Craig. wrote on Apr 14^th, 2008 at 1:29pm:



Firstly, with slicks any car will be faster. As for the nose, if it gives the car a huge advantage, I would not be surprised if it was banned after a race or two, especially if the other teams are not up to speed and doing it themselves. When you start doing things with the aerodynamic that are outside the envelope, the FIA jumps on it quite quickly. Examples, being Alpha Romeo and the fan, active suspension, but more in the direction of this, the praying mantis wings that Ferrari put on the side pods a few seasons back. We will just have to wait and see, but if it is a Ferrari one two and the rest 5 minutes behind, be prepared to the FIA to act.

Interestingly, McLaren chose to try and adjust the car to an approximation of the very different 2009 aerodynamic regulations whist Ferrari zipped about in todays car with tomorrows tyres on. They must be confident if they can have time to play. Equally McLaren are using valuable testing time at the beginning of this season to start on next seasons challengers. Maybe they also have time to play about a bit.

Matt

Edit, Also McLaren where faster on a 2009-ish setup than BMW on a 2008 setup

ferrari did the 2008 work aswell as 2009 tyre evaluations. their 2008 work had a time of 1:22.006 I believe.
Mclaren have an extra days testing this week with a private day on friday IIRC. So they can use today to do their 2009 evaluations.
Ferrari will be doing their 2009 work on wednesday when Michael Schumacher takes to the track. Ferrari have tasked him to the development of the F2009 and Bridgestone have asked him to also be onboard in the development of the 09 tyres.

As for the hole in the nose, word has it pegged to about 0.5 seconds in time gains. Quite frankly if thats true then it will be 2004 all over again. And it'll just be a case of when either Kimi or Felipe wins the title. I dont want that and I cant believe anyone does. However as several engineers have stated, that hole in the nose while technically brilliant, is also technically difficult to get to work as it varies greatly from track to track and speed to speed.
I think this test will proove absolutly nothing in terms of figuring out who's quickest. As everyone will be testing 2008 with 2009 setups and then mixing in their development for this year while running the slicks and so on.