Six of the Best: Testing tales

Formula One testing today may be concentrated on a series of regulated and chaste plods around some of the season's least compelling circuits, but a look back through the archives shows that there's sometimes more to testing than incessant red flags and Flo Viz paint.

BRAWN SHOW BRAINS

Brawn GP's single season of Formula One remains one of the most stunning success stories in the history of the sport.

Consecutive dismal seasons in 2007 and 2008, allied to the global financial downturn, saw Honda announce their withdrawal from Formula One in December 2008. A long winter of uncertainty ensued before a management buyout, led by former team bosses Ross Brawn and Nick Fry, was announced in late February 2009.

With sweeping regulation changes being introduced to the sport for the 2009 season, Honda had started development work on their 2009 car early. Brawn, inheriting Honda's Brackley base, staff and infrastructure as part of the buy-out, also took ownership of the planned Honda chassis, rechristened the Brawn GP-001.

With a hastily bolted-on Mercedes engine welded to the chassis and Honda drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello retained, Brawn arrived at the second pre-season test in Barcelona simply content to have a chance to make up the numbers. By the end of the four-day test though Brawn had stunningly demonstrated themselves to be the class of the field, the sponsor-free car displaying bullet proof reliability and incredible pace up to a second per lap faster than its rivals.

The impression was confirmed at the final test in Jerez, where Brawn once again topped the timesheets. Button and Barrichello had not only unexpectedly retained their places on the grid, but were suddenly installed as championship favourites after their incredible pre-season form. A crushing 1-2 in the opening race in Australia was a prelude to a dominant sequence of early-season performances, laying the foundation for Button and Brawn to sensationally claim the drivers' and constructors' championships respectively.

THE PROFESSOR'S CONSULTANCY

Fernando Alonso's return to McLaren for 2015 demonstrates Ron Dennis' surprising capacity to welcome back into the fold drivers who have seemingly fallen irrevocably foul of the Woking hierarchy, but Alonso is far from the only world champion with whom Big Ron has kissed and made up for the benefit of the McLaren cause.

Alain Prost had left McLaren under a cloud after winning his third championship with the team in 1989, the seismically fraught relationship with Ayrton Senna and McLaren's seeming favouritism towards the Brazilian leading to a tense parting of the ways.

At the end of the 1993 season, unenthused by the prospect of staying with Williams to race alongside the incoming Senna, Prost had announced his retirement. With Senna's departure however there was a champion-sized vacancy at McLaren - and Dennis pursued Prost's services with vigour.

In February 1994 it was announced that Prost would test the new McLaren-Peugeot MP4/9, with Dennis declaring that 'this will hopefully lead to Alain driving for us this season'. However, the Peugeot engine was dismally down on power, and after testing at Estoril it was clear to Prost that McLaren would not be competitive at the start of the season.

The Frenchman deferred his decision until the last possible minute, but two weeks before the start of the season McLaren announced that Martin Brundle would partner Mika Hakkinen for the 1994 campaign. Prost remained as a technical consultant though and would test regularly for McLaren over the next two years - offering his expert insight on some of the least competitive cars in McLaren's history as the team endured a three-year winless slump.

ZONTA'S MIRACLE ESCAPE

The years of unlimited testing in F1 were marked by regular accidents as teams pushed their cars to the limit freed from the restrictions of limited mileage. The death of Elio de Angelis during testing for Brabham in 1986 saw a re-assessment of the safety practices around test sessions, but near-fatal testing accidents for Jean Alesi, JJ Lehto and Pedro Lamy during the 1994 season demonstrated the lingering dangers of the in-season development race.

The mid to late 90s saw a significant drop-off in injuries sustained at the wheel, as ever-improved safety regulations saw drivers such as Pedro Diniz, Ukyo Katayama, Martin Brundle and Giancarlo Fisichella enjoy miraculous escapes from spectacular airborne accidents.

One of the most incredible survival stories saw Brazilian rookie Riccardo Zonta walk away unscathed from a horrifying rollercoaster ride of an accident at Eau Rouge in practice for the 1999 Belgian Grand Prix. The crash, an inevitable consequence of a pact with BAR teammate Jacques Villeneuve to try and tackle Eau Rouge flat-out, wasn't the most alarming accident Zonta would suffer in his F1 career though.

In testing at Silverstone ahead of the 2000 British Grand Prix, Zonta's BAR left the circuit at Stowe corner - where Michael Schumacher had suffered a broken leg the previous year. Following a suspension failure, Zonta's car left the circuit at such high speed that it vaulted the tyre barriers, rolling over the catch fencing and smashing through a concrete wall to land upright in a spectator enclosure a considerable distance from the circuit.

A single grainy picture of the incident shows Zonta's car inverted at a ludicrous height and angle, but also highlights the most crucial aspect of the accident: the empty grandstands. The consequences of such a crash during a race weekend, with the car landing in a spectator area, could have been horrifying.

Zonta suffered nothing worse than a cut finger in the accident, but it was not to be his last such misadventure - a brake failure in testing at Monza seeing Zonta escape yet again with only minor bruises after destroying his car against the barriers at Parabolica.

SCHUMACHER TAKES A SPIN FOR SAUBER

Before confirming his second retirement at the end of the 2012 campaign, rumours swirled about a potential deal for Michael Schumacher to join Sauber and extend his last hurrah. Given Schumacher's sportscar racing heritage with Peter Sauber it would have represented a homecoming of sorts - but it certainly wouldn't have been the first time Schumacher had driven a Sauber F1 car.

