One of the headlines is that Pirelli have done an excellent job with the first stage of development of their tyres. Engineers and drivers alike are full of praise for them. The 2012 tyres are more durable and offer good grip. This was particularly evident when the track was cooler; the wear was significantly better than last year.

According to Pirelli, during the four days in Jerez “a total of 3380 laps were covered by 23 drivers – equating to 14,949 kilometres.” The new medium tyre completed the most with 1776 laps, followed by the new soft with 1010 laps run and the hard with 594 laps run.

Lewis Hamilton gave his assessment of the competition at the front, “The Ferrari’s not really showing anything just yet. Of course, the Red Bull looks fast – as it usually does – and we’re there I think.”

Although RBR have not gone for an eye catching time this week Vettel did use a set of new soft tyres on the final day, but his best time in a seven lap run on them was a 1m 19.7s, which indicates that he had a fair bit of fuel on board. His next run was on a set of used medium tyres and he did a 1m 19.6s straight off and then a sequence as follows – 1:28.1; 1:21.1; 1:21.5; 1:21.5; 1:21.7; 1:21.5; 1:21.7.

The Red Bull certainly looks consistent, as it did last year, driveable, stable and fast.

Hamilton did a nine lap run on new soft tyres and his first lap was a 1m19.9s, so it’s hard to draw too many conclusions. If the fuel loads were the same the McLaren is 3/10ths slower, but there’s no way of knowing how different the loads were. Just 10 kilos difference would account for 3/10ths of a second.

Alonso did a 6 lap run on new softs where the first lap was 1m 18.9s, but given the way the Ferrari had been running this week this was likely to have been done on less fuel than Vettel or Hamilton were using in comparable runs. There was no comparable used medium tyre run by the Ferrari, due to some reliability problems in the afternoon.

“Eight or nine hours of testing and only 40 laps, “said Alonso yesterday, “In Montmelo (Barcelona) we must do a hundred odd. We’ve understood only about 20% of what we need. This is a completely new car. In four days we’ve turned it around and seen progress even if it doesn’t show in the times.

“There is still much to do, especially on the aerodynamics and on reliability.”

Meanwhile Grosjean did a 13 lap run on used mediums with the following sequence – 1:23.6; 1:23.2; 1:23.4 ;1:23.5; 1:23.6; 1:23.6; 1:24.1; 1:24.2; 1:25.0; 1:25.2; 1:24.6; 1:24.9; 1:24.7; 1:25.3; 1:25.9.

Hamilton’s 13 lap run on used medium tyres was as follows – 1:22.1; 1:21.7; 1:21.8; 1:21.9; 1:21.9; 1:22.0; 1:22.0; 1:22.0; 1:22.5; 1:27.5; 1:22.6; 1:22.1; 1:23.9; 1:23.5.

Although you cannot zero in on the precise underlying pace of the cars, you can look at reliability and this shows that both Ferrari and Red Bull had some problems. Ferrari’s are to be expected given a completely new concept. The Red Bull niggles on an evolutionary car are a little more worrying, but they have time to sort them out.

For the most part the McLaren, Lotus, Williams and the midfield cars ran pretty reliably. Kimi Raikkonen covered 192 laps in his two days in the car and he’s clearly right there despite two years on the sidelines. It helps a bit that his team mate Grosjean is a little ring-rusty and playing catch up.

Engineers are saying that its going to be close this year behind the front three or four teams (Mercedes’ new car is an unknown) and that it will be vital to have all the performance enhancing parts working well in order to get results. These are things like KERS, exhausts blowing on rear wing elements and other aero developments that teams incorporate as the year goes on. Anyone who’s limited on development by budget could find themselves sliding back as the year goes on.

And the distributors, Universal Pictures, have announced that there will be a very special set of screenings of the film on a giant IMAX screen at the British Film Institute in London.

For those not familiar with IMAX, the key is not just the quality of the image but its enormous size. According to Wikipedia, “A standard IMAX screen is 22 × 16.1 m (72 × 52.8 ft), but can be larger.

