The month that can make or break an F1 season

Looking out of the window while writing this, it's a beautiful, white, snow-laden morning. The schools are shut, the roads are chaos, but what else do you expect from the UK after a couple of inches of snow?

But while the kids love a day off school, it's not what the British-based Formula 1 teams need two weeks before the trucks have to head off to Barcelona for the first pre-season test, which starts on February 18.

The big teams can look at flying cars and parts to Spain, but the smaller ones will have to ensure they have a few shovels in the cab of the truck! But it's not just a problem of getting the cars to the test, it's getting staff into work, it's the van drivers and delivery companies moving parts around, whether it's components that are supplied from an outside company or need to go out for treatment. The first couple of weeks of February are a very busy time for all new teams as they assemble their brand new toy.

Every team wants to leave the actual build of the car as late as possible. That way, it has as much research time as possible and when the parts hit the assembly shop they are right up to date.

It's all about day-to-day manufacturing schedules being updated and any delays addressed. If the plan works correctly and everything arrives on schedule, the car can be assembled in about a week.

This also allows the time for minor finishing details of the piping and wiring etc, but everything else - for instance the gearbox or upright assemblies - will be sub-assembled by the various departments through the company.

Prior to and during the final assembly of the car many of the initial components will have arrived earlier and been thoroughly rig tested just to make sure the component meets its design criteria.

All of the teams can simulate the loads going through the various components and these hydraulic rigs will run in order to make sure the lifecycle of each component is designed to withstand what can be achieved, and that their ultimate strength is in line with predictions. The gearbox will have run on the dyno to optimise the gearshifts and check out the lubrication system.

Teams such as Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault and Red Bull have had the boxes running on their transient engine dynos. This is a luxury the small teams don't have, but as most of them - other than Williams and McLaren - are using a gearbox housing and internals designed by their engine suppliers they will get first-hand info on the gearchange set-up required. This puts Williams and McLaren on the back foot before they even start.

This plan would have been put in place at least four months ago and then, just to throw a spanner in the works, some bright spark will have come up with the idea of a launch in the week prior to the test.

This sort of thing is great for the sponsor, fans and media but it really can affect the build plan. Unfortunately, it goes with the glitz and glamour that some say is F1 and needs to be absorbed into the plan. But that doesn't make it any easier for the guys and girls trying to get the car together.

In the past, we have had a variety of launch styles. We've seen cars propped up with bits of wood to make them look good, we've seen a live Cirque du Soleil show where the car was supposed to be the star of the show. Both of those were OK as the car could be, let's say, 'unfinished' under the bodywork.

But the most difficult is when it's a launch with the car running. Then everything needs to be finished and ready to go perhaps a week earlier than absolutely necessary. Most teams that do it this way don't allow the press along so if there is a little hiccup they can cover it up and just release some pictures. Mercedes is taking this approach next week.

But that wasn't the way we did things at Jordan - we invited every man and his dog! We did this style of running a press release for the Jordan 194 in 1993 and everyone was poised with their cameras as we opened the garage door. Rubens Barrichello drove out of the garage and headed out of the pitlane with cameras clicking everywhere but he didn't change gear.

Once you have confidence that the car isn't going to burst into flames at any moment, then the real work of understanding it begins

He did a lap in first gear and during that lap my brain was working overtime; the question was, 'It all worked in the garage, so why not on the track?'

As he drove into the pits and stopped with the engine idling I leaned into the cockpit and, holding back the quick release steering wheel system, pushed the wheel firmly into place onto its second position.

Then I gave Rubens a wave and away he went off changing up through the gears as he left the pitlane. I took a big breath of relief!

So launch over and usually there are a couple of nights burning the midnight oil just to get everything packaged correctly. The test cars will have lots of extra sensors fitted to comprehensively check out all the systems are working as planned. The first runs will be about data gathering so these extra sensors need to be in place before getting to the track.

With everything being modelled and designed in 3D, the car build should go faultlessly as it will have all been assembled on screen prior to the actual physical assembly. But that also means that if anything has been missed it is a bit more of a drama.

The more you leave to do on actual assembly, the more you are prepared and capable of doing to react if something goes awry. If everything is expected to go without a problem, you will have to regroup more to rectify it if a problem occurs.

That's the same even when the car is up and running, as problems will appear and the technical director's job list from the car build and initial pre-season testing will only get longer as the days go by.

The big thing is being able to prioritise and react to the issues. Reliability has to come first, so at the head of the to-do page you need the heading 'to finish first, first you have to finish'. And you need to stick to it.

In the background, there will be an ongoing performance development plan. You can't neglect this, as researching new parts takes time, but this is mainly in the vehicle or aerodynamic departments of the company so they are not really affected by reliability problems.

In the initial stages of the season, and especially with the aerodynamic regulation changes to the front wing and bargeboard areas this year, you have to keep adding performance to the car and you have to be able to redirect that research after the car's first track running.

Initial testing will be about making sure the car behaves as predicted. If it does, then push on with the development plan. If not, you have to recognise why and react to it. It's this sort of detail that Williams and McLaren didn't react to last year and it destroyed their seasons very quickly.

The teams will arrive at Barcelona and provided they have everything they need, the last 24 hours will be spent with final fettling, just checking that the wiring and pipes etc are away from anything hot and that the bodywork fastenings are all in place and fixing the bodywork correctly. The last thing you need with a new car is losing the only engine cover you have at speed.

If, for some reason, you haven't got everything you need to run the car then the garage at Barcelona is just an extension of your factory base. As the parts arrive, they will be fitted and the car will be finally assembled.You can't rush things. When the car hits the track it needs to be properly prepared, any shortcuts will cost you in the long term.

