Why F1 testing threw a major curveball on day two

Pre-season Formula 1 testing in Europe is never the warmest, but the past two days at Barcelona have been excessively cold - watching from trackside or hanging around the pitlane has been a constant battle with very low temperatures.

These conditions do have an impact on the work the teams are able to do, and it hasn't helped us to get much of a picture of the competitive order. While this weather doesn't cause trouble as such for the teams, and it allows some inherent car characteristics to come through, it does make life difficult.

For a start, it's more difficult to get the tyres to a sensible temperature. For some of the smaller teams with less downforce, it can take five or more laps to get the Pirellis working, which is a problem for the drivers and the teams trying to build up data.

What we have seen is that these conditions are magnifying both car problems and driver errors. If you make a small mistake in one corner, you instantly lose 20-30C of temperature and it can take a while to get it back. That's good because you can't camouflage the mistakes you make as you straight away lose half a second and your errors stand out more.

In my time, there were plenty of occasions I wanted a driver to go out and do 20 consistent laps and in these conditions that would be a major challenge. When mistakes are highlighted by a larger than normal time loss it alerts the teams and gives them a chance to look at the data and see if the mistake was just a driver error or a potential inherent car problem.

In a race, you can't afford to make errors if you've got someone breathing down your neck. So anything that can be done to reduce this risk will have a positive outcome.

For the car, it's difficult to be confident that everything is working as it will do when you get to hotter temperatures. Downforce levels change with temperature, the aerodynamic characteristics of the underfloor and front wing change, the tyres are different. So, you have to take all the information you gather with a pinch of salt and be very selective with what you trust.

It's better than getting nothing, but what the teams are building up here is not the greatest databank you are ever going to get. And with ambient temperatures not even hitting 5C today, it has limited what tasks teams can tick off the job list.

"It's affecting slightly the way we are capable of signing off everything that's relating to cooling and management of temperature," says Renault's Cyril Abiteboul.

"It's not really the engine [it impacts], it's all the cooling devices. We have on our car in particular many things that are really different in terms of cooling to what we had last year and that's where we need to be closer to the racing conditions. But we have to deal with what we are given."

"We should not get into details too much because it's a bit pointless, I think the next two days are going to be much better. I hope next week we will know more" Sebsatian Vettel

Force India has encountered similar problems, but given its objective is to prove the fundamental platform of the car during testing before introducing a major upgrade for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, the conditions haven't caused too much disruption.

"We're a bit restricted with the weather," explains technical director Andrew Green. "It is incredibly cold and that does make a big difference to the type of running you can do.

"Making decisions on what the car is doing is almost impossible. The new surface is still very green and it's going to take a while to rubber in.

"But saying that, we never came here with the intention of setting the car up and going quick anyway. It's about mapping the car, getting the data, comparing the car to what it should be doing and if it doesn't change something to see how it reacts versus how we expect it to react. We just sweep through everything and try and pick up a picture of what the DNA of the car actually is."

Next week, the weather is meant to be better. So, Force India is right to focus on reliability running and systems checks and ensure that the baseline car is behaving as it should do.

Overall, if I was Ferrari I'd be pretty happy. The package seems to be reliable, there haven't been any big problems I've been aware of and both Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel look happy with the balance of the car.

I watched Vettel getting up to speed in the car this morning on a long run, and you could see him feeling his way in and then banging in the laptimes. That's what the experienced, professional driver gives you - unlike some of the young chargers, he plays himself in then delivers that pace. But he was also struggling with the conditions.

"It's very difficult to get the tyres to work, I think everybody's struggling the same issues," says Vettel. "It was only 3-4C, the asphalt is 10C, so it's very, very cold. Not the conditions that we normally run.

"I think the car is working, we didn't have any problems reliability-wise, everything was making sense. It seems we have made a step forward. In terms of performance, I don't know yet, but in terms of general operation, everything is really smooth. It's good to come here and switch on the car and be able to run. Obviously the limiting factor was the weather.

"I think we should not get into details too much because it's a bit pointless, I think the next two days are going to be much better. I hope next week we will know more."

Red Bull you've got to stick a question mark over because of the minor fuel leak that reduced this morning's running.

For a car to be serviced overnight, then to come out and have an issue on the first lap is a big problem. If that happens on a grand prix weekend, then you are sat with the car up on stands trying to get it fixed when you should be on track. Last season, Red Bull ruined a lot of its season with reliability problems and it needs to avoid this for 2018.

