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At the first day of the Bahrain test, there were several hours of unexpected rain which prevented any running from the teams. This was down to no teams bringing suitable tyres, leaving them no option but to wait for the track to dry.
Not one of the ten teams selected any intermediate or wet tyres for the test because Bahrain usually only sees 10mm of rainfall over the entirety of April.
However, there was perhaps a warning sign on Sunday, where a few drops of rain fell before the race.
“The rain was a bit of a surprise,” admitted Mercedes’ chief race engineer Andrew Shovlin. “It wasn’t forecast but ended up costing us four or five hours of our programme.
“We selected the tyres for this test back in December and not expecting rain, we chose only dry tyres. So, once the track was properly wet we didn’t have any option but to wait for it to dry again.”
Williams' senior race engineer, Dave Robson added: “It was a very frustrating day for everyone here in Bahrain. Conditions first thing this morning looked reasonable following the dust clouds yesterday and some overnight rain.
“However, some further rain meant that little happened between mid-morning and early evening when conditions improved again.
"We were able to complete some aero testing early in the morning with George, concentrating on data gathering with the rake instrumentation. We then started a performance programme before the rain came.”
The forecast for the second day of the test is looking to be dry, and as always you can follow live updates here on GPToday.net.
Grand Prix of Belgium
G. Zhou
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Posts: 80
This is one of the typical suck situations that makes F1 boring and could be much improved.
TIRES: why dont the teams get enought WET, SOFT, HARD(ANY) tires to run in these conditions. Why cant the teams have SPARE SOFT-WET-HARD TIRES to make test, practices, and even QUALIFYING much more interesting. F1 cars should be doing more laps in their QUALIFYING atemps. Not just 2 fast laps in 15 minutes per qualy session. Thats just boring. More tires. More racing please....