Ferrari expects shocks in Melbourne Formula 1 opener

Although there is a growing view that Red Bull leads the pack ahead of the season opener in Melbourne, Ferrari technical director Pat Fry believes that difficulties teams have faced in managing tyres in testing leave the form book unclear.

"There are still going to be a lot of people learning things in Melbourne to be honest," he said. "Here, the tyres, they grain massively, so what you see here is not necessarily going to carry over until Melbourne.

"I think there will be a few surprised people and a few shocked people."

The high rate of degradation experienced due to the Barcelona track characteristics and cold winter weather has left teams saying that understanding what is going on is an impossible task.

"Certainly there has been massive degradation," added Fry, who says he is pretty pleased with Ferrari's winter test programme.

"Here is a little bit dominated by the graining, but it is bad here. In the morning it is quite bad, because you can't run the hard tyre as by the time you have warmed it up it has grained. It will be interesting at a cold Spa to see what happens as well!

"I think it is going to be fairly mixed up to be honest. I wouldn't like to predict where we will be.

"It will be interesting to see if it is 30 degrees [in Australia] like it was there a few days ago. Then it will be a different story to here.

"We are all going to learn that weekend."

AUTOSPORT special testing coverage:

Gallery Testing blog Technical blog Live commentary Trackside view