Test drives in Formula 1 are a mess. A colorful one at least: But it has nothing to do with action painting when cars in bright green, orange or yellow circle around the Bahrain International Circuit, the track at the gates of Manama, capital of the kingdom in the Persian Gulf, where on Sunday next week (4 p.m. CET in the FAZ live ticker for Formula 1 and on Sky) the first Grand Prix of the year starts.
The hustle and bustle – afterwards you have to fiddle hard – has a deep meaning: Flovis. Flo what? Behind this are the English words flow and visualization – translated into German, it sounds horribly official: flow visualization.
The engineers have the colored paste applied to selected areas of their new cars. On the way it runs, dries up and so the clever heads learn the detailed flow conditions of the car and it becomes clear whether the parts, be it the front wing or smaller deflectors, live up to what wind tunnel tests and computer simulations promised. Equally indispensable are the frames, reminiscent of gratings, with which the cars are temporarily hung to measure air flows and pressures.
A tip against Toto Wolff?
In order to curb the explosion in costs, Formula 1 has severely restricted the testing options on the racetrack in recent years. In 2015 it was twelve days, but today the teams only have three to get to know and understand their new car. In addition, there is the first exit of the car, called the shakedown, and two film days for advertising shots, which are subject to strict rules and only help to a limited extent. “I would also prefer ten days for testing, but every kilometer that a Formula 1 car covers is expensive,” says Franz Tost, Team Principal of Alpha Tauri. “We have a cost cap, if we wanted to test more, we would have to save the money elsewhere.”
Not everything went smoothly for Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes in Bahrain.
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Image: dpa
In any case, the dense calendar with meanwhile 23 Grand Prix weekends leaves little room for additional test drives. No problem for Christian Horner, race director of the world champion team Red Bull. On the contrary: “Let’s test for a day or two and then go racing,” suggests Horner. “If the field is mixed up a bit at the beginning of the season, would that be so bad?”. After all, any problems could be understood and resolved during the course of the year. If you wanted, you could hear a fine tip against Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, Horner’s favorite enemy, who just didn’t succeed last year. Mercedes, which was evident in 2022 after a morning test, had gotten fatally bogged down, and the W 13 was panting hopelessly behind Ferrari and Red Bull in the fight for the title.
And this year? At half-time of the test drives ending on Saturday, the big three mentioned are close together. The scene agrees that the Red Bull has its yellow nose ahead. Mercedes thinks it’s on the right track. The W 14 is not as unpredictable as its predecessor, pilot George Russell reported a noticeably improved balance on Friday, but Red Bull is still a long way away. While Ferrari initially struggled with tire wear in race trim, Mercedes soon suffered a setback. During the test drives, it is secret who has how much fuel in the tank, what engine output is used and which tires are used. But the teams are usually good at assessing where they stand compared to the competition.
Stupid only when the technology goes on strike
In Bahrain, each pilot has just twelve hours to try out the new company car. Stupid only when he bucks: George Russel’s Mercedes didn’t like it anymore after 26 laps on Friday afternoon – the hydraulics went on strike, the tow truck pulled up. Because the simulations are so good, glitches like this are rare, but they jeopardize the delicate schedule of engineers who want to collect mileage and with it data in every imaginable set-up and program.
Surprisingly, Zhou Guanyu in the Sauber was fastest on the day. The Chinese, probably lightly fueled and on soft tires, snatched the best time from world champion Max Verstappen, who had been at the top the day before. Nico Hülkenberg completed 119 laps largely without a hitch on both days. “You’re never satisfied,” the Haas pilot summed it up and let it be known that the balance of his VF-23 could still be improved. After all: Also on Friday the Emmericher was faster than his teammate Kevin Magnussen.