Testing times for F1

End of season: It’s been a long, hard year of racing, and the F1 world is looking forward to easing off until the start of the new season, right?

Wrong.

For many in F1, the next few months will be among the busiest of the year as the preparation for the new season gathers pace.

So what does happen over winter in F1? Lots…

It can be torture for the teams

Some work on the 2017 season’s car will have started before the 2016 car was ready to race, such is the planning required in F1.

The pace will have picked up in May and June, as more resources were diverted to the 2017 car’s development, but the end of the last race marks the beginning of an incredibly intense period of work behind the F1 scenes.

Wings, pipes, suspension components, brake ducts, controls, liveries and thousands of other elements all have to be created.

According to the Williams Martini guys, a team will manufacture around 5,000 parts, each of which has to be conceived, designed and made. There are around 20,000 other parts from external suppliers too, and just as much work will go into redesigning those.

While some of this work will have taken place during 2016, the winter break is when all this has to be ramped up – and, of course, the cars have to be built, ready for testing.

New concepts will be developed, ideas will be suggested and tested, experiments will take place as cars take shape and, inevitably, change shape too.

This season will be particularly busy because of the raft of rule changes coming in affecting aerodynamics, amongst other things.

In addition, there are new tyres to be tested – both by Pirelli, and by the teams – to start building data on how they perform in particular conditions.

Winter testing is heavily controlled by the FIA – teams have to use the same circuits – and it’s crucial to have working cars ready for the first test, to avoid giving opponents a crucial advantage.

Around the holiday break, teams will start to fire up their new cars for the first time – and the pressure really starts to build if everything is not ready.

Last year, McLaren cancelled their Christmas break after the season’s opening race, in Melbourne, was brought forward by two weeks, throwing their plans into chaos.

…and then there’s the testing

Testing for the 2017 season will get under way on February 27, for four days, with a second test session on March 7-10.

Given the secrecy that surrounds F1 car development, testing is as much about seeing what others have come up with as it is trying out your own kit. There may be ideas to adopt but teams have to move quickly as the season looms large.

Every team has photographers to call on. They’ll be tasked with a list of cars and parts to try to photograph and upload immediately to team HQ, where designers and other techie types will analyse them for clues and ideas.

It’s in a team’s interests to keep its own breakthroughs as quiet as possible – mechanics and other staff are used to shield cars from lenses, stickers are used to disguise the location of key parts.

Teams may even use decoy photographers to distract a team, while another, more subtle, photographer dives in to capture the required imagery.

Designer Adrian Newey is a master of testing trickery. He has used decals that looked like exhausts to disguise where Red Bull were placing their real exhausts when blown diffusers were making a comeback.

He also had a particularly brazen approach to stopping photographers focusing on a heavily developed front wing: Newey told the team to ignore it, instead fussing around the rear wing. Inevitably, all the attention was focused on that (quite ordinary) rear wing, even though the ground-breaking front wing was on full display.

Pitlanes will sometimes be swept for spying devices, thermal imaging cameras will be used to find out more about opponents’ cars, engines and tyres, every team is at it.

And, of course, there is the disinformation.

A team that suspects its car is fast will run with heavy fuel loads so as not to attract too much attention. A team that’s struggling may pop in a few qualifying laps with minimum fuel, if only to stop sponsors getting jumpy before the season is even under way.

And there are other reasons why a team might want to appear better than it really is – drivers may be negotiating contracts, which might bring money into a team, and a favourable headline can always help things along. Talking of drivers…

It’s not all fun being a driver

For some drivers, the old season doesn’t end on the day of the last race.

This year, for example, World Champion Nico Rosberg and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff flew off to Malaysia for an event with sponsor Petronas, before flying back to Europe for more promotional work.

Just because you’re champion doesn’t mean you get to take things easy, quite the reverse.

Most drivers will have some promotional work to do, and all will be expected to put in days of work on the car simulators, as both they and their teams struggle to get to grips with new cars.

Christmas is a chance for the drivers to spend time with their families and friends. While you’ll see some family members in the paddock, F1 drivers are on the road for most of the year and the Christmas break is one of the best chances they have to be with loved ones.

It’s also a chance for them to get rest, both physical and mental, before they get back into training with a vengeance in January and the pressure starts to build on them again.

More champagne, bosses?

F1 has new owners, in Liberty Media, and they’ll be beavering away working out what exactly they can do to generate more money from this cash-rich sport.

Bernie Ecclestone hasn’t left the scene yet, and he’ll be crucial in helping negotiate all manner of deals, from TV rights to how many millions a track will pay to host an F1 race.

Although most teams have already decided on their drivers for next season, there will be plenty of other comings and goings among staff.

Circuits, too, may be upgrading facilities and there’s always the chance Ecclestone will be hanging around with politicians and other influencers as he seeks to spread F1 to even more countries.

And the rest of us? We’re just waiting for it all to start again.