F1: BrawnGP stuns with testing performance

Maybe it's cultural thing: perhaps there were just too many cooks at Honda GP and now, the stripped down decision making process where drivers and engineers make most of the decisions means that things can happen faster.

For whilst pre-season testing is notoriously not a guide to full season performance, with the teams all starting on a relatively even playing field of significant specification changes, and with three teams running Mercedes engines (McLaren and Force India being the others) and with heavy restrictions on testing generally, this season's pre-season running may be seen as being a little more reliable than usual.

And so, when Jenson Button surprised everyone with rapid times on the first day of the Barcelona test, the theory was that it was a fluke and that no one else was really trying - after all, they were probably still tinkering with aero settings and tyre pressures, that sort of thing. Several teams have been testing KERS (a kinetic energy recovery system that stores energy created under braking and releases it on demand) but have decided not to use it in Melbourne. BrawnGP does not have it. Although McLaren's Hamilton has said he likes the system it is still unproven in a race situation.

Not so. For yesterday, Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen and the Williams of Kazuki Nakajima went quickest. And BrawnGP's Rubens Barrichello was third fastest. And on the second day of testing, few teams are sandbagging.

Brawn says he chose Mercedes engines over Ferrari engines for simple engineering reasons: the Mercede engine fits the chassis better.