Jerez Test (2) discussion

[LionZoo]

If they were going to put the car into the wall, they should've hired Taku. At least he does it with more style and will give you the occasional brilliant performance. Sadly it's F1's loss and Indycar's gain.

[BigG80]

I can't work out if I'm being exceptionally innuendo aware for wanting to laugh at the name of the Dry Sack hairpin. Possibly far too laboured to make it funny except in my head.

[CarlosFerreira]

Last time I checked, Hulkenberg had already clocked 110 laps. In dry weather, which is harder on the body, and in one of the most aero-dependent circuits. The man is on top of it...

[Yannick]

That's priceless:

14:31 The Virgin is parked on the long straight into the Dry Sack hairpin.

[Nuppiz]

I can't work out if I'm being exceptionally innuendo aware for wanting to laugh at the name of the Dry Sack hairpin. Possibly far too laboured to make it funny except in my head.

It's actually Curva Dry Sac. Still, it does sound a bit funny.

[CarlosFerreira]

Day 3 Over. Report, times and number of laps here.

Hulk beats Schumacher! For fourth place...

Disappointing milleage for Virgin, still faster than Lotus.

[BigG80]

I can't work out if I'm being exceptionally innuendo aware for wanting to laugh at the name of the Dry Sack hairpin. Possibly far too laboured to make it funny except in my head.

It's actually Curva Dry Sac. Still, it does sound a bit funny.

Ah I was going with Autosport and their grievous English spellings of traditional corner names.

Whatever next, Red Water instead of Eau Rouge?
Mirror Bow instead of Mirabeau?


And no, I clearly don't know what Mirabeau means!!

[IdeFan]

I can't work out if I'm being exceptionally innuendo aware for wanting to laugh at the name of the Dry Sack hairpin. Possibly far too laboured to make it funny except in my head.

It's actually Curva Dry Sac. Still, it does sound a bit funny.

Ah I was going with Autosport and their grievous English spellings of traditional corner names.

Whatever next, Red Water instead of Eau Rouge?
Mirror Bow instead of Mirabeau?


And no, I clearly don't know what Mirabeau means!!

Google translate says "beautiful sights" which is a bit too long for a corner name.

[shinji]

Mirabeau is a hotel looking out over the Monaco harbour. Pretty beautiful sight if you ask me.

The corner's named after it.

[shinji]

This just showed up in my Subscription box. Don't know what to make of it. Light-hearted fun, I suppose.

[watka]

This just showed up in my Subscription box. Don't know what to make of it. Light-hearted fun, I suppose.

You can't help but like that team, all the best to them.

[mario]

So, the final day is over, and the test data makes for interesting reading. http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/81618
Button was on top, after a series of very short and fast runs during the morning (he ran three stints of three laps each, all of which were in the 1m19 bracket, apart from one lap in the high 1m18's). However, most of the day was spent by the teams getting test data on long runs and race simulations - in particular, getting plenty of pit stop practise in for the mechanics, now that the stops are due to become much shorter (Williams were particularly active in this regard).

Meanwhile, Virgin Racing and Lotus had quite different fortunes - the VR-01 looked promising, and managed to get within 3.6 seconds of Button, and was for a short while relatively close in terms of pace to the rest of the midfield teams, but then suffered from hydraulic problems, limiting the team to a mere 28 laps in total. The hydraulic problems seemed to be quite serious, and the team are looking to modify the hydraulic system for the final test at Barcelona.
Lotus, meanwhile, were slower, being around 4.5 seconds off Button (and 1 second off the VR-01), but the T127 appeared to be bulletproof today, with Trulli racking up an impressive 141 laps, achieving the highest mileage by anyone today, and managing to get several long runs completed.

