You just can't get enough!

Testing, that is. We're a fickle breed, race drivers. One minute I was feeling really overworked on the testing front last season, then come January I was getting withdrawal symptoms after being out of the cockpit for a few weeks...

Testing is the vital key to your performance in an Fl car, and the pace of development is quite astonishing to people outside the sport. In a top team there is always something new. As Osamu Goto, head of Sauber Petronas Engineering says: "In Fl if you are not developing, you are standing still."

And because of that you simply have to keep driving the car, to learn as much about it as you can, to discover its secrets, and to find new ways of making it go quickly. The time to do all this is during testing. You cannot do that sort of intensive experimental work at a race meeting, because then you've only got two days in which to prepare for a grand prix. Your tyres and laps are restricted, so you've really got to be focused. Testing is where you develop the car; by the time you get to a race meeting you are concentrating totally on setting it up for that specific track.

On Friday you're really trying to find out what the track is like, and looking for a balance to the handling. On Friday morning the track is always "green". You usually aim to find a reasonable balance, something you can work with, by Friday afternoon. Then on Saturday morning, provided you've done reasonable times on Friday afternoon, you'll probably do a couple of runs with a reasonable fuel load, to find a datum for a race set-up, then towards the end you'll take the fuel out and hone your qualifying set-up. By then the track condition is usually about as good as it's going to get, and you have a better idea which tyres to opt for. On Sunday morning you work more on the race set-up, checking that you still have the balance.

The lack of test mileage with Benetton in 1995 was the crux of my problem there. The B195 was a difficult car, and I guess you can say that Michael Schumacher was a difficult team-mate! I probably did two meaningful days of testing that whole season, so I was doing all my learning about the car at the races. Not good.

One of the things I most wanted when I went to Red Bull Sauber Petronas was equality of testing. In 1996 I got precisely that, and I think my performances against Heinz-Harald Frentzen reflected my true ability. By one of those ironies, last year I did the lion's share for Red Bull Sauber Petronas, and it was almost too much. I did say that racing drivers are capricious!

Through force of circumstance we were not always settled as far as the identity of a second driver was concerned, so inevitably the majority of the test burden fell on my shoulders. That meant at least 20 tests in addition to the 17 races. There was at least one test after every race, plus several others. Compared to Benetton it represented the other extreme. The optimum would be 10 or so in a year, with your team-mate sharing the load. That way you keep fresh but you also keep sharp. Over to you, Jean!

For testing you need a different mentality to racing or qualifying. You need to be very patient, and to bring a very high level of consistency and analysis to your performance because much of what you are testing will lead to improvements in the future. You can't lead the team the wrong way. You need to be very analytical and very accurate with your feedback. It's really quite an art, and I enjoy it so long as I can see that the work is having a positive effect on progress.

So far this year I've had three days with the C17 at Fiorano, which went well, and two mostly wet days in Barcelona. Like the other new generation cars the C17 understeers on entry and snaps to oversteer on the middle exit to corners, so there's a little work to do on set-up; but the latest version of the Sauber Petronas SPE 01 D engine is definitely smoother, both in terms of lack of vibration and delivery of power. That's partly down to the wider torque curve. All in all it felt very nice.

The best thing so far about the C17 is that it seems to be much, much better than the Cl6 over bumps That was our abiding problem last year, and it really hurt us at times, but the Cl7 just seems to flow really well over surface undulations and irregularities. It felt very good over the bumps at Fiorano, and over those funny sort of ripples at Barcelona.

Our trend looks promising, and by the time you read [in F1 Racing mid-February] we'll have completed a five-day test at Barcelona. That's the critical one that will decide who will be quick in Melbourne. Hopefully Jean and I will be right on the pace.

These GP Columns appeared exclusively in F1 Racing magazine every month.
The columns are reproduced by kind permission of the Editor, Matt Bishop.
With thanks to F1 Racing ©. All rights reserved.
This page prepared 11th March 1998.