The pre-season test session number two has now been completed and the teams have a lot of mileage under their belt. Or most teams... Some have less than the others. And most shockingly Lotus had to pull out of the Barcelona test already after the opening day due to a severe chassis issue with their car! That was a huge disappointment for me, too because I had been very much looking forward to seeing Kimi at the wheel of the Lotus again after such a successful test session at Jerez. Losing three full test days is a major setback for the team but luckily it seems at the moment that Lotus will be given an extra day of testing next week due to their loss of three full days. I was kind of amazed that the other teams (even Ferrari) agreed to give Lotus the extra day. Fair play doesn´t always apply to Formula 1 but I find that this was absolutely the right decision to be made! Like the Team Principal Whitmarsh from McLaren said, some day they could well be in a same kind of a situation!
On my previous blog post I wrote that it was early days to say anything certain about the performance of the cars. Well, I certainly still agree with that statement! Teams have different programmes that they run at the tests and seeing Williams or Sauber on the top of the time sheets can´t possibly give the right impression of the pecking order... Some teams (like Williams and Sauber) have tried qualifying runs with low fuel and soft tyres and other teams (like Caterham) have had too many problems so they´ve worked on race pace and the long runs. Almost all teams have had technical issues on the way, even the reigning world champion Red Bull. In terms of reliability I´d say the McLaren has given the best first impression. Hopefully there will be less teething problems next week when the third and last pre-season test session takes place at Circuit de Catalunya! And we´ll see how serious Lotus´problem with the chassis of their car really is.. What we know so far it´s definitely not any teething problem, it could possibly even lead to Lotus having only one completely functioning car at Melbourne when the season opens! (Hopefully not...)
The common opinion among Formula 1 experts seems to be that Red Bull and McLaren are going to be strong. Ferrari has still a lot of home work to do and it seems to be kind of a question mark. Mercedes launched their new car at Barcelona and both Nico and Schumi have been very pleased with it. Caterham has been the biggest disappointment at least for me. They hoped to be in the midfield this year but at least at this point it doesn´t seem too realistic to assume that :( However, I have to praise Heikki´s working moral because despite all the problems and setbacks that the team has gone through during these two testing sessions he always remains very positive and is able to look at the bright sides no matter how small they might seem. No wonder Heikki was rated among the 10 best F1 drivers after last season. I just hope the team proves to be worth Heikki´s skills this year!
I´ve been on a winter holiday this week so I´ve been able to watch closely on the test days on the internet. Seeing pictures of the cars driving at Circuit de Catalunya has brought all the memories from last year into my mind. It was absolutely too awesome for any words to sit next to the circuit in the sunshine and hear the sounds of the engines and witness the testing live! I have to admit that I really have a burning desire to travel to Italy in May to watch the F1 tests at Mugello circuit... I do realise that at this point I don´t have any realistic chance to do that but I just can´t help the feeling... Too addicted to F1 I guess ;D
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