Last week’s four-day Bahrain test was interesting in that it highlighted the current problems that are affecting the different teams. It is fairly clear that The teams with Mercedes engines are in the best shape at the moment. Between them they completed a total of 3,865 miles of running. When one adds this to the 2,400 miles achieved in Jerez, it is clear that Mercedes has an advantage. Ferrari completed 1,124 miles in the first test but then added 1,865 in the second test, but that means that the Italian manufacturer has done just short of 3,000 miles of track running in total, compared to Mercedes’s 6,265 miles.
It is a big difference. Renault is in even worse shape because its total mileage in the two tests is just 2,485 miles and it is clear that while we may not have seen the full potential of the engines, it may be some time before we do.
joeblogsf1 
Finally someone publishes the important information rather than the lap times. Thanks Joe.
yes but Ferrari have only claimed their miles from themselves and Sauber. Marussia the only other team powered by the prancing horse this season have been having a torrid time. But the main two teams have been running well so should be fairly happy at this stage.
Renault best hope that they dont fall foul of homologation on the 28th.
Sorry. Marussia…
Did Renault not fall foul during the previous homologation stage too? Along with Ferrari too, I believe? That didn’t hamper either of them.
Will a Renault-engined team be able to pass the 107% at the Melbourne quali?
And what if none of them makes it?
Exactly, these numbers are kind of misleading, as Mercedes has 4 teams running its engines, while Ferrari has just 2, plus Marussia which has not been able to contribute as much.
Approximately half the distance with effectively half the number of cars on track isn’t so bad when you think about it…
Miles are miles…
It means that Mercedes have around 1,400 miles of extra data to play around with than Renault. That’s an advantage. As Joe says, miles are miles.
I have no special concern for Renault but the homologation time-table seems pretty extreme considering that these are totally new engines with a lot of never-been-done-before technology.
I wonder what latitude will be allowed to engine makers to continue modifying their design after it is supposedly frozen. There seemed to be a feeling that this happened (in the name of reliability) in some cases after the development of the V8s was nominally stopped a few years ago.
Wake up… Audi and Toyota have been wandering round Le Mans for a while now using similar technology so it’s no big deal …… but their races are 24hrs not some little 2hr things. Renault should have been testing in a Mule (like Ferrari did) 6 months ago.
Renault will homologate the fastest, most unreliable, expensive and unsafe power unit possible, and then work forward from there to save money, make it safer and more reliable, at no point will they add performance. Typical example of F1 rule makers writing rulebooks that don’t achieve what they intend to do.
6265 miles divided by 4 teams is ~1566 miles per team. If gpcampbell ^^^ is correct and Ferrari logged only the miles for themselves and Sauber, that would equal just shy of 1500 miles per team…
Not saying Mercedes doesn’t have the advantage, just throwing this out there for context.
Test times and mileage this … test times and mileage that . Smoke & Mirrors from all the teams involved designed to give the press something to write about as well a disguise what their actual situation may be to their competitors . Reminding everyone of the past three seasons of testing … where Red Bull Renault was sandbagging left and right .
Thing is though … its been this way since I began following F1 [ 1964 ] .. and will forever be so as long as F1 continues to exist .
Entertaining ? Perhaps . Informative ? Not hardly .
As to Ferrari … any bets those hideously disguised .. excessively loud Enzo and La Ferrari’s prowling the streets of Italy [ hmmmn … ‘ Sounds Like F1 Spirit ‘ to me ] … as well as the Tichino region of CH aren’t in fact putting many many miles on their 2014 F1 engine covertly ? Knowing Ferrari’s past in such matters .. not to mention the FIA’s turning a blind eye on such matters when it comes to Ferrari … especially when Ferrari’s previous seasons have proven a bit wanting … I wouldn’t bet against it
As the Randy Newman song goes ; ” I might be wrong now .. But I don’t think so ”
One last .. any bets what’ll be in the Red Bulls tail come 2015 or so ?
Miles are important
I believe testing in a mule before the start of the season was perfectly legal, not just for Ferrari, but for all teams.
I was interested to read that Marussia were partly delayed by all their racks being infected by a Trojan virus. I wonder if there’s any worry about industrial race espionage in future…simply bringing down the engine mapping systems just prior to parc ferme could effectively decide a race.
I don’t know if there’s been much recorded evidence of sabotage between teams in the past but I’d guess uploading a virus would be a great way to do it now the whole car is utterly dependent on the IT infrastructure.
