule yet?
      2. 

         disjunto (@disjunto)
         24th February 2012, 17:10

         every season so far people have sid they expect HRT to drop out, and they keep both not dropping out AND not losing the constructors
   2. 

      Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
      24th February 2012, 16:18

      It helps that they’re the only one who’s got their new car ready!
      1. 

         BasCB (@bascb)
         24th February 2012, 20:28

         Indeed, and they are close to being just part of the pack now if they keep it up.
   3. 

      dkpioe
      24th February 2012, 16:32

      caterhams test times dont indicate that they are making progress to me. its just the marussia and hrt are going backwards
      1. 

         jsmith944 (@jsmith944)
         24th February 2012, 16:57

         Exactly and Caterham are 3 seconds off the pace in this test so not much closer.
5. 

   Slr (@slr)
   24th February 2012, 16:41

   The Sauber seems to be a bit unreliable, I hope Kobayashi and Perez’s result don’t suffer due to constant car failures.
   1. 

      BasCB (@bascb)
      24th February 2012, 20:31

      If the exhaust cracks after doing 2 gp distances and then some, I think its not about reliability but more about taking it to its limits.
6. 

   Chris Goldsmith
   24th February 2012, 16:46

   Starting to get a little worried for Caterham. I could understand they were on long, slower runs in the first test, and they were showing good reliability, but I was expecting them to put in at least one representative run in this second test. They’ve been consistently 3-4 seconds adrift in every day of testing. I’d be astonished if they’re sandbagging at this point. They are definitely going to have to show better pace come the first race otherwise it’s going to be a disappointing season for them I think.
   1. 

      dkpioe
      24th February 2012, 17:19

      what were you expecting? they had a huge gap to close to get within the mid field teams, but the midfield teams have a bigger budget and higher rated personnel, so they have in all likelyhood pulled away from caterham instead of caterham getting closer. it would have been nice if they did pull closer, but it would have to be a really really big step, like when Honda made the 2009 Brawn car.
      1. 

         verstappen (@verstappen)
         24th February 2012, 22:03

         @dkpioe I did expect more. But I still don’t know about Gascoyne. He was at other teams right before they got good results: Renault, Toyota, Spyker – later Force India. And it’s hard to tell whether he’s good at laying out the basics, or others always had to clean up.

         I do know that the Lotus/Caterham went from very ‘boxy’ to more rounded in a similar fashion as we’ve seen at Toyota, where he also started from scratch. So there should be hope.

         And I don’t think it Has to be so dramatic as with Honda-Brawn. Force India also came from the end of the grid (almost).
   2. 

      socksolid (@socksolid)
      25th February 2012, 6:33

      Yeah I’m getting a bit worried too. Being last in every test session does not really show any indication of improvement over last year. Even if it is just a test the times are not 100% meaningless. If one team is dead last in every test session it is very likely that’s the position they will be in australia as well.

      Or maybe the gatorham are just fully focusing on improving their race pace when they have now figured out that on qualifying lap their car is still miles off the pace… They will get the 19th and 20th place on the grid anyways as hrt and marussia just try to beat the 107 rule…

      If that is the case then they can forget scoring any points…
7. 

   Eggry (@eggry)
   24th February 2012, 16:51

   Looks like mileage goes skyrocket! What a reliability!
   1. 

      AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
      24th February 2012, 22:24

      @Eggry Reliability is the real winner in testing!
      1. 

         US_Peter (@us_peter)
         24th February 2012, 22:44

         @andrewtanner, yes and no, I’ve heard several drivers this week alone being quoted as saying that it’s better to have a fast car that you can work on the reliability of, than a slow and reliable car that won’t get any faster.
         1. 

            AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
            25th February 2012, 9:18

            Good point @us_peter I think having reliability implies that you can complete all your testing procedures and have a good degree of confidence in what you have made correlates to what your wind tunnel tells you. However, it’s all relative. It won’t make you any faster, like you said.
8. 

   ms20 (@ms20)
   24th February 2012, 16:55

   Is the circuit used the same layout as the GP circuit? I thought the cars were meant to be slower this year but Kamui’s lap today is over 1.5s faster than Q2 last year.
   1. 

      AdrianMorse (@adrianmorse)
      24th February 2012, 17:03

      Indeed the cars are looking surprisingly quick, although at the Spanish GP the teams only had the softs available to them. Also, it is to be expected that the midfield teams have lost less performance from the blown exhausts compared to Red Bull and McLaren, so we might see a bunching up of the field.
   2. 

      dkpioe
      24th February 2012, 17:23

      better to compare the times to last years pre season tests at barcelona, where some teams were quicker then at the barcelona race a few months later. 4 days of thousands of laps of the track help rubber the track and make it fast, tyres have changed since then too, and we dont know what fuel and balast the teams are running for their fast laps. might be better to look at the long runs of the cars.
      1. 

         Le Jimster (@lejimster82)
         26th February 2012, 4:35

         Agree about the amount of rubber, but the track conditions should be warmer by the time Bareclona comes around, so I expect the times to go up not down. Also it’s good to see Sauber working on their qualifying form because it’s been really weak compared to their race pace. I feel if they can have good quali’s and reasonable race pace they will have a chance of podiums. A couple of times last season despite Kamui’s car they got the strategy right and ended up leading in Canada for a short time and a 4th place finish should have been theres at Monaco until Webber got lucky with the restart.
         1. 

            Le Jimster (@lejimster82)
            26th February 2012, 4:37

            lol, I meant down not up (my brain is in dyslexic mode this morning)
9. 

   TED BELL
   24th February 2012, 17:22

   My gut feeling is that RED BULL are going to have another cake walk this season. Their is something unspoken going on with this team and I get the feeling that they already know where they stand and are quietly preparing for a run that will demoralize the competetion. Sebastian Vettel will become three times world drivers champion and poor Mark Webber will again play the role of why not me.
   1. 

      JamieFranklinF1 (@jamiefranklinf1)
      24th February 2012, 19:01

      There is absolutely no way that Red Bull could know where they stand compared to everyone else. Not to mention that last year they actually had less advantage less year in terms of car performance than they did in 2010, they just had a better year.

      So I very much doubt that Red Bull will have an easy season.
      1. 

         dkpioe
         25th February 2012, 6:13

         if hamilton didnt crack at every second race, and if button was a faster qualifier, then mclaren would have been in it with red bull, but their driver line up failed when often they had the car to match red bull.
         but red bulls preseason seems to be going in a similar way to last year, and never needing to do a qualifying lap.
10. 

    JamieFranklinF1 (@jamiefranklinf1)
    24th February 2012, 19:05

    I know testing times mean nothing, but it is quite worrying, as others have mentioned that Caterham are always towards the back. You’d think that with the ban on the EBD and with them having KERS this year, that they’d pull back at least a little bit of the deficit (which was around 1-2 second towards the end of 2011, roughly). I really hope they are, otherwise Q1 will continue to be a little bit processional.
    1. 

       Ben (@dirtyscarab)
       24th February 2012, 20:38

       It probably will be processional again but there’s always the question of who’s 18th on the grid.
11. 

    AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
    24th February 2012, 22:27

    Good to see Kobayashi topping something, even if it is meaningless.

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