Mugello Testing – Summary of the Three Days

The F1 teams – apart from HRT – were present this week in Italy at the Mugello circuit for three days of testing. Fernando Alonso was the fastest on Tuesday for the first day, which was heavily affected by rain. Romain Grosjean and Kamui Kobayashi then shared the top spot the following day before the Franco-Swiss driver alone topped the timesheets for the third and final day on Thursday.

The Lotus driver set the fastest time over the three days of testing, ahead of Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Kamui Kobayashi, and Daniel Ricciardo. Overall, the drivers from Lotus, Ferrari, Sauber, and Red Bull showed themselves to be quite comfortable during these three days of testing.

These tests were notably an opportunity for some teams to run their test or reserve drivers. This allowed Jérôme d’Ambrosio, Valtteri Bottas, Oliver Turvey, Gary Paffett, Rodolfo Gonzalez, and Jules Bianchi to either make their first laps or return to the cockpit of a 2012 F1 car.

However, it is complicated to have a precise idea of the situation as the teams have established different programs during these private tests. They performed various tasks such as learning about the tires, conducting aerodynamic tests, and testing new parts more generally.

We can still note that Ferrari seems to have made progress with all the new developments introduced, just like Sauber, which had one of the cars with the highest number of evolutions since Bahrain, according to observers present in Italy.

On the incident side, we can mention Force India. The Indian team completed only a few laps compared to its rivals, mainly due to mechanical problems with the VJM05 – which severely limited the testing program.

Beyond the lap times, the objective for the teams and the drivers is to cover the maximum number of laps to gather data that is then analyzed. Nico Rosberg was the most diligent on track. He leads ahead of Sebastian Vettel, Romain Grosjean, his teammate Michael Schumacher, Timo Glock, Fernando Alonso, Daniel Ricciardo, and Heikki Kovalainen. The Finnish driver, unlike the drivers ahead of him in this ranking, completed all his laps in just one day.

The ranking of the best laps by driver for the 2012 Mugello F1 tests

Laps covered by driver during the 2012 Mugello F1 tests

By transposing this ranking of the number of laps completed at Mugello, we find the Mercedes AMG team in the lead. The German team is the only team to have covered more than 300 laps in Italy during these three days of testing. It is ahead of Caterham and Sauber.

At the bottom of the standings, we find Lotus F1, McLaren, Williams, and especially Force India with only 122 laps completed, which is almost three times less than Mercedes and on average twice less than the other teams on the grid.

Laps covered by team during the 2012 Mugello F1 testing