Joe
With Renault been in trouble will they get extra time with the engine or is the engines locked like all the other team
Some changes can be made for reliability – I believe
To be fair, b bobeckyj, autosport.com has been publishing mileage and number of laps ever since the testing started in Jerez, not just the lap times.
Is there a restriction on how much the engines can be run on test stands or dynos, in the factory?
Joe,
Is there a provision for any performance upgrades to the engine post the homologation date? What about at the end of the season so struggling manufacturers have a chance to catch up for next year?
The race will still be about finishing the race, with fuel allowed (only Merc and McL have run race simulations adhering to restriction of 100kgs of fuel so far) plus this will require far more working with the Trackside Engineer to ensure the optimum speed just so you will make the last lap ……. with the fewest tyres in the quickest time so still loads to learn …. before you even start on setup, handling, etc ….. Oh and yes the driver (Yes him) still hasn’t got to screw things up !! ….
– Loads of Fun !!
Well at least this years tests gave us some pointers. In recent years, testing was only about gathering data for simulators and it was no indicator of form at all. I can remember Joe asking one team member during testing last year what was going on and the reply as something like “haven’t a clue.” No doubt within a couple of years it will revert to that once the teams get their heads around things, but at the moment, paradoxically because we are in the unknown, then the tests provide a better indicator of the true state of things, so it’s all refreshing for the time being anyway
Renault is an interesting case because one Renault-engine team has done rather more running (admittedly not in Mercedes numbers) than the others. That’s Lotus – the only team with a Renault engine but NOT with an RBR gearbox. So maybe not all the problems lie with Renault.
However you slice the bread though they are short on miles and the data that comes with those miles. Ferrari are showing good reliability and the cars running their engines seems to require less cooling, but Merc have more test data to work from as all those miles will have come from teams testing different things.
Be interesting to see if any of the teams crank up their engines to full before the end of the third test, or wait til Australia.
It is a big difference in mileage but some of the benefit of those miles will be eaten up by different teams packaging options etc. So I don’t think Ferrari Power Plants are as far behind the Mercedes ones looking at the pure lap counts.
But there is no doubt at this stage that the Mercedes teams are the most comfortable at the moment, I think this test will be the most telling as teams start looking at performance. Has there been any speed trap data recorded at these tests?
There is a data sharing agreement in place between the Merc teams – at least during testing. Force India have transmission and hydraulics from the Merc team and so there’s a lot of good feedback for Merc there.
Am I right in saying that all the Ferrari customer teams are using the Ferrari transmission as well?
I wonder if we will have enough finishers in Oz to populate the points places?
If so, how many laps behind can one be and still be classified for a point or two?
I believe the answer is 5 in Australia – 90% of race distance would be 52.2 laps of a 58 laps race and one assumes that 53 full laps must be completed.
Maintaining pace at 107% of the leaders’ lap times would mean being 4 laps down at the end of a 58 lap race.
Although I agree that miles is miles, I would have thought the raw mileage figures may tend to understate Renault’s problems, partly because most of their miles were done by their least competitive team and partly because all of their miles (apparently) have been run at a down-on-power engine spec. Hopefully their teams have got some useful information about their chassis and the tyres, but no Renault team has come anywhere near doing a competitive lap yet, so there must be a limit to how useful the information can be as ultimately when they run at full pace, it might throw up different issues. e.g., RB clearly have over-heating problems with their bodywork package, but how can they know whether they have resolved these just because they have no problem when running five seconds off the pace? When they have more power to play with, there may be more heat too.
Unless Renault can make really extraordinary progress between last week’s spec and whatever they can come up with for the final test and for the homologation, we could be in a serious situation where two of last year’s top four teams are unable to compete. At the moment, it seems that all four Mercedes teams and two of the Ferrari teams will be in good shape, but none of the Renault cars will be able to compete with those twelve cars, unless their driver/chassis package is worth about 100bhp extra. I know many people are bored by RB domination, so few tears will be shed, but for the good of the sport we need the top teams and the top drivers to have a fair chance.
Might it even be that, just for a change, this week’s tests might be vitally important, and fascinating to watch? Renault might need to do at least some full-power testing and hang the consequences, just to see whether they have a sufficiently powerful spec that is worth homologating. Then it would be a matter of how long it took them to make it reliable within the FIA exemption. The alternative of their being forced to homologate a down on power spec and then being prevented from making it more powerful during the season would be very bad news for F1 in my opinion.
It must be said that Renault appear, at least at this stage, to have seriously screwed up and have only themselves to blame. Nevertheless, the homologation date seems far too early in the year, given the unprecedented complexity of the new power systems.