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Ive been following their times closely in pre-season testing, and so far, nothing suggests that they have closed the gap on the field at all so far.

I know a lot of it is about data, aero and bedding in new parts etc, but the times should by the end of sessions be somewhat reflective of their position.

Has anyone seen evidence otherwise?

Marussia is consistently propping the timesheets up. Which doesn't bode well at all. They have no reason to sandbag (presumably, unless they've become God during the off season) so it looks like they're just plain slow. Caterham is nearly always second last but around a second ahead of Marussia.

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Official Kamui Kobayashi Fanboy

Well, unless I'm mistaken, Marrusia have KERS this year, so that should help them to close the gap to Caterham. But I still don't think that in a short off season like this they would have made too that much progress. Especially on stable regs.

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Forza Fernando !

Marrussia's car again looks worryingly GP2.... I was hoping they could both be within a second of the midfield on outright pace this season, but it's looking a bit bleak at the moment.

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#ANYONEBUTVETTEL2013

Pick 10 Competition 2013: Current Championship Standing = 21st with 597 points
Pick 10 Podiums: USA 2012 - 1st Place with 205 points

It's only testing.

Problem at the moment is that until Melbourne it's hard to tell. They were aiming at a moving target as the cars in front of them might have moved forward to close the gap on the front teams.

This would mean that if Caterham and Marussia have close the gap the gap might not actually have closed at all as things would have moved forward. This would mean that they would be less far back in total, but still just as far back as they were from those in front of them...

Basically, they are still likely to prop up the timesheets...

Yes it is only testing, but in general the established teams have all set headline times within 2 seconds of the leading times, Caterham and Marussia have been nowhere near.

I guess what would be more interesting is long run comparisons if anyone knows where to find them?

.....

Yes its only testing but the pecking order is still usually the same. Its been the same old teams topping the timesheets, same old teams at the back.

What does that say?

Caterham/Marussia are hiding 5 seconds? Cough.... No..

They are at the back, same back pecking order and no gaps closed.

I would guess that Marussia and Caterham come to testing with a lot less data from simulations, and the data they do have is less accurate. Also, they don't have as solid a base from last season to build on.
This might mean they come in less "hot" and have to actually have to do more substantial development work during testing than other teams, especially years without major regulation changes. This means they don't achieve as close to a representative time as the bigger teams that are fine tuning proven concepts.

Or they might just have been left behind again

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i fear for the future of the two 'new' teams.

which of course, they arent new teams anymore...this is season number 4.

they need to pick up the odd point or two otherwise whats the point ?

i think Marussia are in greater danger than Caterham at the moment. two rookie drivers - whats that about ??

Nope.

Simply put, they may have been light on fuel or doing heavy runs for whatever reason, and we wouldn't really be able to tell. If someone is, then so be it, but this far nothing points to them having closed the gap to any extent.

Well, taking a simple approach - Marussia are faster than last year.... By about 1.4secs...

2012 Barcelona GP Qualifying
Caterham - Vitaly Petrov - 1:25.277
Marussia - Charles Pic - 1:26.582

2013 Barcelona 1st Test - Day 2
Marussia - Max Chilton - 1:25.115
Caterham - Charles Pic - 1:26.243

Be a shame if no progression... Was hoping they could mix it up a bit more rather than just making up the numbers

If we were still in the eigthies or nineties they would have folded already. Marussia has 2 rookies. Caterham has a rookie and a driver with 1 year of F1 experience. However their experienced drivers from past seasons have not really been moving the team that much forward.

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F1 fan since 1989

slower than last year.

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I don't doubt that without Pedro, Glock & Heikki respectively the newer teams would be further away from the midfield than they are now. You can't expect them to work miracles with bugger all to work with.

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Official Kamui Kobayashi Fanboy

The history of the backmarker car performances, driver-neutral, according to my calculations, showing percentages from the top/fastest car of each season:
2012: Caterham 2.0%; Marussia/ex-Virgin 2.9%; HRT 3.1%
2011: Lotus-Renault /now Caterham 3.0%; Virgin 4.7%; HRT 5.4%
2010: Lotus-Cosworth/now Caterham 3.7%; Virgin 4.0%; HRT 5.2%

All improved, and when one considers how difficult it is to gain speed and how costly, there must be so much work and enthusiasm going on in those teams. Admirable.

