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"Formula One pre-season testing is the climax of a secret spy war between the 11 teams on the grid. With just days to go until the Australian Grand Prix, teams are still trying to figure out their cars. What&amp;#039;s working? What isn&amp;#039;t? But most importantly, why? And they&amp;#039;re always keeping a watchful eye (or lens) on their rivals. The cold war mentality is well and truly alive in the Formula 1 pit lane. Mechanics take secret photos of rival cars&amp;#039; suspension and aero work. Teams use any means at their disposal to make it &amp;quot;hard&amp;quot; for photographers to shoot what parts their cars have on them, from closing us out of garages with canvas screens to more direct intervention. Almost anything goes when it comes to protecting the cars. It&amp;#039;s madness, really. Almost comical. Certainly annoying. But at the same time, it really is interesting. You can&amp;#039;t make Formula 1 something it isn&amp;#039;t. It&amp;#039;ll never be a &amp;quot;stock car&amp;quot; series where everyone gets a kit to use and can only push the boundaries so far. Instead, F1 has a book of rules, many pages deep, that can be, will be, and always has been creatively interpreted as teams search for loopholes they can exploit. It is what it is. Teams spend insane amounts of money making cars go faster tenth by tenth. Hundredth by hundredth. They add wing parts, curves, and suspension pieces that might make a race car marginally faster. Those efforts can add up to millions of dollars lost, or earned, at the end of the year. On an F1 car, nothing is designed by accident. It&amp;#039;s a fascinating process to watch up close, so please enjoy some of my favorite images from the final Barcelona pre-season tests in 2013. Jamey Price is a professional motorsports photographer covering Formula 1 and other racing series throughout the year. This post first appeared on his blog and is reprinted with his permission. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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