“The increased resolution allows the audience to be much closer to the screen; typically all rows are within one screen height; conventional theatre seating runs 8 to 12 screen heights. Also, the rows of seats are set at a steep angle (up to 30° in some domed theatres) so that the audience is facing the screen directly.”

It should be an unforgettable experience for those lucky enough to see it.

The dates for the BFI screening are as follows:

Tuesday 28 February (21:15)
Thursday 1 March (21:15)
Sunday 4 March (18:30)

Standard seats are £9 for adults and £5-75 for children. You can book tickets by clicking on this link BOOK BFI IMAX TICKETS

The BFI is located on the south side of Waterloo Bridge, London SE1.

Meanwhile Nico Rosberg came in for Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes and continued to set the pace; the German running the same 2011 specification car with the blown diffuser as the team builds up data on the new generation Pirelli tyres.

Rosberg did his fastest time on a single lap run, edging out Romain Grosjean in the Lotus who did his time on the first lap of a six lap run. Grosjean covered 117 laps today and did a long run of 20 laps in the afternoon with times in the 1m 22s dropping to 1m 24s.

Everyone apart from Mercedes is coping with the loss of the downforce and rear end stability that the EBD brought. Of the 2012 cars on show the Red Bull seems to be handling as expected, able to knock off the lap times at will, without yet showing what it can do when pushed to the limit. Vettel set his time on the second lap of a four lap run and his long run pace indicated that at all stages he was carrying a lot of fuel.

Ferrari and McLaren are feeling their way, not even exploring the limits yet. Ferrari continue to make gentle progress with their revolutionary new car. Its engineers have been saying that some new things on the car, like the pullrod suspension, are working as expected, while others, like the exhausts are more complicated to understand and make the most of.

Alonso’s best today of 1m20.412s was set on the first lap of an eight lap run, while Hamilton’s 1m 19.464s was done on the first lap of a five lap run. Fuel loads are unknown in the case of all the short runs.

When he left Jerez yesterday, Felipe Massa told the Italian media that, “There is a lot of work to do, perhaps a little more than we had anticipated.” Massa spent much of his time data logging, but did observe that the F2012 Ferrari has less understeer than its predecessors and has “gigantic potential”. But there’s a lot of work to do to bed down a completely new concept before extracting those vital few final tenths of a second.

McLaren too has been taking small steps with its car, but today engineering boss Paddy Lowe said that Jenson Button had given the car a thumbs up as one he could “do business with.”

Bruno Senna took the wheel of the Williams and covered 125 laps, the most of any driver today. Caterham’s recently announced new tester Guido van der Garde got an outing today too, trying KERS for the first time. Heikki Kovalainen has given the new Caterham the thumbs up, saying that be believes it is closer to the midfield pace they have been hoping for.

FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting took the unusual step of attending the test to check on some of the interpretations of the new rules. He’s already intervened to ba Lotus’ innovative brake stabilisation system. But he gave the thumbs up to the exhaust exits on the Ferrari, which some rivals had questioned. He did however say that aero devices on brake ducts which channel the exhaust gases to the diffuser would not be permitted. This is a concept that some engineers were talking about during the launch season.

One whisper doing the rounds is that former Sauber technical director James Key has been linked with a move to Lotus Cars to work on their sportcar programme.

JEREZ TEST, Day 3
1 Rosberg Mercedes 1m17.613s 118 Laps
2 Grosjean Lotus 1m18.419s +0.806 117 Laps
3 Vettel Red Bull 1m19.297s +1.684 96 Laps
4 Hamilton McLaren 1m19.464s +1.851 80 Laps
5 Vergne Toro Rosso 1m19.734s +2.121 79 Laps
6 Perez Sauber 1m19.770s +2.157 48 Laps
7 Alonso Ferrari 1m20.412s +2.799 67 Laps
8 Senna Williams 1m21.293s +3.680 125 Laps
9 Van der Garde Caterham 1m23.324s +5.711 74 Laps

Last year’s race had to be cancelled due to political uprisings in the country and attempts by the FIA and F1 commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone to reinstate the race later in the season were thwarted by the teams refusing to go.

The FIA’s rules state that if an event is called off within three months of taking place it cannot appear on the following year’s calendar and we are already passed that cut off point. The exception is a case of force majeure, but as the race has been on/off for 12 months it’s not easy to see how that might apply here.

