Red Bull RacingAn image of the new Red Bull Formula One car with its trendy, ugly nose.
It may not have been a grand prix, but in a way, the Formula One season started on Tuesday in Jerez, Spain, with the first testing session of the year. It was the first time the new cars hit the track, and questions of finding this year’s strongest teams and best drivers were supposed to start being answered.
It seemed, however, as if the first session might have raised more questions than actual answers. Could it really be, for instance, that the Lotus and Kimi Raikkonen, who is returning after two seasons away from the series, are the strongest and fastest of them all? It’s doubtful that many people expected the Iceman, as Raikkonen is known, to set the fastest lap time of the first session. But that is exactly what he did, as the pack behind him looked strangely mixed up, and showing little of its strength from last season.
Second fastest, in a Force India, was Paul di Resta, while Nico Rosberg was third in a Mercedes. Rosberg only drove in the morning session, with his teammate Michael Schumacher taking over in the afternoon and finishing sixth best. But the Mercedes was last year’s car, not the new model, which is not yet finished.
So the dominating Red Bull car in all of this? Mark Webber finished fourth, eight seconds off Raikkonen. Jenson Button finished eighth in a McLaren-Mercedes, 1.8 seconds behind Raikkonen.
But what’s to be read into all of this? Probably not much, because it’s only the first day of testing.
“It was good,” Webber said. “I felt quite comfortable in the car quite quickly. It’s very early days, but so far, so good.”
Perhaps by the end of the week more issues about this season will come into better focus. There is also, of course, this thing about what to do with the ugly new car noses. My last post was a celebration of the beauty of the new McLaren car compared with the ugliness of the cars that people expected would be the norm this year with their platypus noses. Well, since that McLaren post, over the last few days, all the other cars that have been revealed to the world have had one variation or another on the ugly nose.
The one that stands out the most, of course, is the Ferrari. Who has ever heard of an ugly Ferrari, anyway, right?
But on Monday, the key to which way the aerodynamic wind might be blowing came with the presentation of the new Red Bull. This is the team that has won the last two championships, including last year with total domination. More important, it is the team for which the chief designer and head of the technical program, Adrian Newey, is also a master aerodynamicist. So what Newey might do with the nose would be watched closely. The answer? Ugly. Oh, not as bad as some, but ugly still.
So this first test. which runs until Friday, may begin to show who got it right. And yet, tests like these are not a real competition.
Also, it may take longer to find out the answer to the design question. Still, if the McLaren is immediately and indisputably faster than the others, there will no doubt be a little head scratching in the nose design department of the other teams. Somehow, it is hard to imagine that a majority of the teams got it wrong…..
Perhaps the most important words came from Sebastian Vettel, the Red Bull driver who won the title in the last two years and dominated last year:
‘‘Looking at the cars, there’s not much room left for the designers to play with, to find something extra,’’ Vettel said at the car’s introduction in Jerez on Monday. ‘‘The last two years we have had two big things taken away — the double diffusers, and for this year the system around the blown exhaust. We are missing that, and so it’s difficult to really create a difference. We’ll see.’’
He added, “I think it will be very, very tight this year, and anything else would be a surprise, to be honest.”
The lap times of Tuesday’s testing:
1. Kimi Raikkonen, Lotus-Renault, 1m19.670s, 73
2. Paul di Resta, Force India-Mercedes, 1m19.772s, + 0.102 101
3. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes, 1m20.219s, + 0.549 56
4. Mark Webber, Red Bull-Renault, 1m20.496s, + 0.826 53
5. Daniel Ricciardo, Toro Rosso-Ferrari, 1m20.694s, + 1.024 57
6. Michael Schumacher, Mercedes, 1m20.794s, + 1.124 41
7. Kamui Kobayashi, Sauber-Ferrar, 1m21.353s, + 1.683 106
8. Jenson Button, McLaren-Mercedes, 1m21.530s, + 1.860 60
9. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 1m22.815s, + 3.145 69
10. Heikki Kovalainen, Caterham-Renault, 1m23.178s, + 3.508 28
11. Pastor Maldonado, Williams-Renault, 1m23.371s, + 3.701 25
12. Pedro de la Rosa, HRT-Cosworth, 1m23.676s, + 4.006 44