Lotus abandons Barcelona test

[Bezzen]

Lotus only managed to do 7 laps this morning with Romain Grosjean before they parked the car after Grosjean reported that the car felt "strange". Lotus sent the chassis back to the factory for inspection and they have now decided to abandon the Barcelona test, which would indicate that there's something fundamentally wrong with the chassis.

Autosport's technical correspondent suspects that there is an engine mount problem and that the higher aerodynamic loads in Barcelona compared to Jerez made the problem manifest itself.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97616

[KevMcNJ]

Not good but I guess thats why they call it testing

[RS2]

The chassis has over 1000 miles on it but they indentified it as a production problem that could reappear. So they decided to go back and make the fix.

[Automotive]

Maybe they can make it look good at the same time. All but the McLaren are high on the hideometer. All wax poetic about the sharknose Ferrari of yore, can't wait to see this years creation at Pebble Beach in 2035.

[Deutsch]

Lotus seem to have bounced back from this okay at the subsequent test. Romain Grosjean has been fastest both days so far. Apart from the glitch in the earlier test, Lotus have looked pretty good so far. I wonder how that will hold up when it comes to Melbourne though. F1 testing is pretty well-known for featuring sandbagging.

[aaron5572]

Lotus seem to have bounced back from this okay at the subsequent test. Romain Grosjean has been fastest both days so far. Apart from the glitch in the earlier test, Lotus have looked pretty good so far. I wonder how that will hold up when it comes to Melbourne though. F1 testing is pretty well-known for featuring sandbagging.

I don't think teams would sandbag forever. I remember Brawn was the fastest in testing in 2009 and they ended up being the fastest in the races too.

[bduddy]

Maybe they can make it look good at the same time. All but the McLaren are high on the hideometer. All wax poetic about the sharknose Ferrari of yore, can't wait to see this years creation at Pebble Beach in 2035.

I don't know, I think the Lotus is pretty decent actually.



Now, the Ferrari...

[Deutsch]

I don't think teams would sandbag forever. I remember Brawn was the fastest in testing in 2009 and they ended up being the fastest in the races too.

From my recent memory, Brawn were a bit of an anomaly in that respect. Fastest last year: Barrichello, Schumacher and Heidfeld @ Jerez, and Kubica, Sutil then Alonso @ Valencia. I think Brawn were pretty confident that they had an awesome car, too. No one seemed to know at the time, however, whether they were quicker than everyone else or the other teams were holding back.

So maybe it's not entirely sandbagging, but just that the teams actually focus on "testing", meaning that the don't go for the fastest laptime at that track, but rather focus on optmising the cars for certain aspects (high vs low speed, for example; or race distance + running).

[Joe in LA]

So far it looks like McLaren has the race pace, but isn't setting gaudy one lap times. Lotus seems to be doing both. Red Bull seems to be more hit/miss--I suspect they will show stronger when P1 starts.

[aaron5572]

so it seems like Kimi may be quite competitive.......hmm........

[Deutsch]

I like this quote from Vettel regarding testing:

"You never know where you are until you get to Melbourne and everyone pulls their pants down. Then you can see what they have got and you show what you have got."