At the same time there are other political winds which threaten the country, with escalating tension between Israel and Iran over the latter’s developing nuclear weapons capability. Middle East experts are now saying that a strike by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities is growing in likelihood and if that were to happen this Spring, Iran’s most likely first response would be to attack US military installations in Bahrain.

Whether the race happens or not will all come down to insurance. If the people and the cars, the TV companies and the F1 circus can be insured then the event is likely to take place.

At this stage the F1 teams are planning for it to be on and the personnel are still leaving it to the FIA to judge whether to hold the race or not. What will be decisive here, among other things, will be the UK Foreign office Travel Advice. If that were to switch to “Do not travel to Bahrain” then insurances would not be valid and the teams and others would decline to go.

There has been no official reaction so far today to the letter, but last month Bernie Ecclestone told an Austrian newspaper, “Everyone talks a lot about this part of the world, but Bahrain is the country in the region where there are the fewest problems,”

Before Christmas the FIA sent a delegation to visit Bahrain, with FIA president Jean Todt, Damon Hill and other officials checking out the situation. It is a very complex situation and a difficult one for the FIA to rule on as siding either way leads to controversy.

For the record the key points of the politicians’ letter today were:

“We note with concern the decision by Formula 1 to go ahead with the race in Bahrain scheduled for April.

“The continued political crisis in Bahrain is a troubling source of instability in the Gulf region, and the lack of any move towards political reconciliation concerns those who wish to see Bahrain move in the direction of greater democratic accountability.”

After explaining that they had hoped the outcome of the would have helped calm the situation, they said that in fact the opposite had happened.

“Two months on [from the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI)] we see an entrenchment of the positions of both sides which risks letting more extreme voices dictate the progress of the conflict. Given the current dire situation, with daily street protests and the deaths of more civilians, we do not believe that the time is right for Formula 1 to return to Bahrain.

“Bahrain is a major trading hub and financial centre in the Middle East but this brings greater responsibility. Human rights and economic stability go hand in hand and the government of Bahrain must do more to persuade international events and corporations that Bahrain is a stable place to do business.

“Until it takes concerted measures to reform the electoral, penal and judicial processes, international observers as well as ordinary Bahrainis can have little confidence that Bahrain is on the path to reform and political stability.

We urge the FIA to reconsider its decision to continue with the race.”

The seven times world champion was at the wheel of the 2011 Mercedes, the only top team not to bring its new car to the first test.

After some early fast laps by Red Bull’s Mark Webber, Schumacher lowered the bar set by Raikkonen yesterday to the mid 1m 18s, substantially faster than the same car managed at an early stage in 2011. This shows the development a car goes through in the course of a year. Red Bull’s Christian Horner has estimated the improvement of a car from a front running team at around two seconds from pre-season test to last Grand Prix of the year.

Schumacher was using the old Mercedes to evaluate the new Pirelli tyres and today soft and medium compounds were tried out by many teams. These are new tyres for 2012, with only the supersoft from 2011 remaining in Pirelli’s range this year.

Yesterday’s pace setter Raikkonen spent much of the morning in the Lotus garage after going off track into the gravel on an early run.

Webber was second fastest while Toro Rosso’s new boy Dan Ricciardo continues to go well in third ahead of the Force India car which was driven today by reserve driver Jules Bianchi. But the times are not yet really significant as there are various programmes at work in these early stages with the new cars.

Ferrari and McLaren continues to take their time to get up to speed. Everyone has different programmes to work through in these early days, depending on the nature of their car. Ferrari, for example, has more work than the others in terms of measuring the car’s behaviour and understanding it because it is a completely new design, a total break from the past. Most other cars are an evolution of a design philosophy from last year.

The teams need to make sure that the aerodynamic data on the track matches the data coming from the wind tunnel – this was an area where Ferrari struggled last year, for example at this early stage. Then there are new electronic systems to check over, loads passing through Ferrari’s radical new pullrod front and rear suspension need to be measured and understood. There is a lot to do before the team can start to chase some performance from it.

