Engineer Rob Smedley has a wealth of Formula 1 experience after a long career in the sport working for Jordan, Ferrari and Williams. Today he explains how the teams go about their business and what they are looking to achieve as the second week of pre-season testing gets underway in Barcelona.

As the days progress from Test 1 and on into Test 2, you’ve got the car up to speed and you’ve been through all of the basic systems checks, then you're really into core reliability and core performance tests.

We’re always mindful in the teams that the drivers do need to start getting a feel for the car at the limit of its performance envelope. But the reality is that there's such a lot of data to collect, and the only way to collect it nowadays, really, is during the winter tests. Because of that we have very prescribed tests across Weeks 1 and 2, and we need the drivers to perform in a certain way during those tests – and that rarely involves driving the car as fast as they can.

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Sometimes, we do actually want the driver to push the car to the limit of its performance envelope, because without that, we’re then not going to get the data that we need. If we’re testing, say, a new front suspension which has more castor in the car, which essentially gives you a little bit more camber and a little bit more turn-in in the initial part of the corner, then you will want the driver to push to the limit of the envelope and equally, you want their subjective feedback. You’ve got all of the objective data taken from the car, but what you need is their personal feedback, as well as what the all-important stopwatch is telling you.

READ MORE: Rob Smedley on what teams do on Day 1 of testing