2020 F1 Pre-Season Testing Recap
Pre-season testing for the 2020 Formula One season has come to a close, and now fans have nothing left to do but to watch the new Drive to Survive series on Netflix before the regular season kicks off in Melbourne, Australia, on March 15. And speculate, of course.
So what have we learned from the 2020 F1 pre-season? Well, as with every pre-season, lap time performances must be taken with a grain of salt. There are many factors to take into account when interpreting a car’s speed: tire compounds, fuel loads, engine modes, whether the driver was actually pushing, among other dynamics ranging from easily discernible to inscrutable.
During the first week, Mercedes looked its usual competitive self. The car was fast and featured a brand new dual-axis steering system that had the whole paddock talking. But there were unusual hiccups as well. Bottas suffered an engine failure, and the Mercedes engine in the Williams car needed to be replaced twice.
Then, on Thursday of the second week of the 2020 F1 pre-season, after mechanics had worked on his car for hours in the garage, Lewis Hamilton only managed to put in 14 laps before another engine issue ended the day prematurely for the team. Things were back to normal for the last day of testing, but there is talk of Mercedes having pushed its engine development harder than usual, and it may be paying the price with worse reliability.
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The two Honda-powered teams had their best-ever pre-season in years, completing a combined total of 1,547 laps. Red Bull Racing is typically a team that’s slow to get into gear at the start of the year, but whose development pace throughout the season sees them frequently fighting for wins at the end. This year, its focus is to be competitive from the start as it hopes to challenge for the title.
Ferrari didn’t look very fast, and there was a lot of talk of the team “sandbagging,” or hiding its hand, though Ferrari itself denied it. Jolyon Palmer, former Renault driver turned pundit, also insisted at length that it made no sense for teams to hide their true capabilities during testing. Teams don’t actually stand to benefit from it, he says, and are in fact better off pushing their cars to the limit during pre-season testing when championship points aren’t on the line.
Because of Ferrari’s lackluster testing performances, some are expecting its primary rival to be Racing Point, whose “pink Mercedes” car has been the source of amusement or concern, depending on who you ask. Certainly, the Racing Point drivers and staff seem more jubilant than usual, and even Ferrari is admitting they could be a concern at the start of the season.
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Most of the other teams had a fairly quiet 2020 F1 pre-season. Carlos Sainz at McLaren got on with completing the 2nd-most amount of laps without ever changing an engine, and while it’s hard to say how good the AlphaTauri is going to look on the timetables come Australia, there’s no doubt the new fashion brand-inspired car design looks good.
The Renault car seems to have undergone a major design evolution, which, combined with its black testing livery, has caused it to look not dissimilar to the prettier 1990s cars. But the answer to whether it’s actually fast is still up in the air.
Williams certainly seems to have made a step forward, though its goal for 2020 is a modest one. Claire Williams, team principal, says she’ll be happy getting into Q2 every now and then as opposed to simply being dead last.
The only thing we can probably say for sure is that, as this is the last year of the current regulations, the field is going to be more bunched up than ever. We may have a great season on our hands. If Ferrari really is struggling for pace, we’ll probably be looking at Lewis Hamilton for Mercedes vs Max Verstappen for Red Bull-Honda for the championship, and that ought to be a spectacle indeed.
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Kurt Verlin was born in France and lives in the United States. Throughout his life he was always told French was the language of romance, but it was English he fell in love with. He likes cats, music, cars, 30 Rock, Formula 1, and pretending to be a race car driver in simulators; but most of all, he just likes to write about it all. See more articles by Kurt.