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http://grandprixratings.blogspot.com

Impressive indeed. Just out of interest and using your data how much closer would say, Caterham be to the rest of the pack if they had a Hamilton/Alonso/Vettel driving for them?

So sorry to see the times, but by far, and i mean it, those two cars are the best looks in the grid by a country mile.

It's much too early to be drawing conclusions about their pace. We've only seen them in action for 5 days. Teams like Caterham and Marussia are more more likely to achieve good results if they've got a reliable car instead of a fast car, so they'll be testing the durability of their machine instead of its out-and-out pace this early in the tests. This doesn't mean either of them are going to suddenly jump up the order - the 2013 grid is easily one of the strongest in a number of years and the hardest for teams like Caterham and Marussia to break into. Keep in mind that the established teams finished 2012 with a hefty lead over the backmarkers - which one do you think was going to screw up and lose 1-2 seconds to them? Toro Rosso was the closest, only managing to qualify .3 of a second in front of Caterham at the final race in 2012, but their 2013 challenger is apparently a lot more workeable than its predecessor, so Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniel Ricciardo will probably be able to extract more out of their car this year.

Caterham managed to finish a race in 11th place in 2012 and Marussia finished 12th two times.
In 2011 Lotus finished 13th twice and Virgin 14th twice.
In 2010 Lotus managed to finish 13th three times and 12th once. Virgin finished 14th twice.

Progress is slow, but they're making it. I'd guess that 2013 is the year at least one of them breaks into the points.

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I also have one of these.

I am going to put my bet on Marussia. They seem over the past year or so to have made more progress on aero pace. Now with KERS I think they will beat caterham.

For the sake of competitiveness, I hope that by the time the teams arrive in Melbourne, they're both closer. I don't think anybody really wants to see two teams adrift from the rest of the pack (besides, perhaps, the 3rd slowest team!) Based on testing times so far, it doesn't appear to be the case, but hopefully the times are deceptive.

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Currently cheering for: Felipe Massa; Nico Hulkenberg; Romain Grosjean; Felipe Nasr. Oh, and of course, the Toronto Maple Leafs

Every season we see the backmarkers telling the world, that NOW is the time for their succes. But the backmarkers are still behind the rest of the teams financially, so how should they suddenly be catching up with Toro Rosso, Williams and Force India in a sport, where money is everything, when it comes to development? They are not.

Caterhams new team principal Cyril Abiteboul said that Caterham have been too optimistic the previous seasons, and thereby disappointing a lot of people. This year they admit that they are not strong enough to win points under ordinary race conditions, but they will still try to take a point during the season, if the chance arises.

By that he probably means, that by focusing on reliability they might end up finishing 10th in a race, with only ten drivers finishing, and that is a more realistic approach than Tony Fernandes has had the past three seasons.

Without Kovalainen to make the odd entry into Q2, this year all Q1 will be about is who will end up outside Q2 with Caterham and Marussia.

Maybe if Tony Fernandes would spend some of the money he's pouring into Queens Park Rangers on Caterham instead, it would be a different story...

According to Ted Kravitz on day 2 Caterham were running full tanks all day to give Pic an idea of KERS and how it reacts in a race situ so not even that is representative.

Not representative for Caterham, as their pace will obviously be hidden by running on full or nearly full tanks - but the facts still show that Marussia in colder conditions were faster than the fastest time they could set in Q1 at the Barcelona GP last year.

In fact, at the test last year, the fastest time they set was Timo Glock on Day 3 of the first Barca test with a 1:26.173 in their 2011 car...

And they have improved on that already by approx 1 sec. I understand the KERS is suposed to provide approx 0.3secs benefit - so that means that they've improved their car to the tune of 0.7secs at least...

That's progress...

From about 0.5 sec/lap faster and more, if Petrov and Kovalainen were replaced. That is about 30 secs at the end of a 60 lap race. Amazing how those fractions add up. When I last posted such info, I used a 100-second lap as at Abu Dhabi and a 100-minute race, which is rare these days; but I used those round numbers for easy comparison. On shorter circuits Pedro would be about 45 secs behind AlonsoVettelHamilton in same cars.

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http://grandprixratings.blogspot.com

I'd like to think that they will steal some points finishes this year - even if only by going slower and saving tyres (and thus a pitstop or two!)!

I think any speed advantage gained in the cars this year will be hampered by the inexperience of the drivers.