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The second pre-season test of F1 2012 gets underway at Barcelona on Tuesday
morning with Mercedes taking centre stage as it launches its MGP W03 – the car
it hopes can move it closer to the dominant Red Bull squad – most of the rest
adding to the mileage they achieved at Jerez, and Marussia and HRT yet to show
off their new machines.

Pre-season running, as we've all seen in the past, has been known to throw up
a surprise or two, so here at AUTOSPORT, we decided to trawl through our
archives to unearth the shock moments of tests gone by.

So what constitutes a shock? Well, in the context of our list, it can be
anything from a hot favourite having a disaster to a super-fast time coming from
an unexpected source. It could be a novel design proving genius – or stupid – or
a top line driver turning out unexpectedly for a tiny team.

1. Brawn stuns rivals

Nothing about the lead-up to the Brawn BGP01's first test inspired
confidence. There had been the Honda team's winter collapse. The 11th-hour
rescue. The last minute arrival of the car at Barcelona in February 2009. Even
the interviews were patchy – Jenson Button conducted his first press duties as a
Brawn driver standing beneath an air conditioning unit in a walkway because the
allocated suite was locked and nobody could find the keys!

Then Rubens Barrichello took to the track, and was immediately quick. Smirked
references to 'glory runs' ended when nobody was able to get near him for the
rest of the day. By the following evening, reality was dawning upon the rest of
the paddock.

"I think we're f***ked," one rival driver confided. He was right.

2. McLaren raises the bar with the MP4/4

The final pre-season test ahead of the 1988 F1 season-opener at Rio was a
week old when McLaren's new Honda-engined MP4/4 showed up and turned a wheel for
the first time.

The car was late, as much says designer Steve Nichols because he wanted to
'leave no stone unturned' as anything else, but it made a big impact when it
finally did arrive.

The best lap of the test, at which McLaren had been present with its MP4/3B
test hack, was a 1m29.90s for Ferrari driver Gerhard Berger, yet Alain Prost put
in a 1m28.50s on his first morning in the car. Ayrton Senna, despite his
team-mate's urging to keep the true pace of the car under wraps, then went out
and set a 1m27.86s, a full two seconds ahead of McLaren's nearest rival. The
rest of the grid, it turned out, had good reason to be quaking in their
collective boots – the MP4/4 went on to win 15 out of 16 grands prix in '88.

3. Prost hoodwinks the world

On February 14, 2001, the cash-strapped Prost team suddenly looked like the
team to beat ahead of the F1 season. Jean Alesi, having already topped two of
the previous four days of testing at Estoril, lapped the Portuguese circuit over
a second quicker than anybody else had managed - or would manage - during the
winter.

The rumours of the AP04 running massively underweight in a bid to grab
instant headlines and convince potential sponsors to part with their cash, flew
instantly - especially as the car had also gone second fastest at Barcelona two
weeks previously. The rumours were right too. Sponsors secured, the car showed
its true colours, scoring only four points all year.

4. McLaren goes retro

With McLaren's 23-year association with the Phillip Morris tobacco company's
Marlboro brand having come to its conclusion at the end of 1996, the MP4-12 of
the following year was always going to look a little different when it first
appeared on-track. But what nobody expected was a vivid orange livery
reminiscent of the constructor's first few years in F1 during the late
1960s.

The purists loved it, and understandably so, but it was not to last; a glitzy
London launch featuring band of the moment The Spice Girls, revealed that the
car would instead run in a silver colour scheme that the team has retained a
version of ever since. The orange did make another appearance, however, in early
2006 as both Valencia and Barcelona played host to the early-spec MP4-20
(pictured).

5. Toleman nose no boudaries

Not enamoured of the new stepped-nose F1 cars? Well, what about the Rory
Byrne-designed Toleman TG183B? Ice-scraper nose it may have had, but the Toleman
stunned everyone at Rio in early 1983 when Derek Warwick matched Alain Prost's
Renault at the top of the times. Next best, 1.5s adrift, was the Ferrari of
Patrick Tambay – and the Italian team's mechanics clapped 'Delboy' as he drove
down the pitlane after setting his time.

