Christmas decorations have
been taken down and New Year’s Eve antics are long forgotten but who can shake
the 2012 Formula One season hangover. Hailed by racing legends, broadcast
pundits and hard core fans as one of the most memorable seasons to date, it’s
going to be a challenging one to beat.
The
twelve week F1 dry spell has made us all irritable and itching to see some
rubber to track action and with March just around the corner, it’s nearly time
to put down our over-played season review DVDs and stop taking the apex on the
roundabout. However, before we can completely cancel our social life for a race
weekend, every season has to start somewhere and that’s with testing.
Let’s
face it; pre-season testing often proves, well, not much. Not all of the
technical goodies have been fitted to the car, flat out and there’s no way
we’ll see the fruits of this winter at full capacity just yet. For
competitions’ sake, there’s no logic in playing your strongest card before the
game has really begun; be the dark horse, keep it all close to your chest and
keep up the poker face until Interlagos.
TESTING ETIQUETTE
Following
suit from previous years, the first round of pre-season testing kicks off in
the southern Spanish 10ºC heat, at Circuito de Jerez. It’s a
thirteen-turn track favoured by drivers and teams alike despite its
non-appearance on the F1 calendar since the late nineties.
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| Jerez Credit: Leo Hidalgo |
For
teams who have elected not to launch their shiny new cars in top-secret warehouses (see Purple Reign: The RB9 Launch) or at a very wet Silverstone garage,
the initial winter test is the time to do it. All but one team, Williams,
have revealed their 2013 labours of love - the struggling British outfit anticipate
going live on 19 February, the first day of the second round of winter testing.
Last
week’s Jerez test saw Mercedes, Toro Rosso, Caterham and Marussia all roll out
a new set of wheels.
From
Tuesday to Friday, the highly theoretical thirty-two hours of driving time
is usually divvied up between the team’s two drivers. However, reserve and test
drivers might get a look-in for half a day too. For teams such as Force India
who have yet to secure a race mate for Scot, Paul di Resta, Christmas came
around pretty early for fellow Brit, James Rossiter and Frenchman, Jules
Bianchi, who bagged a full day’s driving respectively in absence of a second
driver. For Ferrari, the trio of reserve drivers has come in handy, as their
numero uno driver, Fernando Alonso, chose to tame a bucking bicycle over the
prancing horse to lengthen his pre-season fitness training.
Jerez
testing also offered this year's rookies a ride in their new motors. Esteban
Gutierrez (ESP), Valterri Bottas (FIN), Giedo van der Garde (NDL), Max Chilton
(GBR) and Luiz Razia (BRA) are the newbies with the priceless/metaphorical keys
to a 2013 F1 car. Familiar faces around the paddock such as Lewis Hamilton,
Sergio Perez, Nico Hulkenburg and Charles Pic retain their keys after an
expensive and lucrative game of musical chairs, which sees them all moving
teams for the season ahead.
THE LOWDOWN
This year’s first round of testing had
its fair share of drama: a Mercedes in the wall, a Ferrari and Merc on fire and
Nico Rosberg tripping over at the W04 launch. Particularly one Brackley based
team seemingly stealing most of the limelight as they try to smooth over the
shame of an unrewarding return to F1.
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| Jerez: Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) Credit: Leo Hidalgo |
However,
as is the case with this sport, molehills are often made in to mountains. If we
consider relativity, the matters of pre-season testing are generally
insignificant to the wider picture of the upcoming season. For instance,
Lotus’s 2012 testing proved disastrous after they discovered a major flaw in
their chassis build but finishing fourth in the Constructors’ Championship is
far from a tragedy.
This
time around, Lotus experienced a bit more success with their E21 topping the
timesheets on the fourth and final day of testing. McLaren’s Jenson
Button, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and both Lotus drivers set the fastest lap times
during the week with around one second separating those in P1 from P2. But as
we know with Formula One, every tenth counts.
While we can’t
glean much from pre-season testing with teams running various set-ups, fuel
loads and teething problems being ironed out and recurring on the cars, there
is a nostalgic value to this year’s winter test in particular. This time next
year, we won’t be hearing the howl of a V8 engine but the decidedly less
aggressive cry of a V6. While many F1 fans consider the current engines
unworthy of holding a candle to the V10 and V12s of the past, generations of
baby-faced fans will remember this engine as the one that ignited a passionate
love affair with motorsport.
So
although testing isn’t quite lights out, there’s only a couple of weeks to
separate us from donning the new team wear and screaming in front of the telly.
To coin a recent quote from the highly irreplaceable Finn, Kimi Raikkonen,
“it’s better than totally s**t.”
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