Under The Skin Of F1 Testing

Pre-season testing is fraught with tension for the Formula 1 teams. Here Gary Anderson explains how they prepare for and carry out the initial running of their new cars – fingers crossed, of course.

Pre-season testing for the latest batch of Formula 1 cars is just around the corner. Since this is the second year of the current technical regulations, we can expect the car concepts to converge.The aerodynamic and tyre changes for 2017 were fairly dramatic and they brought roughly what was predicted in terms of lap-time improvement. This year, optimising that package will be the order of the day.

During the season, there is always development and most teams will try for around one tenth of a second of improvement each race. That should add up to a 2s gain over the season. That, combined with the introduction of new chassis for 2018, with all the developments it wasn’t possible to add last year, means that at pre-season testing the cars should be 3s faster than they were last year. It’ll be very interesting to see which teams achieve that.

Most of the big teams have the infrastructure to manufacture components much more quickly than was possible a few years ago. This is what some have concentrated on, because once a drawing is printed or a machine is fired up to make a part, that component is already out of date. The later that everything comes together in the build schedule, the more time it allows for pre-build development.

Since testing now gets under way later in the year, teams have extra time for designing, optimising and manufacturing components. But the start of February will have been D-Day for final assembly of the 2018 test package. Before this, hopefully the chassis will have passed all the FIA crash tests. These are high-pressure moments and you want to build everything to be as light and efficient as possible, while still meeting strength and stiffness requirements. One failure can set a team back dramatically.