Why pre-season testing is better than ever for F1 fans

"It's the most wonderful time of the year." So sang Andy Williams about Christmas. But Formula 1 fans might argue that right now pips Yuletide. Yes, pre-season testing at Barcelona has just got underway.

Photo: Octane Photography

Test one stretches until this Friday, February 21, then all reconvene one week on, from Wednesday 26 to Friday 28 February.

The excitement this time of year at the season stretched ahead is inimitable. Of course, in an accompanying annual event, testing will come with health warnings about not reading too much into things. But it doesn't stop us trying...

And there's never been a better time for F1 fans to follow it all. Not all that long ago, testing coverage would broadly amount to a few paragraphs and lap times in Autosport. Even until fairly recently the concept of televising testing was not something of this earth.

Not now. As F1 TV Pro – F1's digital platform – will be broadcasting the six days of testing live from 9am to 1pm and 2pm to 6pm (CET). Plus it's added 11 new countries to its roster, bringing the total to 70 which includes the United States.

And if you subscribe to F1 TV during this testing period – from today until February 28 – you will get 25% off. There are more details via this link.

This year we'll get even more to look at too as for the first time the tests are organised directly by F1 which means, among other things, those dreaded screens in front of team's garages are banned, unless they are repairing the car after a crash or failure.

The F1 TV coverage will include the on-track running, pitlane and garage filming, graphics and pit and trackside reporting, plus there's a range of on-demand content.

In another innovation, there will be press conferences with drivers and team representatives, footage available on demand, in every test day's lunch break. F1 TV Pro subscribers also get Sky UK and F1's daily round-up show, produced in the paddock in the hour after testing finishes.

The inimitable Will Buxton will also each day host 'Tech Talk' and on either Friday host 'Paddock Pass'. There also will be round-up 'What we learned' programmes on either Saturday, while on Friday February 28, after the final test concludes, Jolyon Palmer will give his take plus his predictions – no doubt in his usual no-holds-barred style.

Live Timing has also been beefed up and this, as well as features, clips, 'Paddock Pass' and 'What we learned', will be accessible on Formula1.com too.

Why the UK’s F1 fans won’t miss out on pre-season testing

For Formula 1 fans there is nothing quite like pre-season testing. At this time of year any number of possibilities stretch ahead, and testing offers our first clues for resolving the big questions.

Photo: Octane Photography

This year is no different. Will the dominant Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton be toppled? If so, will it be by Ferrari or Red Bull? At Ferrari, can Sebastian Vettel strike back against his young team-mate Charles Leclerc? Who will top the midfield? Can famous old Williams recover from its woeful 2019?

The opening test starts today and continues until Friday, and test two is exactly a week on, from Wednesday 26 to Friday 28 February.

And this year F1 fans will be able to follow in more detail than ever. The UK isn't one of the 70 countries with access to F1 TV Pro which is televising testing live, but it's far from the case that UK fans will miss out.

As for the first time they will be able to watch all six days of testing live on Sky F1, starting at 8am UK time and stretching through each day to 5pm, with an hour's lunch break. Sky F1 also has a 'Story So Far' hour-long round-up show from the paddock at 5pm each test day.

What's more, UK-based F1 fans can get F1 TV Access. Its subscribers get F1's live timing, which via the F1 app is much richer this year. Fans will not only be able to follow drivers' times in the usual three in-lap sectors, but also in detailed segments within the sectors. They also can compare drivers' performance via a new tab, as well as see real-time telemetry, tyre usage history, driver maps and hear the best of team radio.

F1 TV Access also is a treasure trove for lovers of F1 history, as you can watch footage from over 650 historic races, starting from the 1981 season, as well as exclusive documentaries.

F1 TV Access costs just £19.99 a year or £2.29 a month. And if you subscribe to F1 TV Access during testing – from today until February 28 – you will get 25% off. You can subscribe or find more details via this link.

There also is plenty available via F1's website, Formula1.com. In addition to full live timing, there's content including, among other things, clips from testing as well as F1 TV's 'Paddock Pass' and 'What we learned' programmes providing additional insight from Barcelona.

New Motorsport Week article: What to look for (and not) in Barcelona testing

Photo: Octane Photography

And so, one of the most anticipated points on the F1 calendar is just about upon us. The opening pre-season test, where all the gleaming new machines be be running on track together. And this year with a host of new technical rules the anticipation is even more keen than usual.

But...as we keep being reminded interpreting the goings-on in F1 testing is rather an intricate exercise, certainly is not nearly as simple as looking at the headline lap times.

In my latest though for Motorsport Week I outline a few things from my meandering experience of watching testing that may help in unravelling the knotted but key matter of who is quick and who is not. You can have a read here: https://www.motorsportweek.com/news/id/13873

Inside Line F1 Podcast - How To Measure A Good F1 Test?