Those first laps may only be about getting data from those extra sensors, but that's data you need at the outset. If the car hasn't had a shakedown before arriving at Barcelona then just making sure all the systems are working as planned will be the order of the first morning. This can take quite a few in and out-laps, with a quick underbody inspection between each run just to make sure nothing is burning up.

There will be temperature stickers all over the place. These change colour depending on what temperature that component has witnessed while out on track. It's very important that things like the rear wing pillar are not overheating from the exhaust gasses.

When we first ran the Jordan 197 in 1997, we used the exhausts to blow the lower beam wing. This, in turn, helped the diffuser performance but after the first run the beam wing was getting a little hot so we had to just alter the exhaust out angle slightly to reduce the heat. Nothing too complicated, but it took half a day. It still improved the performance of the beam wing, so all was OK.

Once you have confidence that the car isn't going to burst into flames at any moment, or that you are not going to have a leak from a pipe that isn't supported properly, then the real work of understanding the car begins.

The days of trying to find the best set-up by trying different suspension settings on track are long gone and most teams will have optimised this with simulation tools back at base. So it's now all about making sure that the car is performing aerodynamically on track as predicted in the windtunnel.

Some small rideheight changes will be done to make sure that the underfloor airflow separation height correlates with the tunnel. And if it doesn't, just knowing the offset is very important to how the car gets set up.

The same will happen with the front wing especially, as it's the victim of some serious regulation changes this year. The team will alter the wing angle to check if its characteristics are as expected. Being so close to the ground, it works in what's called ground effect, so a range of angles will be tested to identify any problems with correlation in that area.

It's a fine line between elation and despondency when the car first runs. You really do know, as does the driver, if what you have created is going to do the job within very few laps

The front wing will be the focus for most teams. It is one of the most powerful areas of the car and if the airflow in this area is not yet doing what was predicted it can affect the whole car further downstream. So I expect to see aero rakes like we have never seen before.

These massive grid structures are full of sensors measuring the airflow direction and speed off the car's surface. Flo-vis paint gives you the surface airflow, but it is the airflow off the surfaces that can alter the airflow on the surface so it's critical to understand something that you just can't see.

As far as the suspension set-up is concerned, changes to vertical and roll stiffness in something like 5% steps will also be tested. This is more to get an understanding of how different car set-ups change the car's behaviour and especially how it works the tyres. They are all new for this year. So tyre testing will also come into play.

The first test is normally all about getting as much information as possible and trying to understand as far as you can if the car is behaving as predicted. If it is, then your back at base development plan can proceed. If not, you have to dig a bit deeper to understand what is going wrong, where it's coming from and why.

If all is working as planned, which it very seldom is, then the second test will be a bit more about performance and long-run tyre durability. With that comes race runs, which prove out reliability.

That's not to say that some teams won't show their hand as far as performance is concerned at the first test or do some race runs. They will. But it's normally the second test before it gets just that little bit more serious.

During car build and testing, the technical director's job list gets longer - as does everyone else's. These jobs lists all need to come together and be prioritised. There is no point in using a scattergun approach to solving them, they need to be allocated and solved. It doesn't matter if it's performance or just the fact there were not enough cheese sandwiches for lunch, prioritising them correctly will mean you will be in better shape when you rock up in Melbourne.

It's a fine line between elation and despondency when the car first runs. You really do know, as does the driver, if what you have created is going to do the job within very few laps.

It's the old saying that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, if it doesn't feel right to the driver they will know it and they will know if it is just a small adjustment away or if it needs major surgery.

Take the Brawn in 2009. Jenson Button knew the car was a solid package from his first run in it and that has happened to me on quite a few occasions. On the other hand, I also knew when we needed to start to burn the midnight oil if we were ever going to recover.

Anyone that starts talking about the fact they have gathered lots of data and will analyse it overnight or between the tests is usually being fairly political about the situation and behind closed doors a little panic might be setting in.

The Barcelona pre-season test will be the first time the cars will appear in public so it's the first time the teams will have seen each other's interpretation of the new regulations. So they will all be having a quick look at each other - not maybe quite so publicly as I will when I am there with Autosport, but quietly they will be having a look.

Each team will have at least one of those pesky photographers snapping as many shots as possible. We used to get someone to do it and nothing has changed so post-test the technical director's desk, or at least their laptop, will be littered with holiday snapshots from Barcelona.

It's not about copying other teams, it's about trying to understand how the opposition went about sorting out all the details. As I have said on many occasions, these current cars all have to work as one. It is not about putting together a bunch of individual parts, it's about the sum of the whole that ends up giving you the performance.

For example, the front wing endplate detail has a major influence on the performance of the underfloor. You could change your front wing endplate to exactly the same detail as the fastest car, but your underfloor design wouldn't respond in the same way so it would probably be detrimental to your overall performance. It's like a jigsaw, all the parts need to fit together.

And after all that you are trying to get an understanding of this highly-strung vehicle at a track where the temperatures will be at least 15C lower than they will be at any of the first four races. Temperatures change everything. Yes, the tyres will respond differently but that's just a small thing and it's the same for everyone.

But the aerodynamics will also respond differently. Any airflow-separation problems that appear at Barcelona will be much worse when the ambient and track temperatures rise, so performance information from testing needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Basically, if you are aerodynamically critical in any area then be aware it will rear its ugly head and bite you when the temperatures increase.

As a technical director, pre-season testing is a bit of a pressure pot. You have seen your new baby evolve and now it's on show for the first time. It's not a beauty contest, although I have always liked nice looking cars. The real judgement is against the stopwatch.

Yes, fuel loads and the teams' individual test programmes can change things but the stance of the car and its consistency on track normally gives us a reasonable idea of who's hot and who's suffering from the winter blues at Barcelona.

I'll be there with Autosport and my trusty stopwatch to bring you as much info as possible as the tests progress.