Technical directors of Formula 1 predict that the new cars will be faster than their predecessors, although the change in the rules should have caused them to become slower.
At the end of 2018, the technical regulations were changed to increase entertainment and facilitate overtaking in the race - for this, the front wing, side deflectors and front brake air ducts were simplified.
At first, the teams assumed that the cars would be slower by two seconds. The head of the Ferrari team Mattia Binotto said at the presentation of the new car: "Based on measurements in the wind tunnel, we assume that the car will be 1.5 seconds slower."
However, expectations did not come true and according to the results of the first week of winter tests, on which the cars quickly drove at the same pace as 12 months ago.
The leader of the first week was Niko Hulkenberg in Renault with a time of 1.17, 393, which was very close to the best time of last year in the pre-season tests - then it was Sebastian Vettel's time of 1.17, 182.
The difference is even more dramatic when you compare the first week. Lewis Hamilton was the leader in the first four days last year with a time of 1.19, 333.
Although the weather this year is warmer and the surface has been changed, which has accelerated the cars, there is no doubt that the teams have managed to neutralize the loss in speed due to changes in regulations.
Renault CTO Nick Chester expects this year's race cars to outperform last year's fastest laps as racers have traditionally accelerated significantly during the second week.
“At the end of the tests, the cars will go much faster than last year. I think that in the end they will generally become faster than the cars of last year,”he said.
Although Toro Rosso deputy technical director Jody Eggington was initially pessimistic, he said that the ingenuity of the royal racing engineers was underestimated.
“The engineering divisions of the teams are fantastic at meeting the challenges,” he said. - I think the key point was the difficulty of translating what people said about the time difference. When we first put the new car in the aerodynamic tunnel, we lost balance, a lot of downforce and in general the distribution of air flows. Many teams faced similar problems.
After that, everyone began to level these losses. In our case, we studied every last screw to find additional opportunities to increase the power of our car.
History shows that teams are fantastically working on recovering losses quickly and looking for and finding new opportunities, even in spite of large restrictions in the regulations. Let's see what happens in the first races."
