After topping Formula 1 pre-season testing five times in the last ten years and taking the top spot in the Barcelona shakedown a few weeks ago, Damon Hill claims Ferrari is using ‘pointless’ tactics to mislead fans on their performance.
Pre-season testing is a chance for teams to shakedown their cars for the upcoming season, and with it comes some teams ending the sessions faster than others, sometimes by fine margins but sometimes significant jumps.
It also frequently sees outliers or unexpected results, with a backmarker jumping through the order during pre-season testing. However, it’s well known that those results are rarely indicative of the true pace or order of the grid in the coming season.
Hill hammered this point home, urging fans who sit down to watch testing this week not to blindly believe the times teams show.
Hill said on The Race’s Stay on Track podcast: “The testing results, what they do is they cover the days and who is quickest and all the rest of it. And sometimes you get unexpected people who are very quick.
“And it is nearly always wrong. I mean by miles.
“You suddenly see teams you don’t expect looking really quick in winter testing.
“So viewers and listeners beware, do not go by the lap times you are seeing because if you are quick, which is what we’d do at Williams when we knew we had an advantage, we’d run with 60kg of fuel in the car to slow us down.”
Ferrari’s ‘pointless’ tactics
It wasn’t just Williams whom he pointed a finger at. Hill also noted one of the biggest culprits was Ferrari. The prancing horses often opt to take fuel out of the cars to put in ‘glory laps’, shooting to the top of the timesheets.
Hill’s belief was that, despite not having the true pace behind the wheel, Ferrari and other teams chose to put in these laps to impress fans and sponsors ahead of the maiden race of the season.
This was something the former champion branded as ‘pointless’ as it backfired when the results didn’t follow.
“It’s utterly pointless. The culprits for this were Tom Walkinshaw with Arrows; they wanted to do it with Jordan as well. We’ve got to put a show time in.
“Don’t do it. You’ll just look like an idiot when you come to the race, and you’re not quick!
“But they do it because the sponsors want an uplift. They want to have something they can crow about.
“Ferrari are also good at doing this, it seems to me. They feel the pressure to just get a lap time.
“I think Red Bull are very good at keeping their powder dry and not showing their hand.”
Despite topping pre-season testing five out of the last ten years, the Maranello-based team have not won a Drivers’ or Constructors’ title since 2007.
In 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2024, Ferrari has followed up its impressive pre-season performance with lacklustre results.
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