{"id":468630,"date":"2026-02-09T14:36:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/468630\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T14:36:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:36:06","slug":"ex-f1-champion-questions-ferraris-f1-testing-pace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/468630\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-F1 champion questions Ferrari\u2019s F1 testing pace"},"content":{"rendered":"

After topping Formula 1 pre-season testing<\/a> five times in the last ten years and taking the top spot in the Barcelona shakedown a few weeks ago, Damon Hill claims Ferrari <\/a>is using \u2018pointless\u2019 tactics to mislead fans on their performance.<\/p>\n

Pre-season testing is a chance for teams to shakedown their cars for the upcoming season, and with it comes some teams ending the sessions faster than others, sometimes by fine margins but sometimes significant jumps. <\/p>\n

It also frequently sees outliers or unexpected results, with a backmarker jumping through the order during pre-season testing. However, it\u2019s well known that those results are rarely indicative of the true pace or order of the grid in the coming season.<\/p>\n

Hill hammered this point home, urging fans who sit down to watch testing this week not to blindly believe the times teams show. <\/p>\n

Hill said on The Race\u2019s Stay on Track podcast: \u201cThe testing results, what they do is they cover the days and who is quickest and all the rest of it. And sometimes you get unexpected people who are very quick.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it is nearly always wrong. I mean by miles.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou suddenly see teams you don\u2019t expect looking really quick in winter testing.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo viewers and listeners beware, do not go by the lap times you are seeing because if you are quick, which is what we\u2019d do at Williams when we knew we had an advantage, we\u2019d run with 60kg of fuel in the car to slow us down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ferrari\u2019s \u2018pointless\u2019 tactics<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just Williams whom he pointed a finger at. Hill also noted one of the biggest culprits was Ferrari. The prancing horses often opt to take fuel out of the cars to put in \u2018glory laps\u2019, shooting to the top of the timesheets. <\/p>\n

Hill\u2019s belief was that, despite not having the true pace behind the wheel, Ferrari and other teams chose to put in these laps to impress fans and sponsors ahead of the maiden race of the season. <\/p>\n

This was something the former champion branded as \u2018pointless\u2019 as it backfired when the results didn\u2019t follow. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s utterly pointless. The culprits for this were Tom Walkinshaw with Arrows; they wanted to do it with Jordan as well. We\u2019ve got to put a show time in.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t do it. You\u2019ll just look like an idiot when you come to the race, and you\u2019re not quick!<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they do it because the sponsors want an uplift. They want to have something they can crow about.<\/p>\n

\u201cFerrari are also good at doing this, it seems to me. They feel the pressure to just get a lap time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Red Bull are very good at keeping their powder dry and not showing their hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite topping pre-season testing five out of the last ten years, the Maranello-based team have not won a Drivers\u2019 or Constructors\u2019 title since 2007. <\/p>\n

In 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2024, Ferrari has followed up its impressive pre-season performance with lacklustre results. <\/p>\n

READ MORE \u2013 Mercedes cautious of true \u2018performance picture\u2019 amid praise for Red Bull<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After topping Formula 1 pre-season testing five times in the last ten years and taking the top spot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,826,813,816,909,85],"class_list":["post-468630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-hill","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}