We all know the ones about testing. The standard disclaimers when it comes to interpreting what it’s all telling us. The lap times mean little. Several things that we looking in from the outside don’t know can skew a car’s behaviour as well as its speed severely: fuel loads; running programmes; extent that the engine wick is turned up; track conditions; state of the tyres… The list almost is endless. And to add to the obfuscation whether a team is doing well or doing badly, in either case its interest is in disguising the fact to outsiders.
It was not in the most obvious place that I stumbled across some words that rather summed up the challenge of deciphering pre-season testing. They were from the former British Foreign Secretary, the late Robin Cook, reflecting on his time in that role when he had to review the evidence from intelligence services. Told you it wasn’t obvious.
“Doubt and intelligence assessments go hand in hand,” said Cook. “One is trying to guess the secrets that somebody is trying to keep, so it inevitably follows that one is trying to carry out a task even worse than that of the Israelites: to make bricks out of straws in the wind.”
A ring of familiarity perhaps.
But then again it might not be that unlikely. The parallels between F1 and geopolitics have been noted before. And amongst it interpreting pre-season testing is F1’s answer it seems to interpreting the outputs of MI6 monitoring mysterious alien activities.
But we don’t learn, as despite the perils we can’t help ourselves trying to make sense of it all. So what were the straws in the Jerez wind from our opening four days of testing just passed in southern Spain, and can we build something solid with them?
Well in another thing that has a ring of familiarity on the test’s evidence Mercedes looks well on top still. And not only that but is proceeding these days with a cocky strut.
Right from the start of day one the W06 was rotating the track like a Duracell bunny, and as everyone else was making their first tentative steps the silver lot wasn’t caring to hide that it was bouncing along instead like John Travolta in the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever.
“Mercedes are taking the mickey” – Christian Horner, Red Bull team principal
Come lunchtime that day Sky’s Ted Kravitz noted that, “It’s astonishing. I’ve been talking to a lot of engineers up and down the pit lane…and engineers from rival teams are astonished that Mercedes have managed to come straight out of the box and be this reliable, and this consistent, and relatively fast.
“This is a brand new car, brand new everything…and for Rosberg to be out there and putting in 50 laps on the first morning of testing is almost unheard of.”
Christian Horner described it as “taking the mickey”. But it’s the sort of swagger and audacity – and performance – that could have been taken directly from Red Bull in its recent pomp.
And it continued in much the same vein throughout the four days so that by the end Mercedes was clearly atop the mileage charts, with over 600km (or over 100 laps, if your prefer) more under its belt than the next team and even further ahead of those that may be presumed its closest title rivals. Problems were few, amounting to a water leak on day two and Lewis Hamilton managing to spin off on the final day.
And while a reliable car isn’t necessarily a quick one, it indicates a thorough preparation which reflects well on the team generally, and a reliable car is also easier to develop competitively as well as frees up time to brush up on operational matters (the silver squad was even practicing pit stops on day one). Remember too that there are relatively few regulation changes this year so the Merc’s big 2014 pace advantage is unlikely to have evaporated and that the closest thing the car had to a weakness last season was…reliability.
True, the machine rarely troubled the top of the headline times, but you feel it wasn’t really trying to. None of the W06’s quickest efforts were set on soft tyres (worth at least a second) while its runs tended to be 30-40 laps in length; Ferrari’s, by comparison, often were around the 10 lap mark. And as Sebastian Vettel pointed out during the week at this stage “I think lap times are not that important in the end – it’s the amount of laps”. Furthermore the view of trackside observers was that the Merc looks the strongest out there once again and consistently so; both drivers too reported that the car felt similar to last season’s all-conquering one and effused quiet confidence. Nico Rosberg on the radio called it a “really top job to start the year”.
“I’ve seen nothing that will dissuade me that it’s just going to be Mercedes on top,” Kravitz concluded, reflecting the view of most.

Ferrari performed well on the surface, but is their pace truly the result of a revival?
But if the consensus is that the Mercedes remains ahead, it also is that many of the rest have clawed back some of the deficit. And on the basis of the opening test none have more than Ferrari. Indeed the red cars topped the times on three days out of four, as well as overall.
This may surprise, given the Scuderia’s recent heads-on-spikes policy reminiscent of the bad old days. Yet for all of Ferrari’s merry-go-round in a strange way Ferrari could hardly not improve its car this year, almost in spite of themselves. The room to improve in the power unit was conspicuous while the SF15T is the first car properly from the leadership of James Allison, who in what is soon to be a post-Newey age is for many F1’s number one technical brain. And it seems on both fronts it’s exactly what’s happened.
