Lap time watch: 2017 pre-season testing day three

2017 F1 season

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Has Formula One got five seconds faster under the new rules? Here’s the data from testing so far.

Have they hit the ‘five seconds faster’ target?

The new regulations have been created to make F1 cars five seconds faster compared to the pole position time at the 2015 Spanish Grand Prix. This was the most recent race at the track which hosts pre-season F1 testing at the time the regulations were finalised.

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How do their lap times compare to 2015?

Mercedes set the pole position time at the 2015 Spanish Grand Prix. The graph below shows how much of an improvement each team has made compared to their own performance in that race weekend.

For reference the lap times for 2015 pre-season testing have also been included.

How do their lap times compare to last year?

Lap times fell last year after Pirelli introduced softer compounds at some races. For this reason, plus the usual car development, teams will not have improved by as much compared to 12 months ago.

Mileage watch

Here’s how much distance each team has covered so far in 2017 pre-season testing:

Mercedes2280.95km
Ferrari1745.625km
Sauber1233.575km
Haas1042.72km
Williams991.515km
Red Bull972.895km
Renault944.965km
Force India912.38km
Toro Rosso847.21km
McLaren656.355km

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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7 comments on “Lap time watch: 2017 pre-season testing day three”

  1. I’m a statistics geek, which is why I love this website. Especially after the race weekends. Today I did a bit of calculation of my own, by combining the fastest times for all 8 test days from 2016 of each team and comparing it to the 2017 testing so far. If we take the absolute average of fastest laps (so the average of the 10×8 fastest laps, Manor excluded) you get a 1:25.257 in 2016, which is 2.1 seconds slower than the average in 2017 so far. If I only look at the fastest times from all teams combined, the difference is just 1.9 seconds.

    So far from the 4-5 seconds they assumed it to be. But to be fair: basically only Mercedes and Ferrari are pushing (a bit?), the rest seems to be holding back.

    1. You need to look at the 2015 Testing times, as the “5 seconds faster” is compared to 2015 not 2016. The reason for 2015, is that that was the year in which they decided to come up new rules to make the cars faster.

      1. in any case, by the end of day 8 of testing the teams on super soft and ultrasoft will be in the 1:18s. Ferrari already in the 1:19s on soft tyres today.

    2. This is really only valid if every team was running exactly the same testing program in 2017 as they did in 2016.

  2. So, Mercedes has improved versus last year more than Red Bull and Ferrari: that’s bad news
    Hamilton is faster than Bottas, also bad news
    Renault and Sauber are most improved versus last year, so at least we are closing up the grid.

    1. Ferrari last year set fastest time on ultra softs. In 2017 they are only run softs.

  3. Good as all the analysis is, we will only really know if they are fast enough once they reach qualifying in Australia, and we won’t know about Spain until qualifying in Spain. None of these testing lap times are representative.

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