Winter Test 1: Jerez - What to expect?

Romain Grosjean testing the Lotus E20 at Circuit Jerez de la Frontera in 2012

Jerez will be the track where all the teams run their new cars in 2013 together for the first time. Barring Williams, who would be launching their new car at the second test in Barcelona, all other teams will be testing their 2013 challengers. The main aim during the 4 days of the test would be to get some reasonable mileage on the cars and during that time, try to identify and eliminate the problems in them.

At the current moment, all the teams have set up their motorhomes at the circuit and are completing the final preparations before the cars take to the track for the first time tomorrow.

Launches at Jerez

The new Mercedes W04 being launced at Jerez today

Mercedes and Toro Rosso will be launching their new cars at Jerez today, the 4th of February. Taking them into account, 8 cars will have already been launched by tonight with Lotus, McLaren, Ferrari, Force India, Sauber and Red Bull having already completed the unveilings in the few days preceding the test session. Caterham and Marussia will be launching tomorrow morning when actual testing begins.

Anybody skipping Jerez?

Apart from the already mentioned Williams FW35, the high-profile name of Fernando Alonso will be missing from the timesheets come Friday afternoon. Fernando himself has announced that he is skipping this test so as to have more time to prepare for the long and tough season ahead. What this does is it provides a golden opportunity to Pedro de la Rosa, Ferrari’s new development driver, to take to the wheel of the F138 on the final day of the test.

Who will drive when?

How will the teams use the 4 days?

This test will not be about achieving pure performance out of the package. Most teams will not be bolting huge updates onto their launch specification cars. First thing will be to find out any fundamental problems such as Lotus found out (front suspension) last year. “To finish first, first you have to finish” – thus resolving all such issues will be of prime importance if teams want to achieve good results during the season.

For the first time, drivers will get to drive their new cars for long periods of time and hence they will be able to figure out whether they are comfortable with the seat fitting, steering wheel position etc. Also, their feedback regarding the behaviour of the car will be very crucial for the engineers in the garage as well as back in the factory as they try and improve the car.

One big unknown area will be the new Pirelli tyres. The teams did test a sample compound in Brazil but with the cars having changed significantly, everybody will have to start from zero again. This year the construction of the tyres has been changed to provide more traction out of the corners which will make the work of the engine techies a bit more complicated about how to optimize engine performance at corresponding RPMs on corner exits. Also, long runs will be conducted to study the degradation rate of the Pirellis and this way we will also come to know which car is gentle on its tyres or which tyre suits a particular team.

Every morning beginning at 9 am local time, a driver will do some installation laps to begin with and then come back to the pits for the mechanics to check if everything’s OK. When the chief engineer gives the go-ahead, the driver will go out for long runs on the different compounds – Soft/Medium/Hard being supplied by Pirelli with the Supersoft not on their shortlist because of the tyre “not suited to the nature of the track”. There will be a lunch break of about an hour or so in the afternoon (each team is free to choose the time of its break within a stipulated time period) after which teams will continue their work up until 5 pm in the evening.

Weather

The weather forecast is sunny for all the 4 days and so Pirelli don’t have to worry about bringing their intermediate and wet Cinturato tyres. With low temperatures, everything will not be clear-cut for the engineers because these kinds of temperatures are not what they would be experiencing at most of the weekends during the season. They might only race in Spa and Austin in similar or lower ambient temperatures.