On the power unit front it appears to have focussed on the things it was bad at last year – namely its power delivery and energy harvesting. It also appears to have clawed back the power deficit at least to the Mercedes of 2014, judging by the words of Felipe Nasr who drove last year’s Williams and reckoned this Ferrari unit felt “very similar”. This should be tempered a little though with the fact the Mercedes unit is a moving target, and is reckoned to have found up to another 60bhp itself between seasons – albeit Ferrari is thought to have more horsepower to come also.
And as well as reliability problems being rare out on track the car looks strong, with the chassis’s own 2014 bugbear of a weak front end also looking largely resolved, the machine appearing responsive and nimble through the chicane and elsewhere. This will be a particular relief to Kimi Raikkonen who is thought to crave such handling. Indeed it even contributed to the normally impenetrable Finn describing the 2015 machine as “definitely an improvement”. Heck, before the test was out he was speculating about extending his contract beyond this season after all.
Sebastian Vettel meanwhile looks comfortable in his new environs already. The ready smile of before has returned, as reportedly has the extreme industry. One Autosport article speculated about his returning mojo.
Of course, it’s only testing (apropos of nothing McLaren topped the Jerez times 12 months ago), while Ferrari’s rivals didn’t show their hands to a great extent, due to variously not chasing headline times or having problems. Perhaps even with this Ferrari was on top by default. Further the gap that must be jumped to catch the Mercedes in one go is chasm like, and in fairness not many even of the red team’s most fervent fans are predicting that this begets a title challenge for 2015. But as Daniel Ricciardo noted of Seb’s 1m 20 mark, reflecting paddock consensus: “I don’t know the fuel, tyres, whatever but in any case it was a good time”, while Nico Rosberg admitted the Ferrari pace was an “eye opener” – albeit it was not said with a massive degree of outward concern. Respectability, perhaps even competitiveness on occasion, looks well within reach at Maranello. All of a sudden the team’s aim in advance of two wins from the season strikes as a measly minimum expectation.
But if Ferrari’s sojourn in Jerez gave strong indication of a new dawn McLaren has to remain in the dark for a little longer. Various teething problems – sensors not talking to each other among other things – limited the car to 12 laps over the first two days, which itself followed on from two days of Abu Dhabi testing wherein it hardly ran at all. And while things picked up marginally thereinafter the team at the end was still clearly bottom on times and on distance covered. All in the team put a brave face on things, but it was well shy of the 60 laps on day two that Eric Boullier had said was the target.
While its Jerez experiences certainly were a set-back it also didn’t change anything for outsiders looking in – McLaren started the test as an enigma and ended it still as an enigma. All still has a ‘could go either way about it’, as was summed up by Ricciardo in the days prior to heading out to Jerez.

A difficult test for McLaren and Honda. Where can they realistically expect to be come Melbourne?
“The big question mark is McLaren with Honda” he said, “that’s probably the one everyone’s going to be watching. I think for the rest everyone will make sort of standard steps. It’s the one team that’s probably more unknown…they’ve probably got the best opportunity to make that big difference…they’ve got the cards to do it, it’s now whether they pull it off.”
All is not yet lost in other words. In a perverse way too the struggles even could be an encouraging sign, in that it shows a team taking things to the edge, which of course is exactly what it has to do to get back to the top. Certainly with the notable ‘size zero’ packaging and Ron Dennis talk of prioritising performance over reliability it appears this is what McLaren’s aiming for. And while of course they would say this, some in the team insist too that its simulations demonstrate that once all in the machine is working at once it’ll be bang on the money, as outlined by engineering director Matt Morris: “Obviously it would be nice to be a little bit further up, but we have got great simulation tools these days…If we look at that and add on where we should be, I am not worried really.”
It might not just be blarney either given that on a damp early part of day three Fernando Alonso set a purple sector and was only 4km/h shy of the Mercedes through the speed trap (though it was nowhere near as close in the dry), with a power unit reckoned to be at around half chat. The design too has impressed observers, not just in its rear shrink-wrapping but also in its revisions to what was a problematic front end last year. Driver feedback reportedly was positive also.
There are a few crumbs of comfort from the past for the Woking squad too. In 1984, when it swept the board, the MP4/2 barely turned a wheel (thanks to electrical problems, natch) until its final pre-season test, some three days before heading out to the first round. There even just over a year ago were horror stories emanating from Mercedes that its unit couldn’t run for more than a few minutes without blowing up its electrics. And for the reasons Ricciardo gave no one is close to writing the Woking effort off yet.