Exhausts
One area where there will be a lot of development for everyone over the next month is in the position of the exhausts. These have been moved by regulation, to outlaw the exhaust blown diffusers of the last two seasons. Now they must be placed, higher, further towards the front of the car and the exits must be round.

Everyone was cagey about this before testing started, with McLaren even launching its car with fake exhausts! Engineers say that the final position of the exhausts for most teams won’t be defined until the end of the testing season.

There are a number of different interpretations on view in Jerez, although nothing radical so far. Ferrari designer Nicolas Tombazis told Gazzetta dello Sport yesterday that there is nothing on any car which Ferrari hasn’t thought of.

Red Bull has the lowest exhausts, below the rear suspension arm, still working with part of the floor at least. Many teams are blowing across the bottom element of the rear wing, McLaren have their exhausts well forward in the sidepods, Lotus Renault have a straightforward exhaust exit of the kind we saw in F1 a few years ago.

Jerez Testing: Day 2

1 Schumacher Mercedes 1m18.561s 132 laps
2 Webber Red Bull 1m19.184s +0.623 97 Laps
3 Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1m19.587s +1.026 100 Laps
4 Bianchi Force India 1m20.221s +1.660 46 Laps
5 Raikkonen Lotus 1m20.239s +1.678 117 Laps
6 Di Resta Force India 1m20.272s +1.711 69 Laps
7 Massa Ferrari 1m20.454s +1.893 95 Laps
8 Button McLaren 1m20.688s +2.127 85 Laps
9 Perez Sauber 1m20.711s +2.150 67 Laps
10 Maldonado Williams 1m21.197s +2.636 97 Laps
11 Kovalainen Caterham 1m21.518s +2.957 139 Laps
12 De la Rosa HRT 1m22.128s +3.567 64 Laps

Darren is widely regarded as one of Formula 1′s most creative and experienced photographers. A multi award winner, he has been the chosen photographic partner of JA on F1 since its inception in 2009 and a great supporter of the site.

The exhibition features many stunning images of Sebastian Vettel, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and others in action at many of last year’s Grands Prix.

The artwork is presented in large framed limited edition prints, which are also available for purchase at the venue.

Collyer Bristow Gallery
4 Bedford Row
London
WC1R 4TF

Telephone for opening times: 020 7468 7200. A reminder: The exhibition runs from 6th to 16th February.

You can check out Darren’s work at http://www.darrenheath.com/ and follow him on Twitter @f1photographer

In total there were 11 teams running in Jerez, with only Marussia not present. Most teams were giving their new cars a debut outing, however both Mercedes and HRT were running 2011 specification cars. Both Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher got a chance to run in the Mercedes today.

Raikkonen wanted to start strongly and send out a positive message and he certainly did that; he was straight into the groove, after his two day outing in Valencia in an old Renault F1 car recently. His time of 1m19.670s was competitive and he set the pace for most of the day in the new Lotus Renault E20, but Force India’s Paul di Resta ran him close. The Scot had an encouraging day with over 100 laps covered in the new Force India car, which was shaken down at Silverstone on Friday.

Also putting in a solid mileage was the new Sauber C31, with Kamui Kobayashi covering the highest mileage of the day with 106 laps, pretty impressive for a brand new car.

Caterham’s new car had a few Day 1 niggles including a starter shaft problem which meant they had trouble getting the engine started as well as a cooling issue, and the new Toro Rosso stopped out on track with Dan Ricciado at the wheel due to an oil pressure problem.

Times are secondary at this stage to mileage, but nevertheless the pace was pretty strong for Day 1. Last year Felipe Massa set the fastest time on Day 1 in Jerez with 1m 20.709s, a second slower than this year. And last year Jerez was the second test after a session at Valencia, so the cars were more sorted.

The Pirelli tyres are a step softer this year, but against that the cars have lost a lot of downforce from the banning of blown diffusers.

