F1 Testing Analysis: Weather woes give teams headaches

After a damp, cold afternoon of running in Barcelona on Monday, there were a few concerned faces spotting the sleet gently falling when departing the Formula 1 paddock that evening.

The concerns only grew this morning as ice was scraped off car windscreens and heaters were put on, with the temperature reading just before the start of play at 9 a.m. being 0.3ºC and just 2.8ºC on-track.

It all served to further the headache which had been building throughout testing so far, making on-track activities in the morning effectively worthless due to the low temperatures. A paltry 16 laps were completed in the opening hour, and it wasn’t until 10:15 a.m. that the first timed effort was recorded by Carlos Sainz Jr.

When it comes to picking a venue for F1’s pre-season test days, there has never really been a perfect answer. Bahrain - which last hosted winter testing in 2014 -  offered teams consistent, warm conditions that meant running was rarely hampered by the weather, yet the distance back to base in Europe proved problematic for teams.

The traditional home of testing has been Barcelona, but concerns about the weather have persisted. Monday’s afternoon session saw most teams stay in their garages. For the drivers who had sat out the morning and taken over in the afternoon, it was a particularly rough first extended test run that one driver summed up - off the record - in one word: "shit".

“On a personal level it wasn’t the best of the afternoons, a big pity as it was my turn,” Sainz - not the driver in question! - said. “The wind came, the clouds came, the North Pole came and suddenly Barcelona tuned into Finland!”

Toro Rosso’s Brendon Hartley enjoyed a strong first day in the Honda-powered STR13, silencing many critics of the newly-formed partnership, but he also lamented the tricky conditions later in the day.

“I think everyone probably struggled with tyres, I haven’t spoken to any other drivers but doing one corner slow the tyres drop out of the window and it was almost like an ice skating rink,” Hartley said.

“It was quite a challenging day to get the tyres into the working window all the time, but I think we learned a lot and it’s set us up really nicely for the rest of the test. Probably more so for next week when maybe the weather is less arctic.”

With the forecast for Wednesday - snow and heavy rain - being even worse, talk of a rethink of the test schedule was doing the rounds in the paddock on Monday night. One idea was to scrap Wednesday’s running altogether and bolt an additional day of running onto the end of the test this coming Friday, or even start test two on Monday, one day ahead of schedule.

“We’ve just got to make the best of whatever slots in the weather we get and do as much as we can,” Renault technical boss Nick Chester said. “I think there’s been some discussions going on, but one team’s got a filming day booked [on Friday], so it probably won’t move.”

Said team turned out to be Williams, with deputy team boss Claire Williams confirming that while there was a filming day in place, a move was an option, although it would require unanimous support from the teams.

“Yesterday afternoon was quite difficult for all teams to get some decent track running with it but today we’ve got clear skies and it might be a little cold, but I think we probably need to see how the next few hours unfold and then come back and have the conversation about it,” Williams said.

“I don’t think every team is there lobbying for the test to continue as far as I’m aware. I think there are a few teams that would like it to continue but we do have a scheduled filming day, we have booked the circuit and obviously that is important to us.

“I know Ferrari have the same scheduled on Saturday so maybe it's the case that if that was the general consensus with people wanting to extend the test that maybe we look at moving it a day into next week.

“But nothing is official yet, and we will always have conversations about it.”

Official conversations did take place later on, with the idea ultimately being knocked back when the teams failed to reach the required unanimous agreement. 

“Frankly it looks to me that forecasts are really better for next week. We are more thinking about next week than this week,” Renault chief Cyril Abiteboul said, writing off the coming days for meaningful running.

“This week is really about system checks, signing off the mechanical component of the car and next week will be more useful to understand about the performance potential of the car.”

Abiteboul did, however, concede that the cold conditions were making it more difficult to complete all of the usual testing checks and processes.

“It's affecting slightly the way that we are capable of signing off everything that's relating to cooling and management of temperature, because obviously we are in a very different temperature to the rest of the season,” said Abiteboul.

“We have on our car many things that are really different in terms of cooling compared to last year, and that's something where we want to be closer to the actual racing conditions, but you have to deal with what we are given.”

Haas team boss Günther Steiner doubted a shift in the test days was ever really going to happen, though, given the nature of any political discussion in F1.

"If you think we can come to an agreement to do an additional day... you know how it works here," Steiner said.

"When there's two of us, we cannot agree on something. Can you imagine if 10 are here? 'I want to do Sunday afternoon, I can't do Sunday morning because I need to go to church!'

"Logistically it's very difficult, and I think it's not only for the teams, but in general. It's a huge cost as well. You do a lot of work to do nothing.

"Some people tried to do something different, but there was always a no from somewhere."

Both Pierre Gasly and Kevin Magnussen explained how conditions complicated their days, forcing a change in programme - or in Magnussen’s case, it to be shortened to just 35 laps.

“[We changed] quite a lot actually, especially this morning because we started really late,” Gasly said. “We had a really busy plan, and in the end we didn't manage to do all of what we had planned, but I think overall we maximised the time we had on-track. We did the best we could do with the conditions.”

"It was frustrating, not to be able to do much with this weather," Magnussen said. "There's not much we can draw from today, we did some system checks and some aero mapping and that’s about it.

"The weather [was] not allowing us to get any proper answers. The sun came out for a few hours and then made the track warm up a bit and that was the only time you could get the tyres to work kind of, so not a lot to learn."

As such, picking out any kind of pecking order from Tuesday’s running is even less worthwhile than it would be anyway on the second day of pre-season testing. We did see a fair number of laps turned in through the afternoon, with officials opting to scrap the lunch break in order to create an additional hour of running in the afternoon, when we were even treated to some sun breaking through the clouds.

But just as there appeared to be an extended stretch of running, the sun disappeared and flakes of snow began to fall, and that was it for any meaningful testing. Despite a handful of laps in the closing hour, there was nothing of any note completed - and we’ll be back tomorrow for (most probably) more of the same.

Maybe the internet has a point. Maybe snowflakes really do ruin everything…