We have built up another day of lap time data, and while it's still early it's worth taking a look at what we've learned from that. Looking at the supertime average of the last four races of last year and comparing it to the average of the first two days here gives a clearer idea of who might have gained and who might have lost from last year.

Supertime gain/loss

Comparing the final four races of 2017 with testing so far

Toro Rosso -0.692%

Renault -0.593%

McLaren -0.233%

Ferrari -0.016%

Mercedes +0.150%

Sauber +0.223%

Red Bull +0.294%

Williams +0.410%

Haas +0.416%

Force India +0.978%

There are several caveats to add to this beyond the fact that the track conditions are poor: nobody is going for full-on performance runs and tyres, runplans and fuel loads all vary significantly.

First, Toro Rosso is on top with its Honda engines, but with two new drivers at the back end of last season and lots of engine problems that team didn't show its true pace. Equally, Red Bull's loss of time this morning makes its figure a little misleading, although Max Verstappen's fastest time was still only 0.653s off the fastest today. Force India is also misleading, even though I've awarded the same time to the team for yesterday, when development driver Nikita Mazepin was at the wheel, as it set today.

So, if we set aside Toro Rosso for now, Renault stands out. It had a good end to last season, so improving by almost 0.6% is a decent step when you consider that the back end of last season data is very accurate and based on low-fuel qualifying runs wringing the car's neck. I think we can say Renault has taken a step forward. Whether it's enough to join the leading teams and break free of the midfield is another question entirely.

McLaren is a step forward from last year, and Ferrari, at the front in 2017, is more or less standing still with Mercedes dropping off a little bit. There's a big mixture there. In data of this type, you need to look at the bigger effects. That's good news for Renault, although I don't expect Mercedes and Ferrari not to be at the front.

What I'd say is that it's definitely going to be tough in the midfield. Exactly where the front of that group is relative to the big three teams is one question, but it's going to be congested and Force India faces a big challenge to hold on to fourth. If it does then it will have been, pound for pound, as successful as whichever team wins the championship. Success is only relative to resources, after all.

It's possible that these unrepresentative conditions will mean there are problems some teams have that they won't know about until they run in warmer temperatures

The weather conditions will inevitably cause some to ask why testing doesn't happen further afield. But I'd say it's very good for the playing field in F1 that it is done in Europe. Testing been exclusively a Spanish affair since 2015, but the year before that two of the three tests took place in the desert heat of Bahrain. The downsides of that, especially for the teams with less disposable income, are cost.

"If it was the same cost, we'd be in Bahrain," says Green. "But it's not, it's significantly more expensive. If we went to Bahrain it means that all the car production schedule has to change because of it and that's a big thing for us. To try to shift a week for car build, especially when we were squeezed to get here with the need to integrate the halo into the design let alone to get it out a week earlier to allow the freight to go to Bahrain.

"We're going to have four nice days next week and that's fine for us. We'll work around it, use the conditions to our advantage and do what you do in the conditions we've got. We know the limitations, work to the limitations, it's still good data because it doesn't matter what the temperature at the track is, we just have to wait for the track to come to us."

After all, it is the same for everyone. The task of any racing team is to make the most of the situation its presented with, and the teams that come out of pre-season testing in the best shape will have focused more on that than hiding from the weather.

Given how bad the weather looks tomorrow it's possible Wednesday could be a very difficult day. But the cars have done a lot of running and nobody has had any massive setbacks and spent days sat in the garage.

You can't change the circumstances. It's about achieving what you can and making the best of it. The key is that you need to understand the car, because all the developments coming in the future will currently be based on what package you think you've got.

And while these conditions make it harder to judge, you can still detect problems if you make the most of the time.

It's possible that these unrepresentative conditions will mean there are problems some teams have that they won't know about until they run in warmer temperatures. We heard suggestions a couple of the Renault-powered teams were running with less radiator blanking than they should be, which could mean problems lie in wait when F1 gets to races like Bahrain.

Teams will have to be very careful not to mislead themselves. Pre-season testing is never easy, but the conditions so far at Barcelona have made it that bit more difficult. That probably explains why, at times, the teams have been as reluctant to let the cars out as I have been to brave the cold to watch trackside.