We also got some interesting information about the tyres today, since Bridgestone decided to bring the soft and medium compounds today, instead of the harder compounds which were used at the start of the test (so it is difficult to compare the times from the start and the end of the test). Trulli did a 20 lap stint at one point, and although his times started in the 1m25 bracket, they dropped off sharply, with his times at the end of the stint well into the 1m27 bracket.
Gascoyne revealed that Trulli was suffering from excessive tyre wear on the rear tyres in the final 5 laps, and suggested that the team needed to look after the tyres more - which the team seemed to manage later, with a 25 lap stint from Trulli producing more consistant times in the 1m26's and 1m27's. Meanwhile, Force India reported problems with the medium tyre suffering quite badly from graining after 10-12 laps, because of the low temperatures. However, they think that the tyres should perform much better in hotter temperatures.
http://live.autosport.com/commentary.php/id/181

So, following yesterday with Red Bull topping the time sheets, today it is the turn of Mclaren to go for a slightly more aggressive program. Both Kobayashi and Kubica are surprisingly high up the time sheets again, although the gap between the top 3 is barely 3 tenths. The rest of the field, meanwhile, have been concentrating on longer runs - both drivers for Ferrari and Williams have now managed to rack up over 2,500 km each. Mercedes seem to have been pretty quiet today, as have Ferrari - but I wouldn't be surprised if both of those teams have something up their sleeves come the final test (in fact, both teams should bring aero updates for the final test, according to their press reports).

[Nicky_Louder]

It's actually Curva Dry Sac

Sorry, that is not correct. The corner is the Curva Dry Sack (with a K).

The name comes from a sherry wine called Dry Sack produced by Bodegas Williams & Humbert of Jerez.
The Dry Sack brand was pretty big in Britain in the 1960s and 70s. It is still produced.
http://www.bodegas-williams-humbert.com ... 180&lan=en

Sherry comes from English pronunciation of Jerez.
Sack is an old English word for sherry.
Britain was for centuries the main market for sherry and many of the sherry producers (bodegas) had/have British involvement.

The corner name on the Jerez circuit web site:
http://www.circuitodejerez.com/es/curvas/r9.htm

[Myrvold]

Holy Clap! That was a bump for... strange reasons!

[Mister Fungus]

Wow I was so confused. I saw the date 20th february on the upper posts and yet reading the whole thing felt so weird.

[Ferrim]

We also got some interesting information about the tyres today, since Bridgestone decided to bring the soft and medium compounds today, instead of the harder compounds which were used at the start of the test (so it is difficult to compare the times from the start and the end of the test). Trulli did a 20 lap stint at one point, and although his times started in the 1m25 bracket, they dropped off sharply, with his times at the end of the stint well into the 1m27 bracket.
Gascoyne revealed that Trulli was suffering from excessive tyre wear on the rear tyres in the final 5 laps, and suggested that the team needed to look after the tyres more - which the team seemed to manage later, with a 25 lap stint from Trulli producing more consistant times in the 1m26's and 1m27's. Meanwhile, Force India reported problems with the medium tyre suffering quite badly from graining after 10-12 laps, because of the low temperatures. However, they think that the tyres should perform much better in hotter temperatures.

Mmmmm... now that sounds familiar...

[mario]

We also got some interesting information about the tyres today, since Bridgestone decided to bring the soft and medium compounds today, instead of the harder compounds which were used at the start of the test (so it is difficult to compare the times from the start and the end of the test). Trulli did a 20 lap stint at one point, and although his times started in the 1m25 bracket, they dropped off sharply, with his times at the end of the stint well into the 1m27 bracket.
Gascoyne revealed that Trulli was suffering from excessive tyre wear on the rear tyres in the final 5 laps, and suggested that the team needed to look after the tyres more - which the team seemed to manage later, with a 25 lap stint from Trulli producing more consistant times in the 1m26's and 1m27's. Meanwhile, Force India reported problems with the medium tyre suffering quite badly from graining after 10-12 laps, because of the low temperatures. However, they think that the tyres should perform much better in hotter temperatures.

Mmmmm... now that sounds familiar...

Hmm, it's interesting to see how things change over the course of a year - or not, as the case may be. Pirelli seem to think that we will have two stop races throughout 2011 for most circuits, and have put the high wear and graining rate down to the low ambient temperatures. In addition, due to differences in the ambient conditions, the times set during the pre-season in recent years have actually been faster than the times set during the Spanish GP, so the loading on the tyres is probably higher now than during the races.
Interestingly, though, the drivers have been quite complimentary about Pirelli's wet weather tyres; Mark Webber said that you get "a lot of bang for your buck" as he was able to do over 40 laps with a single set of intermediates on a drying track. Admittedly, Sutil wasn't happy with the intermediate and wet tyres, but, then again, he always complains about the behaviour of the wet compounds.