Jerez test: Day 1
1. Kimi Raikkonen Lotus 1m19.670s 73 Laps
2. Paul di Resta Force India 1m19.772s + 0.102 101 Laps
3. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m20.219s + 0.549 56 Laps
4. Mark Webber Red Bull 1m20.496s + 0.826 53 Laps
5. Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1m20.694s + 1.024 57 Laps
6. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1m20.794s + 1.124 41 Laps
7. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber 1m21.353s + 1.683 106 Laps
8. Jenson Button McLaren 1m21.530s + 1.860 60 Laps
9. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m22.815s + 3.145 69 Laps
10. Heikki Kovalainen Caterham 1m23.178s + 3.508 28 Laps
11. Pastor Maldonado Williams 1m23.371s + 3.701 25 Laps
11. Pedro de la Rosa HRT 1m23.676s + 4.006 44 Laps

Like many 2012 cars, the C31 is an evolution of the 2011 car, but there is one significant difference. Like their friends and allies at Ferrari, who supply the engines, the team has switched to pullrod suspension, albeit only at the rear. Ferrari has gone for pullroad suspension front and rear, which is much more edgy.

Sauber explains it like this: “The rear suspension is now a pullrod design. It shows a long pullrod towards the front of the gearbox and wide angled wishbones. This design allows improved packaging of the rear spring and damper elements. Despite the change from pushrod to pullrod, in terms of kinematics the engineers maintained a similar direction to the one they went in for the C30.”

Last year’s Sauber was very gentle on its tyres, which allowed it to score some useful points by employing fewer pit stops and long run strategies on days when other midfield teams were struggling for tyre life. This year the Pirelli tyres are designed to be a little more durable. The Sauber is likely to retain its race performance but the engineers will have been looking to make the car less peaky on set up so that they can qualify more consistently. Last year qualifying consistently was a big problem, especially for Kamui Kobayashi.

According to Sauber chief designer Matt Morris, “Pirelli is in its second year, so is now beginning to refine its compounds and the tyre’s profile. The compounds generally tend to be heading to slightly softer solutions, slightly more biased to a stronger front tyre than last year. This, of course, changes the way you balance the car.”

You can follow all the action from Jerez and the other tests in real time with tweets from teams, drivers and journalists at the circuit at http://twitter.jamesallenonf1.com

Alguersuari, who looks likely to appear in the F1 paddock this year as reserve driver for Mercedes, thought he had been given verbal confirmation before the end of the season that his seat at Toro Rosso was secure. But two weeks after the last race he was told that he was out.

Speaking on his own website the Spaniard said, “On December 13th, when Red Bull Racing told me that I was no longer part of the family I said that I was not going to judge them, neither I was feeling like a victim and that this was not a drama.

“But let me say just one thing: they hurt me, and moreover, it was unnecessary.

“I was verbally confirmed during the Brazilian GP. Hence, being confirmed by Red Bull and STR, I rejected a very good offer. Back on December 11th, Toro Rosso sent me to a PR event in Madrid, in the Cepsa headquarters to participate in the awarding medal ceremony to the employees with the longest seniority in the company and the Christmas dinner, with a very well prepared script from Faenza where I was supposed to talk about Toro Rosso, Cepsa and myself in 2012. Two days later, I received a phone call saying that they were not counting on me. They were two phone calls no longer than two minutes each.

“Neither I nor anyone else will ever understand why, having largely fulfilled all expectations that the team asked for, having improved my position from 2010 and having beaten my team-mate, I was ceased on December 14th when there was no reaction time to have a good option to run in 2012.”

The man in charge of Red Bull’s driver programme, Helmut Marko, explained his reasons for dropping Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi at the time thus, “Toro Rosso was created to give young drivers a chance. Alguersuari and Buemi had that chance for three years and after that period it’s possible to evaluate a drivers’ development.

“We didn’t see in them any possibility of growth. Both are Grand Prix drivers, but for us that’s not enough. We want Grand Prix winners.”

Toro Rosso now has Daniel Ricciardo and Jean Eric Vergne in the cars for 2012 and they started testing today in Jerez alongside the other contenders. It’s a great opportunity for both men, one of whom will aspire to fill a seat at Red Bull alongside Sebastian Vettel at some point in the future, depending on what happens with Mark Webber.

“I am not thinking about 2013…obviously there is probably a chance for 2013 with Red Bull Racing but I will not answer these kinds of questions because at the moment I don’t want to see too far ahead,” said Vergne.

