Mark Hughes on the balance of power based on the test results

Mark Hughes, on the pages of The Race, analyzed the results of the tests and believes that they allow us to get a preliminary idea of ​​the balance of power before the start of the championship.

Towards the end of the pre-season testing, a more or less clear picture began to emerge.

Max Verstappen, who was only in 4th place on Friday, showed a result of 1:30.755 during the day on C3 tires, on which he had already completed one fast lap. In reality this is approximately equivalent to 1:30,500 if the set of tires was fresh.

In all three cars that were ahead of Red Bull, i.e. Ferrari, Mercedes and Sauber were equipped with tires of the softest compound C4, which allows laps to be completed approximately 0.6 seconds faster than C3.

Theoretically, if you adjust the results of Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Guanyu Zhou, imagining that they were all driving fresh C3 kits, and also taking into account that Verstappen showed his best lap when the track temperature was still warm 34 degrees lag, whatever high speeds didn’t help, it turns out that Red Bull’s real advantage on each lap will be about 0.4 seconds.

Ferrari’s pace was clearly visible throughout the three days of testing, while Mercedes only showed what their car was capable of on Friday evening. Moreover, this team decided to simulate it without a race at all and only conducted a relatively short series of laps, analyzing the effectiveness of certain components.

So there is no exact picture yet of what level Mercedes is at, but even if we do not take into account that Russell showed the second time of the day on C4 tires, the results of the laps he completed on C3 tires are are quite similar to those of Leclerc. And Charles rode on such tires a little earlier, when the track temperature was about three degrees higher. Therefore, we can assume that Ferrari’s pace is probably still higher than Mercedes’.

But as always, we know nothing about the amount of fuel in the tanks. But the fact that no one could come close to Carlos Sainz’s lap of 1:29.921 on C4 tires on Thursday suggests that track conditions were slightly worse on Friday.

If we take as a basis the theoretical result that Verstappen could show on non-new tires, the assessment of the teams’ speed capabilities in one fast lap will look something like this:

Red Bull
Ferrari/Mercedes + 0.4 seconds
McLaren +0.5 seconds
Aston Martin +0.6 seconds
Visa RB/Williams +0.9 seconds
Sauber/Alpine/Haas +1 second

The Sauber driver completed a fast lap on the softest tires at the end of the tests, most likely in a car whose tanks were low on fuel, allowing Guanyu Zhou to climb to third on the protocol. But everything else the Swiss team has done in Bahrain so far suggests it is right at the bottom of these rankings.

If we analyze the race pace, the picture will be slightly different.

Red Bull, Aston Martin, McLaren, Williams, RB, Sauber and Haas conducted a simulated race, dividing the distance into three segments. It seems Ferrari only managed two full stints and had to cut the third short when the session ended. Neither Mercedes nor Alpine simulated racing
I haven’t started it.

At the same time, Verstappen showed the highest pace during the race, but in the two segments that Leclerc managed to drive, he was almost as good as Max.

Ferrari team boss Frederic Vasseur said the tire degradation situation is much better compared to last year. He formulated his thought as follows: “We are now on another planet.” But it cannot be ruled out that this has forced the Scuderia to make some compromises, and in terms of speed in one fast lap it is unlikely that the SF-24 will surpass the RB20. In any case, the Italian team made a confident impression on all three days.

It appears that Aston Martin ran a shortened simulation of the race, as Fernando Alonso completed far less than the 57 laps that make up the full Grand Prix distance over the three long series. But corrected for the fuel load, he could have estimated that he would have finished around 16 seconds behind Verstappen in the RB20 in the AMR24, and would also have finished behind Ferrari. But Mercedes remains a dark horse for the time being.

Although the McLaren car, it seems, should have been faster than the Aston Martin in one fast lap, it did not fare so well over long distances. When Oscar Piastri ran the race simulation, he had obvious problems with the degradation of both the C3 and C1 compounds. In fact, the Australian was slower than Alex Albon in Williams, but around the same level as Daniel Ricciardo, driving the Visa RB car.

The Haas car was firmly in last place – according to calculations it should have been about half a minute behind the VCARB01 over the race distance. Somewhere in between would be Guanyu Zhou’s Sauber.

This is the picture that emerged at the end of three days of testing, although in some cases the difference in the results was quite small, so we cannot say that this is the final balance of power.