Hamilton crashes, Raikkonen on top in quiet first day of F1 test

2014 F1 season

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The 2014 F1 season got off to a subdued start on the first day of testing at Jerez as most teams completed only a handful of laps, if any at all.

With Lotus absent from the test, McLaren’s MP4-29 failed to emerge from the garage all day and Marussia revealed their MR03 had only recently left their factory.

World champion Sebastian Vettel only took to the track for the final few minutes of the test after Red Bull hurried to complete his RB10. Williams and Caterham’s cars were also not seen until the afternoon.

Mercedes seemed to be in the best shape as the test began. Lewis Hamilton joined the track shortly after 9am and began piling up installation laps.

Kimi Raikkonen’s first run for Ferrari since returning to the team did not go so well as his F14 T stopped halfway around the lap.

But their fortunes reversed over the remainder of the session. Raikkonen logged the most laps of any driver – 31 – and topped the times with a 1’27.104, though at this stage they are far from representative.

Hamilton, meanwhile, suffered a crash at turn one after the front wing failed on his Mercedes on the start/finish straight. He climbed from the car uninjured but the car did not run again for the rest of the day.

DriverCarBest timeLapsDifference
1Kimi RaikkonenFerrari F14 T1’27.10431
2Lewis HamiltonMercedes W051’27.820180.716
3Valtteri BottasWilliams-Mercedes FW361’30.08272.978
4Sergio PerezForce India-Mercedes VJM071’33.161116.057
5Jean-Eric VergneToro Rosso-Renault STR91’36.530159.426
6Esteban GutierrezSauber-Ferrari C331’42.257715.153
7Sebastian VettelRed Bull-Renault RB103
8Marcus EricssonCaterham-Renault CT051

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2014 F1 season


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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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45 comments on “Hamilton crashes, Raikkonen on top in quiet first day of F1 test”

  1. Lewis crashing on the first day of testing seems to be a ritual for him.

    1. to be fair you should know the details before you make a comment like that, he had a high speed front wing failure on the strait which took all his down force away so he never made the turn.

      1. what makes you think @kingshark didn’t know that?

        It was clearly a joke, or a comical remark (wether or not you found it funny or not)

        1. And even if it wasn’t, he still crashed, regardless the circumstances.

  2. Did you mean far from representative of a F1 car or an Horseless Carriage.

  3. In a year when reliability is supposed to be more important, I’m really surprised that some teams didn’t even venture out. Did McLaren have an issue of some sort, which stopped them running?

  4. How many laps did others do? Did RBR only complete the installation lap?

    1. @fleik

      Look at the last column of the table at the end of the article.

  5. Will Raikkonen be used more for car setup? He has said, in his usual Kimi style that the workload this year isn’t very different. Can he just take more of the surprises? I had read that he had also been doing time in the simulator for Ferrari but he hadn’t done much with Lotus. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Thanks

  6. Today’s performance reminded me a bit of the film Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, everyone raring to go , but a lot seemed to be lacking in the preparation.Of course that was supposed to be a comedy !!

  7. Of all the cars to crash and smash it’s nosecone into 1000 pieces it would have to be the only one which was aesthetically pleasing in the nosecone department. Poor Merc.

    1. The Caterham surely needs the nose job urgently. We need to see how these cars fare against the all time worst F1 noses ever made. I can only think of a few looking worse from the front than the Caterham.

    2. @calum – my thoughts exactly.

      truly ironic.

      I stayed up late last night to see the launch pics of the W05, then to wake up this morning to the news that it had a wing failure and smashed up the nose… d’oh!!

  8. I know times are irrelevant really when it’s only the first test, but I wonder why the quickest time today was around 10 seconds slower than the quickest time last year? That’s a pretty big gap, but I’m sure I shouldn’t read too much into it. However I really hope that the overall laptimes this season aren’t too much slower than previous years.

    1. Well, the cars are heavier, have less power and lower downforce. What did you expect?

    2. I think it comes down to teams not really pushing today; there’s other testing in the future where teams can eventuallly do proper flying laps. I think today was just a matter of sorting out any mechanical/electrical gremlins in the car designs. I don’t think any driver would say they even came close to pushing to the limit today.

