[Spyderman]

After reading on the Toyota and Audi threads what basically boiled down to claiming that both Audi and Toyota were really out for an early spring stroll, whilst Porsche was doing its very best to set the fastest time, I thought I would try and inject some sensible (I hope) counter points.

• As we all know, Porsche was testing their high(er) down force package for the first time. It strikes me that Paul Ricard , in the configuration that was being used for the prologue, is not exactly a high DF type of track. It of course has sectors 1 and 3 where some good DF is a great help, but the long Mistral straight is not at all kind to those running a high DF package. This was more than evident in the delta between the top speeds set by Porsche and the other two competitors. The Sector 2 times were also illustrative as Porsche's best sector 2 time was 0.291 slower than Audi's best for that sector, and a full 0.656 seconds off Toyotas best.
• Of course Porsche did do some qualy simulations, but these were usually done right at the start of the session, and were not nearly as frequent as some are claiming.
• An interesting observation is to see Porsche doing a stint of 9 laps where only 2 of the laps (one being an out-lap) were over 1:39.7 (last stint of Day 2 - Afternoon)
• It is really difficult to make any real comparisons between the three cars (at this point in time) as they were all running different aero packages , all in differing stages of development.
• I read somewhere that Toyotas were claiming to be fastest in all sectors and that were often on a quick(est) lap and would back out in the last sector. I am afraid that this is simply not the impression one gets from looking at the sector times. Toyota was never quickest in S1 with their best S1 time being 0.575 off Porsche's best time for that sector.
• It also does not seem reasonable to me, that one would give up testing an entire sector of the track over a period of two days, even if your DF package is not ideal. Testing is all about trying to find out (gather data) as much as possible about as many conditions as possible.
• I think that we can safely (relatively) say the following: Porsche has , at this stage, an edge in reliability. They also seem to have a slight edge over both Toyota and Audi . Now, will they retain that edge into Silverstone?. I don't know, but over those two days at Paul Ricard, they were the car to beat. That is all we can safely say at this time.