With a low budget, Toleman struggled to keep up the momentum. It was only
later in the year, when the team switched to Holset turbochargers, that the cars
gained the reliability to become regular points scorers.

6. Williams tries six wheels

The concept of a six-wheeled F1 car was not new; Tyrrell won a grand prix
with such a machine and March also tested the waters. But by the 1980s, the
thought process was considered dead in the water.

It was with some surprise then that Williams, just after clinching its second
constructors' world title, gave Alan Jones a car with six wheels to test at
Donington Park in late 1981.

The FW07D was based on Patrick Head's assertions that the large rear wheels
and tyres used in F1 were responsible for 40 per cent of a car's drag and that
the extra contact patch afforded by six wheels could only be of benefit. Despite
excellent acceleration and mechanical grip, the concept looked flawed due to the
difficulty of making the underbody aero work. After Keke Rosberg tested an
updated car that would eventually become the title-winning FW08 four-wheeler at
Paul Ricard three months later, the concept was abandoned.

7. Honda's halted return

OK, so it wasn't a great surprise to see Honda take to the track with its own
F1 car in early 1999, but the fact that during only its second test it set a
time quick enough for 11th on the grid at the previous year's Spanish Grand Prix
did ruffle a few feathers.

Led by Harvey Postlethwaite (who had also designed the Dallara-built car),
with the management talents of Rupert Manwaring and the driving skills of Jos
Verstappen, things looked set to move forward at a rapid rate, the RA099 car
developing every time it ran. But Postlethwaite's shock death in April '99 led
to the mothballing of a project that was barely eight months old. It would be
seven more years before the full acquisition of BAR would lead to the Honda name
becoming an F1 constructor once again.

8. The big cat fails to roar

The pressure was on at Jaguar. Ford had purchased a race-winning team in
Stewart Grand Prix and expectations were high for the green cars. The R1 was
fast(ish) but fragile, the R2 shared the reliability problems but had little
pace.

For the R3 the technical team had been rejigged with Mark Hanford brought in
from the US to boost the aero programme. The new car hit the test track at
Barcelona with Eddie Irvine at the wheel. As he came back to the pits, faces
dropped quicker than the garage door. Irvine finally returned to the track in
the afternoon with the R2's front wing fitted. Poor windtunnel correlation was
blamed as the team endured yet another trying season – and yet another technical
reshuffle…

9. New Ferrari barely turns a wheel

The big shock regarding the Ferrari 640 of 1989 was that it had completed
just two days of pre-season testing before the season-opening Brazilian Grand
Prix. It barely managed more than a handful of laps on each run, such was the
flimsiness of the machine - in particular its semi-automatic gearbox, a
pioneering innovation of new designer John Barnard.

That said, winter testing had been undertaken to a far greater extent by a
pair of 639 Ferraris - a prototype machine built specifically to put the new
'box to the test. Proving far more efficient at transferring the power of the
car's V12 engine to the rear wheels, it was rushed into service at Rio and
astonishingly won - giving Nigel Mansell a debut victory for the team - and
paving the way for Alain Prost to give the team a genuine title challenge for
the first time since '85.

10. Ligier adds a touch of French fancy

The success of the Lotus 79 spawned a host of ground-effect imitators for the
1979 season, and initially it was Ligier that stole a march.

In December 1978, Patrick Depailler and Jacques Laffite lapped the short
circuit at Paul Ricard in 1m06.7s and 1m06.8s respectively in their new JS11s,
Ligier's first Cosworth F1 car. The closest anybody got to it was Riccardo
Patrese, 2.1s slower in his Arrows.

OK, other leading teams were testing in Brazil, and Ferrari and Renault had
previously set similar times at Ricard to Ligier, but these were believed to be
on considerably softer tyres. Sure enough, the Ligiers swept all before them in
the first two races of '79, in Argentina and Brazil.