Before we get to answering 'How to measure a good F1 test?', we tell you why we were missing in action for a few weeks. We also tell you why we love Formula 1 testing as we try and indicate the 'Sign Of Times To Come' (for 2016). Along the way, we also answer a few other questions in this week’s episode of the Inside Line F1 Podcast:

• Why the silly qualifying changes till be delayed till the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix?
• Who is the ONE person in the sport not doing his job?
• Why Lewis Hamilton won't be able to dominate for 10 years? – Why F1 drivers are losing weight?
• Why Renault's 2016 car has been delayed?
• Is Rio Haryanto the new Pastor Maldonado?
• Why Haas's car has the COOLEST name! And why the start to their debut campaign is already ominous.
• From third grade engine to third sponsor – McLaren Honda woes to continue in 2016?

And finally, has Alain Prost hinted on the sign of times to come?

Tune in! (Season 2016, Episode 05)

Melbourne Preview: Unknown pleasures

Could it be the case that no round in F1's history has represented as much of a step into the unknown as this weekend's 2014 Australian Grand Prix? Most probably.

Opening rounds of the season come armed with enough unknowns at the best of times: everyone starts from zero, there are new cars on show and testing only gives us a cryptic picture of which are working better than others. We've had rule changes before too of course, sometimes fundamental ones. But has any previous set of rule revisions between two seasons been so extensive? We've had big chassis changes on occasion; on other occasions big engine changes. But this time in unison the chassis and, particularly, the engines have altered radically. For the latter the capacity is reduced from 2.4 litres to 1.6, turbos are back, energy recovery is greatly increased, and on top of these we have a fuel, as well as a fuel flow, limit. As if to underline the distinction even the engines are no longer called engines - get used to the age of the power unit

The sun shone on Mercedes in pre-season testing
Photo: Octane Photography

If this wasn't challenging enough this highly complex and still largely new technology has been thrown wholesale at the teams in one go. Unlike, say, the banning of the turbo in the 1980s, or the race-day fuel restriction of a few years earlier, there's been no incremental introduction. And they've also only been given 12 days of pre-season testing running to eliminate the glitches (Adrian Newey pointed out that even the most complex hybrid road car has several years' worth to do the same).

What we've been able to decipher from testing is that the order of before has indeed been shuffled: a consequence of the new rules is that engines are now a differentiator, and the Mercedes power unit looks to be the best of the bunch in power, fuel economy and reliability. It also has had a rising-tide-lists-all-boats effect on all four of the teams that use it. But even of the Merc runners the works team looks a cut above in its pace and preparation - the smart money for a Melbourne triumph is on one of the Silver Arrows.

The plot thickens: What we learned in Jerez

We know. We're constantly reminded. But we never learn.

Yes, F1 and pre-season testing. We have no excuse to not be at one with all of the usual disclaimers regarding interpreting it and its lap times. We don't know the respective programmes, fuel loads, state of the tyres and the like, all of which can skew a car's behaviour as well as what the stopwatch shows by several seconds and make who's actually looking good and who's not a particular riddle. And this is at the best of times: add in that in this the 2014 variety there's reason to think that such interpretation is significantly more complex even than is ordinarily so.

The F1 fraternity gathered in Jerez
Photo: Octane Photography

This time there's an added expanse of obfuscation provided by the fact that between seasons we've had perhaps the most significant simultaneous shift of engine and chassis regulations that the sport has ever faced. As a consequence everyone returns to base camp; previous years' pecking orders therefore count for not much. There may also be more scope for variation in the testing programmes as teams explore the new and uncharted landscape. And you can add to the disclaimers of the previous paragraph that now too there's a proscribed 100kg per hour fuel flow limit in the book of regs, a limit which might not necessarily be heeded in testing. This time more than most, you might be better served seeking to predict the world championship outcome by reading tea leaves than by poring over a pre-season test.

Final thoughts on 2013: Dark matters

The 2013 F1 season was a year that promised much and in many ways disappointed. It was a year undermined by political intrigue, aggravation, sometimes scandal. A year that perhaps won't linger in the affections, aside from recollection of a driver and team in unison performing at the top of their respective games in taking the honours, a partnership that has been formidable for a while and was increasingly so as this campaign went on. We might have witnessed the team in some ways at its worst this season, but we also saw it at its very best.

And yet at the campaign's outset we were full of optimism, coming off a season wherein the fare were was more competitive and varied than had been so for a long while, and was played to a close and dramatic climax. There were not many reasons to think that things would be much different this time, yet we didn't to any great extent get more of the same, and worse the main thing that we did get more of was politics.