In 1997, Schumacher, then driving for Ferrari, was embroiled in a tense title battle with Williams' Jacques Villeneuve. A few days after the Italian Grand Prix, in which Schumacher had finished sixth, the German was to be found behind the wheel of a Sauber C16 at a secret test at Ferrari's private Fiorano circuit.
Sauber at the time enjoyed a close partnership with Ferrari, who supplied the Swiss team with customer engines and gearboxes. Sauber's lead driver, Johnny Herbert, had scored a podium in Hungary and four further points finishes, but his teammates Nicola Larini, Gianni Morbidelli and Norberto Fontana had all struggled in the second car during the season. The team therefore turned to Schumacher for advice on how to solve the C16's recurring balance issues.

Completing 84 laps of Fiorano in a sponsor-free chassis with his distinctive original bundesflagge helmet protruding from the cockpit, Schumacher reportedly emerged from the car looking rather pleased with the experience and gave the Sauber engineers a detailed debrief.

Only a few pictures were taken due to the secretive nature of the test, and none of the laps were officially timed - although reports at the time suggested that Schumacher had lapped in a characteristically competitive time of 1:00.10s, only a second shy of his best time in that year's championship-challenging Ferrari F310.

McLAREN LAY DOWN A MARKER

Over the past twenty-five years no man has had as profound an impact on the design of Formula One cars as Adrian Newey. Across three separate dynasties with Williams, McLaren and Red Bull, Newey has been responsible for designing some of F1's most iconic, and dominant, cars.

Perhaps no Newey car announced itself with a statement of intent as ominously as the 1998 McLaren MP4-13 though. Joining McLaren midway through the 1997 season, Newey watched from the sidelines as the team returned to winning ways after a three-year drought -culminating in a 1-2 at the season's final round in Jerez.

For 1998, sweeping rule changes including the introduction of grooved tyres and narrowing of the cars afforded all of the teams a blank slate. Newey had spent much of 1997 considering the challenges of the new rules, and since starting at McLaren in August had been working exclusively on the development of the 1998 MP4-13. As is often the case with drastic new regulations, one team was able to steal a march on the competition - and in this instance it was Newey and McLaren who emerged as the clear class of the field.

Launched in a 'racing orange' heritage livery in early February, the car made its public bow in testing at Barcelona - and duly blew away the opposition to the tune of almost a second per lap. Daily bulletins from Barcelona showed the McLaren drivers Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard taking it in turns to break the winter testing lap record. Chief Designer Neil Oatley modestly recalled, "we didn't really expect to be so competitive... and literally the first run we did was quicker than anyone else had [lapped] all week, so that gave us an inkling we had a reasonably competitive car."

A thorough pre-season programme saw further parallel tests at Silverstone and Paul Ricard, with similarly spectacular results. Whilst the drivers and their rivals were naturally cagy when pressed on the performance, Benetton's Test Team chief, Tim Wright, gave the game away when he revealed that "nobody had expected this sort of pace", and that McLaren had done "one hell of a job".

If testing had only hinted at the MP4-13's awesome performance, then the first race of the season, where Hakkinen and Coulthard lapped the entire field for a dominant 1-2 finish, crushingly affirmed the car's superiority. Only a combination of McLaren unreliability and the brilliance of a peak-era Michael Schumacher in the Ferrari made the season competitive, but McLaren and Newey were ultimately rewarded with both championships by the season's end.

A NOT SO SECRET AFFAIR

Restrictions on in-season testing have been in place since 2003, when test sessions on the Friday of Grand Prix meetings were offered to teams in exchange for a reduction of testing mileage allowed outside of the race calendar. In 2007, annual testing was further capped at 30,000 km per season, before the 2010 regulations banned private testing entirely - with the exception of sanctioned young driver and team tests.

Whilst accusations have often been cast around the various straight-line tests, demonstration runs and filming days permitted within the regulations, never has the unsanctioned running of a Formula One car caused as much outcry as the controversial tyre test held by Pirelli and Mercedes after the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix.

Pirelli's tyres were under intense scrutiny throughout the 2013 season, with high wear leading many to suggest that tyre management had become too important to race strategy. Under pressure to change the composition of the tyres to increase durability, Pirelli announced plans to introduce new compounds at the Canadian Grand Prix.

The new tyres needed testing, however, so Pirelli engaged Mercedes to run a secret 1,000 km, three-day tyre test at Barcelona immediately after the Spanish GP. Mercedes had struggled with high tyre wear all season, and in Spain their drivers Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton had qualified 1-2 only to fall away to finish 6th and 12th respectively.

When the story broke during the following race in Monaco, there was uproar - led by Mercedes' front-running rivals Red Bull and Ferrari. Both Pirelli and Mercedes denied any wrongdoing, with Pirelli claiming that their contract as tyre supplier allowed them call on teams to assist with testing new tyres as and when required. Central to the controversy though was the fact that Mercedes tested their current car and race drivers with the new tyres, offering a potentially crucial competitive advantage and knowledge of the new compounds.

Victories for Mercedes in two of the three races following the revelations fuelled the rumours that the team had gained a performance advantage, but both Mercedes and Pirelli escaped severe punishment - with the FIA delivering reprimands all round at a tribunal meeting in June.