      I would only be concerned about the pace of the cars if we were 10 seconds off by the end of the final test. As it stands now, fastest lap today was some 8 to 9 seconds off last year’s fastest lap on the opening day (from Button). Keep in mind in recent years, the V8 was bulletproof for all intents and purposes, and teams were busy gathering data on tyres/aero. This season, it’s all of that plus a brand new, complex power unit.

      1. I agree, I don’t expect the cars to be much slower than last year, maybe 2 seconds or so.

        Also, the engines weren’t turned up to their maximal power today.

    3. Warmer track, different tyres, Hardly any rubber on the track (93 laps done today in total, whereas in the article you link to, 2 cars completed over 80 laps each)

      I’d expect the true lap time difference to be around 3-4 seconds at worst..

    4. You answered your own question there, but Wolff did say they were “only using 10’000 rpm” which would explain a lot for you.

  9. So all in all the cars combined did only a handful of laps more than the car that was on track the most last year on the first day of testing alone!

    1. I think Autosport said there was a total of 600+ laps run last year on the first day of testing. I think this year we may have reached a tenth of that?

      1. less than a 6th

  10. A front wing failure suggests a lot of downforce and maybe an attempt to have it flex to lower it closer to the tarmac. I wonder how many of these they have available for testing?

    1. If you take a look at the Mercedes launch photos, the front wing supports appear to be quite small (if that’s the wing that Hamilton had on his car). Strange for a wing to just “fail” without bumping into something, like Alonso in Malaysia (or was it China?) this year.

      1. Unusual, but not unknown – remember that the front wing of the VR-01 collapsed during testing (and that is a car that certainly wasn’t producing a lot of front downforce) due to a manufacturing defect.
        Similarly, remember that Hamilton’s nosecone collapsed during the Korean GP last year due to mounting issues? For the moment, I would be inclined to suggest that it was a manufacturing defect – maybe, should it happen again, it could be a design flaw, but for the moment I would say that manufacturing issues are more likely.

        1. I was thinking about that, too. F1 can have some deceptively flimsy looking pieces, so if it’s not manufactured right then such failures shouldn’t be a surprise.

          This is probably the most reasonable explanation, since I can’t imagine a top-tier engineering team not taking into account the fact that the front wing produces downforce, therefore needing adequate mounting to the car =)

        2. But you’re comparing a Virgin to a Mercedes. Didnt Virgin have problems to just finish the first race, due to fuel?

    2. Yep, and he wasn’t running at maximal speed. I heard he was going at 260 kph when the wing failed.

  11. So the new driver numbers don’t even have to be visible from the side of the car?! I was hoping they’d have to be included on the rear wing endplates or sidepods.

    Seems a bit pointless…

    1. Yes, no rules about numbers, but they must have a stupid ugly fin thing on the back, and the rear wing endplates seem to be getting bigger and bigger.
      That’s where you instinctively look for a number, if you’re used to Indycar or 80s/90s F1.

  12. something with a blackberry logo crashes and this is news !

    1. Bwahahahaha.
      Perhaps it will be the best of the best like the BBRY too…..

  13. Hamilton’s crash was caught on video, here’s the Youtube link:

      1. W (@yesyesyesandyesagain)
        28th January 2014, 19:01

        Wow, the coincidental timing of that shot is great.

        1. @yesyesyesandyesagain +1!!!

          @rally-man thanks for sharing that. find of the day!

  14. Even with the crash the Mercedes was still the best looking car.

  15. Speaking of quiet……what do the new cars sound like!???

    1. Here’s Kimi on the Ferrari:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4hDJ7X0nNw

      I like it!

      1. Yeah…going to take a bit to get used to but, for sure, on the cool side of things

  16. The Headline to this article is correct in more ways than one.

    I was there today and left the circuit before the end feeling totally deflated.
    The cars sound ***** !!!

  17. The front wing struts attaching the wing to the nose cone does not look as robust as on the other cars. It simply looks too flimsy to be able to deal with the mount of downforce that wing is expected to generate. I expect a lot more incidents like this; unless Mercedes revisit the design.

Comments are closed.