It was before my time but looking at the history. Williams were super nice, winning world titles and they fell off somewhere
Is that same thing happening with Ferrari now?
It was before my time but looking at the history. Williams were super nice, winning world titles and they fell off somewhere
Is that same thing happening with Ferrari now?
Ferrari looks dysfunctional to me. They throw all the money at it and yet they make fundamentally poor decisions. Their race strategy and decision making is not as good as Mercedes or Red Bull.
Williams seem like they can't keep up with the spending power of the big boys
Looking at this Bahrain outer circle. They say lap times are going to be around 55 seconds. Are there any other tracks with sub one minute lap times? Seems like they’ll be flat out for 72 laps.
I guess it’ll make pit stop efficiency really important?
Dijon's the only other one in F1 history.
There was F1 in Dijon? That’s only a couple miles down the road from me.
Yep. It's where Villeneuve and Arnoux had that angry, angry battle.
Slightly more research means I found out I may have went go-karting on an F1 track. It was the honestly one of the most tiring things I've ever done. We had 2 practices, qualifying and the race. Its the first time I've felt a significant delay between my thought and my action and the fatigue was as much mental as physical.
It was the Swiss GP for some reason. Is motorsport still banned in Switzerland? They are wrong uns.
Didn't know about this and now I think about it all the karting stuff is just over the border...Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
It'll be some sort of tax dodge. Everything is. I remember the G8 that happened in Geneva actually happened in Evian.
They lifted the ban for Formula E. I think they have a street race in Zurich.
The Swiss banned all fun (Formula E obviously doesn't count) after Mike Hawthorn killed all those people at Le Mans.
That would explain a hell of a lot about my life for the last several years.
What's this Super Formula what's on YouTube?
Japanese Formula 2.
Sainzs' McLaren has gone pop on the way to the grid.
Russel quite lucky he saw that coming and wasn't going faster through the corner.
What is wrong with these directors? Ocon, Norris and Albon fighting for 6th, and we are watching 15th place LeClerc following Grosjean.
Because they want us to care about Ferrari.
Nearly halfway through and Hamilton has a 47 point gap to Verstappen. We're already into snookers required stages for Bottas too. Given the spec is the same for next season, we could see him get title number 8. That is, unless he retires to go full time social justice warrior.
The wins record is almost academic at this point. Only 2 behind with such a superior car and a very passive team mate.
If Lewis lands a positive test, he'll be out for two races.
I’ve watched very little F1 in my life but I’ve watched the last few races.
It’d be interesting to see Hamilton and verstappen in the same car, because as it is Hamilton is being billed as one of the greatest ever in a car so superior to the others. He’s better than bottas, but yeah, so is verstappen.
I thought spa was supposed to be interesting?
Obvious 1 stop races are dull. I think it was Jimmy that said last time this happened, the sweet spot comes where the 2 stop is very close to the 1 stop.
Fuck me that was boring.
Everyone was going on and on about it being a wet weekend and every bloody session was dry. Then Bottas gets on the radio early doors asking to push and they basically tell him to shut the fuck up. And then we have the predictable radio where Hamilton comes on and says "loss of engine power" and the cunt goes on to pull away from Bottas.
The Racing Points were nowhere, Ferrari are totally fucked and Albon was on the wrong tyres after the safety car.
I just want an engine blow out at the front or something. Even then Hamilton can win on three tyres.
Finally into the proper F1 stuff of Adrian Newey's book. He seems really proud of the March 881 which led me to this awesome video of Jackie Stewart seething about comfort.
That would have probably been more interesting if one of Bottas or Verstappen had had the foresight to go to 2 stops after the early safety car, stick some softs on to try and get an advantage at the restart etc and then either run softs again or mediums to try and catch the 1-stop hard runners as their tyres fell apart. But, Merc are never going to allow any sort of actual competition and, other than having to be a strategical savant to even think of it at the time, Red Bull were probably more keen on seeing whether the Mercs wrecked their tyres again.
Once that round had gone there was no chance to switch strategy as all the front runners (ie Hamilton) would have just followed anyone trying to mix things up and cover them off.
Having the leaders absolutely pootling around for the last 10 laps of the race is so shit. Maybe they need to say you need to run all the compounds to make 2 stops mandatory.
Mercedes are so far ahead they simply don't need to push and the same is true inside the team, Bottas is good but it's clear that he can't touch Hamilton and isn't likely to be allowed to have much of a go.
Unless they roll back aero, which would make various people cry, then wacky races tyres are the only way of artificially making it interesting.
The fact is that the best resourced team on the grid are currently Sauber-esque midfield also rans and that explains a lot.
I was struck at several points in the weekend when there was somewhat incredulous discussion about the Ferraris being down on power from the same race last season, and how that could be the case. Is there some sort of omerta on discussing the elephant in the room as to why their cars were so much faster last season among the commentariat?