The Pirelli tyres dominated the discourse in early 2013
Photo: Octane Photography

The F1 fraternity is a fractious lot, and the sport can never be detached completely from disputes; the tendency merely has to be managed. But this campaign contained rather a lot to manage, and much flowed over the brim. The matter that dominated the discourse in the first half of the year - much more than any driver or team - were the dark matters of the Pirelli tyres. Dark in more ways than one.

Early in the 2013 season some noticed that the rubber, with Pirelli deliberately engineering degradation in, didn't allow drivers to push all the time. This really shouldn't have been a surprise, as that had been Pirelli's approach (at the behest of Formula One Management) since its return as the sport's supplier in 2011 in order to add a variable to the racing and to strategies. And as had also been also been its way it also this year went more extreme with the tyres than in the season before, given that each year the teams' tendency to get on top of the challenges as the season went on resulted in more tepid fare.

Mercedes's International Rescue - views on the outcome of Testgate

I guess that you could file that under 'anti-climax'. The matter of Mercedes having participated in an in-season tyre test with Pirelli had dominated F1 coverage ever since it 'broke' on the morning of the Monaco race last month. And as we anticipated the verdict of the 'Testgate' International Tribunal today it felt like awaiting the final act of an epic and grandiose opera, that was meant to surpass all that had come before. Absolutely nothing could be ruled out. Yet what we got was a modest rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb.

The International Tribunal did find Mercedes and Pirelli guilty today, but was apparently full of understanding of how they might have mistakenly and inadvertently concluded that what they were doing was kosher. And the punishment was mild: a reprimand for both (the F1 equivalent of a stern telling off) as well as Mercedes being barred from the forthcoming three-day young drivers' test - which seems more ham-fisted attempt at levelling up the balance than it does retribution (some, including Ferrari, have argued already that it doesn't even manage that). Widely anticipated sanctions, such as fines and points penalties, were shunned.

All at Mercedes may be breathing a sign of relief
Credit: Morio / CC

And for all of the expressions of confidence in advance of the Tribunal by Merc's Team Principal Ross Brawn, I suspect that he and his team will have heaved a massive sigh of relief at the outcome. The barely concealed relish with which Brawn and Mercedes accepted the verdict betrayed as much, as did the fact that its defence had already suggested that very same punishment as a suitable one (indeed, that it was suggesting punishments at all wasn't a sign of faith in its case). Niki Lauda's rather conspicuous distancing of himself from the matter indicated that he wasn't all that confident of the outcome either. And one hopes that the Mercedes company doesn't seek to spin this as a vindication in the coming days (and trawling around social media some of the team's acolytes have already started on that one): after all the team was found guilty.

Making bricks with straws in the wind: What we learned in Jerez

The story of the 2012 F1 season began in earnest during the week just passed, in the four-day testing session at the Jerez circuit in southern Spain. Like all good stories, F1 seasons tend not to reveal their plot with any certainty in the opening paragraphs. Red herrings are just as likely as signposting at this stage.

Trying to work out how a F1 season is likely to pan out on the basis of pre-season testing, let alone on just the first pre-season test, is rather like trying to make bricks using straws in the wind. It doesn't stop us trying though.

So, what can we decipher from the four days at Jerez? Firstly, aesthetics. Even if F1 exists for another one hunderd years, 2012 will in all probability be looked upon as the year of the platypus. Noses with an unsightly downwards step just ahead of the front wheels are now, with the honourable exception of McLaren, de rigueur it seems.

The Ferrari F2012 - a prime example of the platypus
Credit: Gil Abrantes / CC

The obvious thought on first sight is that they can't possibly work, seeming like anathema to the usual sleek lines on an aerodynamic racing car. But as is usually the case, they reflect the restrictions of the rules and necessary compromise by the designers to produce the best performance. One of the few rule changes for 2012 is that the maximum height of the nose (measured just in front of the front bulkhead) has been reduced by 75mm, so to avoid side impacts involving the nose of one car coming into contact with the driver's head in the other car potentially. However, a parallel reduction in the maximum height of the front bulkhead itself couldn't be agreed, and most teams prefer to keep the bulkhead high to maximise the area under the nose for aerodynamic reasons (such as to channel more air through to the diffuser as well as to have more space for undisturbed front wing airflow) and are prepared to sacrifice a smooth plane along the top of the nose to achieve this. Hence the platypus look.

I'm told that once the cars are moving one gets used to their eye sore noses pretty rapidly, and indeed F1 fans have an uncanny ability to 'get used' to designs that look rather odd at the first look. I'll believe it when it happens in this case though.

And on to the important stuff: the pecking order. Well, the first point isn't a surprise. Red Bull still look like the team to beat. Of all the cars on show at Jerez, theirs looked the most planted and stable, and the consistency of rapid lap times looks ominously like that seen for most of last two seasons.