Update thread or new thread?
If you can update the title, why not? It's not like there's a ton of pages to look through
What did you think of the two FP sessions then?
Mercedes top
Ferrari and RBR trading 3rd and 4th places
Mclaren still shit
McLaren lol! Mercedes sandbagging in testing is nothing new, we'll see how far off the others really are soon enough, but first impressions are it's going to be like last season but with quicker lap times. Ferrari weren't really any stronger in the race-sim runs, actually a bit slower. Dunno about RBR, but wouldn't trust that Renault drivetrain yet
Everyone seems to be holding their cards close to their chest even in the first Aussie FP sessions and there's a lot of accusations of sandbagging going on since the Barca tests. I don't think we'll see a clear picture of what's going on till the first qualifying and they go all out. I could see this easily being a Vettel Vs Hamilton year. Bottas always had great pace but he's always been poor in hard racing situations (See every time Kimi run him off the road the last few years) so he's going to find it really hard against Hamilton when trying to pass because Hamilton is super agressive under pressure and it cost Hamiltoon a few times last year. Never mind people like Kimi (Who he had plenty of literal run ins with the last few years) and Ricciardio. Meanwhile, if Seb has the pace to run with Hamilton, they will be at each other, especially since Seb has grown less afraid of getting into it with other drivers for position compared to the dominant years. He got the Tifosi temperament, now.
The Hass and Renaults seem to have got a good dose of speed though. Hard to hide that (Even when Palmer flies into the gravel and gets the session red flagged). Hopefully Hass got their brake issues sorted (When they meant bringing American motorsport to F1 last year, they shouldn't have included the ARCA Brakes). Williams look like they have another year of struggling even with Massa pulled out of retirement. lol McLaren and Sauber.
It's going to be an interesting season.