The FIA found something illegal about their engine, but refused, at the behest of Ferrari to not publicise the findings of what. They even went as far as making a deal with Ferrari to not punish them if they helped show how they cheated. Ever since that outcome the Ferrari has been mysteriously down on power.
It's talked about often but the powers that be wont say what it is despite protests.
The rumour was that they had something in the engine that was managing to trick the sensor designed to track it. Something like a sensor monitoring fuel usage, but they designed it so tiny amounts of fuel would inject when there was a millisecond of blind spot within the sensor.
Yeah, there was a sensor in the tank to measure fuel flow that Ferrari managed to deceive.
But are race broadcasters not allowed to, or at least encouraged not to, talk about it? Like openly wondering what happened since last year on air when they all know that's why.
Brundle has said a fair bit that it's no coincidence that since that day Ferrari have gone from a race winning car to barely scraping top 10. But beyond that not much. So I'd suggest they've been told to shut up.
Yeah, yeah, I know the details and I'm the layman's layman in F1 knowledge terms. I just find it odd that their [obvious] cheating is such an open secret but no one in the press corps seems to mention it all that often in any more than a knowing smile nudge and a wink type way, but I guess that's what the fear of litigation/being ruined/blackballed can do I guess.
The way that specific issue was settled with the FIA was specifically weird where Ferrari conceded no guilt in return for ‘sharing their learnings’ which were immediately put under a non disclosure agreement. I imagine that specific example has created an atmosphere among the broadcast legal team that it’s best just not to do more than allude to it.
By the way in ‘probably a terrible idea but...’
I was reading the discussion about two stop/one stop and how boring the races have been.
Wouldn’t it create the possibility for more strategy if tires were thinner compound to make a 3-4 stop the average rather than a 2?
Does tire wear Start to become a safety issue if they’re only lasting 15 laps instead of 3?
While we’re at it can we ban putting under the safety car as well? Seems pointless to crush the whole pack up like that and then have the best cars at peak performance.
Didn't Canada used to have insane tyre degradation? What was that all about? I'm sure I remember a race where cars were having to come in, it felt like, every 10 laps once upon a when.
As for safety cars, what's happened to the virtual safety car? Is it even a thing anymore?
I'd rather have pitting under safety car because the field's bunched up anyway. And there's always the chance someone can lose out more through a slow wheel change or stacking drivers.
The problem comes where it's obviously a one stop or obviously a two stop. You get little-to-no variance in strategy. Take Spa. It's nice and easy on the tyre so it's an obvious one stop. After that safety car I believe all but 2 drivers were on the hards for the duration and that was it.
If you balance the compounds well and have it be a close cross over then you'll likely see a more exciting race.
The dirty air problem also persists and was made obvious by showing all the cars from about 7th to 13th just following each other round not able to do anything, but we have to wait for spec 2022 for that now.
So here was my thinking, Mercedes go faster so they degrade tires faster so if you have a low wear tire anyway it might force them to pit more than the slightly slower cars?
"Okay, Lewis. We need you to go marginally slower so you can match everyone else for pit strategy. That'll allow us to fuel you slightly less than the rest of the field."
"MY TIRES, BONO!"
"Copy."
"Valtteri, it's James..."
The only way to make 2 stops happen is to mandate that all three compounds must be used, otherwise they'll just game whatever system you put in place because 1 stop is safer and nearly always more efficient.
Or make the tyres shit a la 2012 or whatever year it was when 'the cliff' was a thing.
Or introduce refuelling (bear with me on this) and have the maximum fuel load be about 1 lap more than what you can feasibly one-stop on.
The only thing I liked about refueling was being able to sacrifice fuel load for grid position, but it would arguably make the tires last even longer and locks you into a single strategy on Sunday.
Really the compounds need to be further apart and one of them (probably the softest) should be mandatory on Sunday.
I think the tyre lock from Q2 is stupid. I could get behind letting them start on whatever tyre but having to use the softest one during the race. Or would that just lead to loads of soft-hard borefests? I don't know.
The problem is that performance-optimising logic always leads to dull racing, because it's ultimately quite easy to calculate and so everyone takes the same route. It needs external factors to fuck with the computers/strategists. Back in the day, the simple unreliability of the cars (either terminally or not) did a huge amount of heavy lifting.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 01-09-2020 at 01:56 PM.
I think getting the aero balance right is the key, everything else is simply nibbling at the edges. If the lap time difference required for overtaking was smaller then it would make alternate strategies more viable. As it is you can be several seconds faster but still not be able to pass more than a few cars before you shred the tires, if the delta was smaller then the tire advantage lasts far longer allowing greater scope to recover track position.
But then Adrian Newey would have to downsize to a 38 bed mansion, and Ferrari would have to sell their wind tunnel to whoever designs pasta shapes.
Great. Now I'm wondering which pasta is the most aerodynamic.
Fusilli for that Y-250 vortex.
Did Claire jump before she was pushed? I'm also surprised she is leaving mid-season. Maybe they already have a replacement lined up?
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote