Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull, Circuit de Catalunya, 2018

“One-eighth less testing” after washout with no agreement on extra day

2018 F1 season

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Wednesday’s washout at the Circuit de Catalunya has left F1 teams with “one-eighth less testing” as no agreement was reached on extending the pre-season test.

Poor weather meant the track was only open for six hours and only half of the teams present ran. Air temperatures reached a peak of around 2C and the track was wet for the entire day.

Fernando Alonso, McLaren, Circuit de Catalunya, 2018
2018 testing day three in pictures
“We now have one-eighth less testing available to us,” said James Allison, technical director for Mercedes, who did not send their car onto the track today.

“So we shuffle our programme around and try to fit all the work we need to do into seven days instead of eight. Winter testing is always tight, but this is only because you’re trying to achieve as much as possible in the time available. There’s just slightly less time available now. It is the same challenge for all the teams, so we take it on the chin and move on.”

Sauber, whose car did a single lap with Marcus Ericsson at the wheel, has adjusted its driver line-up for the final day’s running. Ericsson will now run the car in the morning before handing over to Leclerc, who was originally scheduled to drive it all day.

Kimi Raikkonen did not appear in the Ferrari during today’s test but the team is not making any changes to its plans as a result. Sebastian Vettel will drive tomorrow and on the first and third days of next week’s test, with Raikkonen taking the other two.

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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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8 comments on ““One-eighth less testing” after washout with no agreement on extra day”

  1. Agreement over a schedule change that would be to the long-term advantage of all teams – can’t be agreed on. Bernie’s divide and conquer Concorde strategy was easy to implement.

    Which team(s) vetoed the idea of extending the test another day? Rich or poor?

    1. I think one of the previous articles indicated that Williams had a private test… err, a filming day scheduled for Friday, and Ferrari has one scheduled for Saturday (at Misano I want to say?)

      Claire Williams indicated she wouldn’t let that stop the test from being extended, but not sure if Ferrari ever said anything.

      I guess if a team already put resources into scheduling the filming day (track rental, camera crew, hospitality, transportation of the team, packing up and transporting the car) they might not be super thrilled to undo all of that.

      However you’d think they’d get much more out of a full testing day vs 100km run on demo tires or whatever the restrictions are…

  2. Would consideration be given to days lost at Barcelona becone days added to Melbourne. Thursday a Test day and all that would have been allowed at Barcelona is done in the same manne as it becomes pre race testing so teams bring all your parts and then make it a FREE FAN DAY and that is the sort of good publicity deal Liberty is looking for.

    1. That makes too much sense. So F1 would be against it

  3. Of course not. These are F1 teams we’re talking about. They couldn’t agree on the color of the sky.

    1. @forrest Ferrari believe the sky is red, while red bull can’t see the sky because it is obscured by flying people

  4. Logic would have suggested test on friday or make it a 5 day test next week, or even extend each remaining day’s testing by 1 hour or something. The teams are all there anyway, so there would be minimal extra cost involved.

    It just shows the political nature of F1, that they could not reach agreement. I would think it was probably Mercedes and Ferrari who did not want to agree, as they look good, and do not wish to give the other teams a chance to catch up

  5. Calum Menzies
    1st March 2018, 17:44

    They’re just being stupid.
    Use common sense.

    Take the extra day.

Comments are closed.