Ricciardo, meanwhile, is the more experienced of the pair, having driven half a season with HRT last year. “It’s a bit emotional actually, seeing the first F1 car that will be mine to drive from the start of the season,” he said.

Like many of its rival teams, Red Bull’s designers have gone for a step down to the low nose, keeping the main chassis level high, to improve airflow to the vanes, around the sidepods and to the floor or the car. Red Bull were the team that led the way in this line of aerodynamic thinking and most other teams have followed, but not McLaren, the odd ones out.

There is a school of thought that McLaren did not need to do the stepped nose because they anticipated the 2012 rules in their 2011 design and thus have an already well sorted concept. But more of that another time.

Last season was a runaway success for Sebastian Vettel in particular and this had a lot to do with Red Bull perfecting the exhaust blown diffuser (EBD), around which the car was designed and running the car with rake so the rear of the car was raised off the ground to maximise the effect of the diffuser.

This year the playing field has been levelled, with EBD’s banned and the designers forced to lower the rear of the car to harvest what downforce they can from the diffuser.

But engineers in the pit lane say that the diffuser is still an area of great interest and that there are some innovative ideas coming on stream around diffusers for 2012.

The tone of the messaging from the Red Bull team today was that its big advantage has gone with the banning of the EBD, the field will be closed up by the rule changes and that the RB8 is now essentially a four year old design.

You can choose to believe that or not, but as the team to beat at the end of last season, there is no reason to suspect that the designers have missed any and every opportunity to claw back the downforce lost in the changes and to stay ahead of the opposition.

But we are dealing with diminishing returns; this season and next are the final years of this era of Formula 1; from 2014 onwards the cars and their powertrains will change massively. So over the next two seasons we should see the cars close up more and more as the avenues for exploiting new ideas dwindle.

Vettel, for example, said, “It would be wrong to go into this season and expect 2011 to happen again, as in getting into the lead early and having a very big gap to other competitors in the Championship.

“So I think it will be very, very tight this year and anything else would be a surprise to be honest. Looking at the cars, you know there’s not much room we have left to play (with) for designers and to find something extra. You know, the last two years we have had two big things taken away, the double diffusers, plus, for this year, the system around the blown exhaust. So we are missing that and therefore I think it’s difficult to really create a difference.”

One talking point around the RB8 is the duct which is set into the step change on the nose of the car. It could be a red herring, as this launch pic doesn’t look very real. Many feel the launch version of the McLaren was a red herring, but if it’s genuine this inlet duct is clearly going to serve a purpose, which is likely to be aerodynamic.

With McLaren’s F Duct rear wing idea, a much smaller air intake on the monocoque fed a channel which led to an outlet the rear wing, which helped to shed drag. In today’s rules the DRS Wing has the same effect now, so there’s no reason to try that on the rear wing. It’s possible it could be working on the front wing, something Mercedes explored last season.

However one key area where downforce has been lost is the diffuser and the rear end – one wonders whether this inlet duct, which will harvest a lot of air given it’s size, is channeling additional airflow to the rear, possibly to work with the diffuser in some way.

It could be to cool the KERS, which was a major headache for the team last season. But the father of the all conquering generation of Red Bull cars is Adrian Newey and he’s famous for not having too many openings for cooling as they cut downforce, especially not one as large as this. Everyone expects something cunning from him, but he downplayed what he’d been able to do with this design. He said today,

“RB7 was designed around the exhaust, this year knowing that the exhaust position from last year would be taken away, we’ve had to go back and look at how we developed the car through the last one and two years.. and try.. to re-evaluate.

“Probably one of the key things there is the rear ride height. The exhaust allowed us to run a high rear ride height, it’s much more difficult without that to sustain a high rear height so we have to go back down and have to redevelop the car around that lower ride height.”

The cars run for the first time tomorrow. Jerez won’t teach us much, but the two tests at Barcelona will and a fairly accurate picture of underlying pace should be possible to establish by the end of the Barcelona tests.

Let’s hope Vettel is correct and the field has closed right up for 2012.

You can follow all the action from Jerez and the other tests in real time with tweets from teams, drivers and journalists at the circuit at http://twitter.jamesallenonf1.com