teething out any troubles. Are your suspension
geometries correct? What about the new tyres?
How is the new power unit running? Are there
any issues with the braking system? You’re really
just focusing around getting a working race car.
It’s not focused around performance.
“Our plan was always that we were going to
add the aero kit at the second test. We actually
found it quite amusing to read what people
were writing about our aero [after the first
test] because, to be honest, we couldn’t even
remember what itlooked like until it showed up
on the car. We’d moved on so muchsince then.
“And then we found it even more amusing
when peoplewere saying we’d reacted in the
second week to what happened in the first –
which would have been a miracle. Our [real]car
was always going to come to thesecond test,
and during that we didn’t show its full speed- a little bit intentionally, and also through a
number of things not all happening together on
the same day. We knewthere was a lot of speed
in the car but weweren’t confident wewere the
fastest team, even in the second test when the
timesheetswere someway short of what we
knew wecould do.”
One of the defining characteristics of the 2019
season, even before a single car turned a wheel,
was the rather slipshod introduction of the new
front-wing regulations. Against a background of
ongoing wrangling over wider changes coming
for 2021, these were rushed through as a sort
of half-way house to evaluate whether it was
possible to reduce aerodynamic ‘outwash’ and
enable cars to get close to one another without
losing aeroperf ormance. Floated as a concept by
FIA president Jean Todt after a rather uneventful
2018 Australian Grand Prix, they were ratified
by e-vote within two months after a brief
consultation period.
Although teams were invited to interrogate
and feed back on the proposals using their
research facilities, many were so sceptical about
these rules ever coming into being thatthey
simply didn’t botherwith what they saw as a
waste of resource. Equally, though, they didn’t
want to be seen to stand in theway of measures
that were claimed to be beneficial to the
spectacle. BothFerrari and Mercedes supported
the proposals and they wereduly enshrined in
the rulebook in late May.“We found it even more amusing when people were saying we’d reacted in
the second weekto what happened in the first – which would have been
a miracle. Our [real] car was always going to cometo the secondtest, and
during that we didn’t show its full speed – a little bit intentionally”JOHNOWEN
Spot the difference.
To the naked eye the W10 that appeared at
the first pre-seasontest (top left and
above left) looks no differentto the car that
lined up inAustralia (above and right).
In fact they are twovery different animalsPICTURES:JOSE RUBIO;MARK SUTTON;GLENN DUNBAR;ZAK MAUGER