Rob Dylan wrote:http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/126554/f1-2017-show-at-risk-without-bahrain-testingPaddy Lowe saying the "s" word. While I have little to no sympathy for him or his team, and say that they should just put up or shut up, I agree with Symonds that traveling to Bahrain for testing only takes up more money from the teams that can't afford it, and the lack of this test only levels the playing field in that regard. If Mercedes gets voted against, boohoo, the entirety of F1 isn't going to collapse. Just as long as Mr Lowe doesn't start sounding as entitled as a certain Mr Horner did after a long period of success...
In fact, to be fair to Lowe, it is worth noting that Pirelli were the first ones to ask for the teams to shift some of the testing to Bahrain, not Mercedes - here's an article from August where Pirelli were arguing that Bahrain would be a better track to do those winter tests.
http://www.grandprix247.com/2016/08/10/ ... -f1-tyres/To play devil's advocate, there have been complaints for some time that the pre-season tests in Spain are not exactly great value for money given that the ambient conditions are much colder than they are during the season. The tests might be cheaper to run, but is it necessarily of that much value given that the data that the teams are collecting on tyre performance is almost useless?
I know that Bridgestone, for example, were complaining back in 2009 that they thought that the first pre-season test was a total waste of time given that both themselves and the teams learned nothing of value about the tyres. They were also pretty critical in 2010 as well - in the pre-season tests, a lot of teams were complaining that the tyres were literally falling to pieces in testing because Bridgestone was having so many problems with cold graining, and a few observers were wondering how teams could cope with that wear rate in race trim - we all know how durable the tyres proved to be during the season itself.
Pirelli have also had a similar issue as well - don't forget that Pirelli had to go to the extent of producing a bespoke tyre just for the winter tests a few years ago, such were the warm up problems that teams had to try and get the tyres into the correct temperature operating window. At the moment, it looks as if you have two different viewpoints - do you want a venue that is cheaper, but may offer less useful data, or a potentially more expensive venue that would potentially offer more useful data?
