Dry weather expected for final test

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The teams had to dodge the rain at Jerez but the final four-day test before the first race of 2010 looks set to be dry.

The weather forecast for the Circuit de Catalunya is largely dry with temperatures in the mid-teens (C).

Some forecasts suggest a low chance of rain – 20-30% – on Friday and Saturday.

At least 11 teams will be at the home of the Spanish Grand Prix for the test but there’s still no sign of Campos Meta or US F1, or Stefan GP for that matter.

During the worst of the weather at Jerez Ferrari suggested the teams would be better off testing in drier (but more distant) venues. The teams have tested at Bahrain in recent years, though sand storms have caused problems at that circuit in past tests.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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24 comments on “Dry weather expected for final test”

  1. I don’t think it would be right testing at Bahrain this year, because it is the first track they visit on the season calender, but from teams perspective, moving all their gear over to Bahrain would make economic sense in that it would only be one trip. They could leave everything in Bahrain for a couple of weeks instead of going from their base to Spain, back to base then out to Bahrain. I also disagree with testing in Catalonia because the Barca track is on the calender. Why can’t they use other non-calender tracks instead, like Portugal’s close to Jerez track – Algarve circuit (Portimao?). A variety of test tracks means tracks that are heavily tested on – mainly Barca – don’t get spoiled because the drivers know the layouts so well they end up a single file procesion.

    1. the best idea would be to test at Bahrain but on the normal configuration circuit. or another configuration different to the one they’ll use in the race.

    2. this track separates mens from the boys clearly, this is prolly the most technically challenging tracks… hence i’m sure even teams would prefer this…. valencia like circuits are not good for testing as they don’t have much good corners… it’s jus accelerate then brake track.. even Bahrain track is not that challenging…

  2. I thought Bahrain got the first GP because it allowed teams to test ther first and save costs, but with this 4 day test in Spain, wont that mean that most teams have met their 15 day testing limit. Give the first GP back to Australia.

    1. I thinking the testing limit was 15,000km, not 15 days IIRC. Agreed on the first GP in Australia.

      1. I agree that Melbourne’s a great place for the race (as the slogan says), and I love getting up in the middle of the night to watch it; it feels ‘special’.

        But we mustn’t forget that F1 needs to constantly attract new fans in order to grow – and Bahrain’s very convenient for both the European audience and the prime-time Asian audience to watch, with all the excitement of not knowing exactly who is going to start the season well or badly.

        1. I know, I’m in the UK so get up really early and it feels special because your still sort of tired, but you stay awake because its the first race in ages.

          I presume the Bahrain race is a UK 1pm start

          1. I missed that about the Brazilian Grand Prix not being the finale last year (though in a way I suppose it was). It just feels right to me having the end of the season being at around 7-8pm.

          2. LOL… For me in the US this is the NORM. All European races run at 7am my time. Now that they screwed up the asian and Australian start times instead of a nice midnight or 1am start the earliest race start at 2am and last race start at 4am. At least this year I got 2 races in “my timezone” granted the start times been jacked there to so they start at 10am and 11am. But at least that means I get to sleep in TWICE this year.. Yes.. LOL

        2. For me, Australia is on at a more normal hour! Every race is live at 3am or later! Regardless I was incredibly disappointed that Australia isn’t 1st on the calendar. I’m of the opinion that this is yet another dumbass move on Bernie’s part. The first race is Australia for sure.

          I think they should do all their testing in the United States… at least that way I could save $1500 on a plane ticket!

    2. bahrain is first this year, because Bernie wanted to star the season earlier, but Australian time differences didn’t fit into his schedule.

      1. I was just reading down about to say that.

        In detail they wanted the Aussy race to start later (getting into twilight territory) but this would not be possible until after the clocks change (towards the end of march) so they had to make Bahrain the first race of the season.

  3. Good , let’s see if Ferrari has the muscle !

  4. Plink Plonk Plunk
    23rd February 2010, 13:31

    I think testing in Bahrain is a great idea. Why shouldnt they be allowed to test there simply because its the 1st race? If all teams are allowed to test there it’s fair for everyone and it saves cost.

    Look at the Indy 500. Another pinacle in motorsports. They start testing in Indianapolis over a month before the event.

    If the 1st race was to be in Australia they should be allowed to test there. I think they test in spain mainly because it’s centrally located in Europe and brings more attention than if it were not in central Europe.

    1. bahrain is not a good testing track… they would prefer tracks like Circuit de Catalunya, Silverstone, Suzuka like circuits… even jerez is a good track….

      the tracks should have good mix of fast n slow corners among other things to test car in different config n to iron out stuff…

      1. How about Paul Ricard? what happened whit this track, it has a variety of configurations to play with

        1. HounslowBusGarage
          23rd February 2010, 16:22

          Well it’s certainly got enough combinations to provide any kind of test faciltiy you want. It’s completely flat, though.
          It seems to be owned by Bernie of course, maybe that ‘s a good thing, maybe not. As Le Castellet it opened for spectators again a couple of years ago and can currently accommodate 5,000-ish spectators only – problem?
          Has the benefit of being right next door to Le Castellet Airport which can take Learjets, Fokkers etc on 1,750 metres of runway.

        2. thats an good alternative too, if the weather during these month allow it…

    2. Oh come on, does it matter where they test for NASCAR, any oval will do!!!!

      1. for F1 car it does matter, they mostly like to test the setup n car behavior in slow, medium & fast corners… braking into corners…

        if you look at Ross Brawns comment for the Valencia test, he said they were only look for system checks and getting reliability test at Valencia as it only had one small slow corner and it would not worth doing any performance testing on that track…

        1. This is true. So far we have seen that some teams seem to be very quick on a couple of ‘Mickey Mouse’ circuits. Barcelona will show us who has done their ‘homework’.

          Maybe thinking for yourself, rather than following ‘trends’ will be the way to have gone?

  5. So the last chance for the cars to show up their power.We will find out who is probably the fastest,I hope for 1 day at least the cars will run on low fuel.

  6. Usually I just skim through these blogs and only read ones that -jump- out at me and yours did. Thanks for it – it is actually a real good read! Do you have a subcribe area so I can link to it to read again another day? Let me know – thanks.

    Peter

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