Andrea Stella says McLaren’s race tempo in testing is “encouraging” however believes the outright pace in different automobiles may 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 chance to run decrease gas and discover efficiency greater than the standard front-running groups. McLaren didn’t full a low gas lap, however throughout race simulations Lando Norris appeared to have the sting over the Ferrari and Mercedes on comparable runs – a state of affairs Stella acknowledged.
“Each crew will at all times be wanting on the data they’ve in relation to opponents,” Stella mentioned. “However actually, in my case, whereas I accomplish that, the principle focus for me and the principle focus for the crew is to take a look at the information and evaluate this information and automotive habits with what we have been anticipating.
“And that is true from an aerodynamic perspective; we have now a number of checks from a mechanical perspective; we have now made some modern adjustments to automotive format and we needed to verify that the automotive behaves as anticipated. So, in the mean time, in these first couple of days, this has been our focus.
“Positively, we talked about not getting distracted by what we see from opponents. The long-run tempo… it appears encouraging. On the identical time, we see that at low gas, there are positively a number of automobiles which can be in situation to place collectively very aggressive lap instances, which I feel are aggressive in absolute phrases.
“So, if something, my take thus far is that I used to be pondering, earlier than coming right here, that previously, we used to speak in regards to the high three. Then, fortunately, McLaren has sort of added, now we have now the highest 4.
“However maybe this yr, we’d must adapt our language once more, which might be nice for Components 1 after which possibly the highest 5 or the highest six. So, we’ll see. Definitely, there appear to be a couple of fast automobiles on the market.”
Together with the Williams, the Alpine seems sturdy of final yr’s midfield runners thus far, however Stella mentioned he gained’t learn an excessive amount of into the common lap instances from the race simulations given the cool and damp situations seen this week.
“I feel by way of tire selection, our long term was simply geared toward testing the three compounds and see how they behave,” he mentioned. “And I feel everybody, even when they modify the order, they needed to realize the identical, simply see what are the appropriate compounds for the race, contemplating that Pirelli have modified the character of the compounds in comparison with what we had final yr, they usually do appear to be totally different.
“On the identical time, we’re testing lengthy runs in situations that are fairly distinctive. It’s chilly tarmac, chilly air temperature. Bahrain is exclusive itself by way of the macro roughness [of the track surface], so I feel it’s general good data – clearly, whenever you undergo lengthy runs and race simulations – however all the data we get must be taken with some care. We should 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 sort of stress on the tires, the requirement by way of interplay between the automotive and the tires will probably be fully totally different. So the indications right here in Bahrain appear to say that the automotive in the mean time interacts effectively with the tires, however in a really particular and particular regime like we have now in nowadays right here.”
