Andrea Stella says McLaren’s race tempo in testing is “encouraging” however believes the outright pace in different automobiles might imply six groups battling on the entrance this season.
Carlos Sainz set the tempo for Williams on day two of testing in Bahrain as he accomplished his pre-season schedule, getting a possibility to run decrease gasoline and discover efficiency greater than the normal front-running groups. McLaren didn’t full a low gasoline lap, however throughout race simulations Lando Norris appeared to have the sting over the Ferrari and Mercedes on comparable runs – a situation Stella acknowledged.
“Each staff will at all times be trying on the info they’ve in relation to opponents,” Stella mentioned. “However actually, in my case, whereas I achieve this, the primary focus for me and the primary focus for the staff is to take a look at the info and evaluate this knowledge and automobile habits with what we had been anticipating.
“And that is true from an aerodynamic viewpoint; we now have a number of assessments from a mechanical viewpoint; we now have made some revolutionary adjustments to automobile structure and we wished to examine that the automobile behaves as anticipated. So, for the time being, in these first couple of days, this has been our focus.
“Undoubtedly, we talked about not getting distracted by what we see from opponents. The long-run tempo… it seems encouraging. On the similar time, we see that at low gasoline, there are undoubtedly a number of automobiles which might be in situation to place collectively very aggressive lap occasions, which I believe are aggressive in absolute phrases.
“So, if something, my take to this point is that I used to be pondering, earlier than coming right here, that previously, we used to speak concerning the high three. Then, fortunately, McLaren has form of added, now we now have the highest 4.
“However maybe this 12 months, we would should adapt our language once more, which might be nice for System 1 after which perhaps the highest 5 or the highest six. So, we are going to see. Actually, there appear to be a couple of fast automobiles on the market.”
Together with the Williams, the Alpine seems sturdy of final 12 months’s midfield runners to this point, however Stella mentioned he received’t learn an excessive amount of into the typical lap occasions from the race simulations given the cool and damp situations seen this week.
“I believe when it comes to tire alternative, our long term was simply aimed toward testing the three compounds and see how they behave,” he mentioned. “And I believe everybody, even when they modify the order, they wished to attain the identical, simply see what are the precise compounds for the race, contemplating that Pirelli have modified the character of the compounds in comparison with what we had final 12 months, and so they do appear to be totally different.
“On the similar time, we’re testing lengthy runs in situations that are fairly distinctive. It’s chilly tarmac, chilly air temperature. Bahrain is exclusive itself when it comes to the macro roughness [of the track surface], so I believe it’s total good info – clearly, once you undergo lengthy runs and race simulations – however all the knowledge we get must be taken with some care. We must be cautious, as a result of for all the explanations I simply mentioned, it’s very specific.
“After we go to the early races of the season, the form of stress on the tires, the requirement when it comes to interplay between the automobile and the tires shall be utterly totally different. So the indications right here in Bahrain appear to say that the automobile for the time being interacts nicely with the tires, however in a really particular and particular regime like we now have in as of late right here.”
