New regulations new season....
Can redbull keep up the pace
Some live updates here:
Some more;
Formula 1 Testing: Updates from Barcelona as 2022 season begins in all-new cars | F1 News | Sky Sports
LIVE COVERAGE - Formula 1 Pre-Season Track Session 2022 - Day 1 in Barcelona | Formula 1®
Brilliant to see all the variations in design. Delighted F1 is back. 😍
For a change in regulations to bring cars more alike, there's no two teams that look the same. Looking forward to 20th March already
Those sidepods on the Red Bull are cool.
This fella is worth a follow, trackside today and taking lots of photos:
Wow, the differences are amazing in the sides-pods - very excited to see how all the cars perform and how far apart they are from each other.
On the RB, is that camo paint underneath the pod?
Or some shiny section that's reflecting the ground? Hard to tell. Interesting though.
Time sheet so far;
1) Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, 1m21.718, C2 tyre
2) Max Verstappen, Red Bull, 1m22.246, C2
3) Lando Norris, McLaren, 1m22.382, C2
4) George Russell, Mercedes, 1m22.655, C3
5) Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri, 1m22.692, C3
6) Fernando Alonso, Alpine, 1m23.317, C3
7) Nicholas Latifi, Williams, 1m23.379, C3
8) Sebastian Vettel, Aston Martin, 1m24.076, C3
9) Nikita Mazepin, Haas, 1m28.255, C2
Hamilton standing outside Redbull garage. Taking in how stunning the car looks.
To me it just looks like patchy carbon fibre, likely still developing the area.
Good to see Mazepin improving :P
Its like illusion effect had me thinking the had no floor in that area.
Russell did a 1.21 on hard tyres. Pole last year was 1.16. Colder conditions (I'm guessing, can't remember the weather for last year's qualifying) will help but looks like they're already as quick as last year.
1:20.1 for LeClerc. If these cars can race much closer while being the fastest cars ever we could see some feckin plane crashes. Getting into video game territory!
Only 4 laps so far for Kubica in the Alfa with Bottas taking the car this afternoon
Just 3.4 seconds off last years pole time. 😳
Don't give me hope Ferrari...
I wouldn't take much from the times in terms of competitiveness aside from Merc, Ferrari, RB being top tier along with, probably, McLaren. Whether 1 or 2 are already clearly ahead or someone else will be getting into that tier remains to be seen.
Some more pics
Red Bulls DRS mechanism looks a lot beefier than others after their troubles with it last year
I thought the new cars would look a lot cleaner and sleeker with the new rules. The area around side pods and barge boards is already quite messy looking on a few cars.
Which cars? There are no bargeboards.
Is Barcelona particularly mucky/dusty at the moment? The cars don't look too clean in these photos...
Also - what's the craic with the metal cages in some photos?
Could be the matte paint making the cars look dusty
The metal cages are aero rakes - basically they're used to correlate the CFD / wind tunnel data and what actually happens on track
The Red Bull and Aston Martin seem to have barge board like panels coming off their floors with enough space for advertising!
Would love to know where the paint starts, looks like air hitting the middle of the rear wing won't be coming from the front wing.
Timing sheet from today having completed half the day! Despite the differing designs, times look very close with the lead cars so far!
Something I found out today is that they don't go through any scrutineering for these tests.
You could show up with a light car and look amazing to attract those last few sponsors for the year.
Yeah that's something some of the smaller teams have done historically. With so little testing time and representative data being so valuable I don't think it happens as often these days.
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