“I am not worried really,” – Matt Morris, McLaren
Red Bull is one perhaps grateful for McLaren struggles, as without them it may have been the Milton Keynes lot getting the bulk of unwelcome scrutiny. Scrub the Woking team and it is the Bulls that would be propping up both the mileage table and that of the headline times. Mainly the struggle was all down to niggling problems associated with the Renault power unit – ever so slightly redolent of its nightmarish opening test last year – though it wasn’t helped either on day two by debutant Daniil Kvyat damaging the team’s only front wing, leaving all inauspiciously to do what they could without one.
No one doubts that the chassis will once again be a jewel – and the camouflage livery suggests it has a few details it feels are worth hiding; the power unit remains the big question. And Adrian Newey suggested that 2015 will be another one of catch-up on that, and that it will preclude a championship challenge almost before things have begun.
“I think we should be realistic about our expectations for this year”, he said. “Mercedes have a very strong power unit…Renault are working away very hard at eliminating that deficit, but it does take time. Power units have a very long lead-time…slower than we’re able to work at on the chassis side.
“This year will really be about continuing to try to move forward and reduce the deficit that we suffered at times last year. If we can manage the odd win, as we did last year, then that would be fantastic. But we can’t count on it. I think it’s really a season that will be very much about trying to extract the most we can and build on it for the future.”
Both Red Bull and Renault itself promise an “aggressive” programme of power unit development however. Optimistic noises continue to come out of the team (“hitting all the notes, just not necessarily in the right order” was how the team’s Twitter feed put it) plus as was on show in 2014 the squad remains a formidable one even in adversity.

Can Williams start where they left off in 2014? Initial signs seem to suggest so.
Williams by contrast does not have to worry about its power unit, and indeed as the closest Merc-powered challenger last year – on many weekends the closest challenger full stop – there are reasons to think it is best placed to get in terms with the imperious works team in 2015, by imitating the things that made the W05 chassis so strong last year.
In Jerez just like the works team the Williams wasn’t often seen near the top of the charts (not on lap time anyway – though mileage may have been curtailed by deliberately sitting in the garage when it was damp out). But we should remember that it is the Grove squad’s way to march resolutely to its own beat, and we may indeed recall that last season it tended to hide its light in Friday practice sessions too. As Valtteri Bottas said at Hockenheim last year, after clinching a front row spot having operated under the radar the day before: “We knew that after Friday there was nothing really to worry about it. I think maybe sometimes some other teams are more focusing on qualifying laps in practice rather than just testing.”
And in Jerez both drivers, again just like at Merc, emitted understated content, and spoke of notable improvements in handling. Observers thought the rear, a little loose last year, appears more stable now.
Most of the rest – at least among those who’d deigned to show up – also gave some indication that they’d made a step-up.
Lotus could hardly not have done of course, but not only does it have the free pass of a Mercedes power unit now it appears also to have righted a lot of its unpredictable handling, as was confirmed by Romain Grosjean: “Both the power unit and the chassis are going in the right direction. It’s a very good start and I’m a happy driver.”
Sauber like Ferrari lit up the timing screens in Jerez, and indeed led one day as well as tended to be the next car up after the Scuderia the rest of the time. This effort elicited a round of ‘glory run’ muttering, and it appears that not even the team thinks its place as second best is representative – Felipe Nasr said as much explicitly. But the C34 looks the sort of solid, neat and tidy design with sound handling that exemplifies the Swiss team at its best, and the rising tide of the improved Ferrari engine will lift the Sauber boat too. It is another car that has improved.
The Toro Rosso was harder to decipher. It did plenty of mileage, the squad unlike its big team apparently prioritising giving its young pilots experience. But observers out on track reckoned the car looked a bit evil. Nevertheless neither of the rookie drivers binned it and indeed the fledgling Max Verstappen turned a few heads, Peter Windsor even going so far as to say that his driving was a little reminiscent of Michael Schumacher in his debut Jordan test. Team Principal Franz Tost also is optimistic, talking about a fifth place in the constructors’ table and drivers “permanently in the points”.
But perhaps Jerez didn’t tell us much of anything, in that even before the test in southern Spain had we been asked to guess the lay of the 2015 land we’d likely have said that those behind the Mercedes would make a step, as in a close season of relative rule stability after a big shift that tends to be the way of things. Those behind learn from what made the hare quick. But even with that Merc would still be ahead – such was the size of its 2014 advantage it would not be eaten up in one bite. McLaren, almost alone, would be an unknown quantity. And that following the first four days’ running is broadly what we have. Who needs intelligence?