With less than a week until the 2019 cars hit the track in Melbourne, let’s take a careful look at the preseason testing data and what we can expect from the latest driver match-ups. Owing to time constraints, you have my apologies for this coming a little later than usual. Hopefully better late than never!

Preseason testing

In past years, I have used a method to analyze long runs from testing that has proven to be quite accurate for predicting the within-in season pecking order. You can find this method described in detail is last year’s preseason analysis post. To briefly summarize the steps:

1. I collected stints that were known to be part of a race simulation. Since these stints were strung together by pit-stops only for tyre changes and typically ran close to a full race distance, the fuel loads are known. These stints can be…