Hope JEV gets another drive after the news he’s leaving Torro Rosso.

He’s sorted already…

webber gets a clobbering – outlook is good, no major injuries
video

Yeah, that looked like a pretty solid hit… 🙁

i quite like the “idea” of the Endurance and LeMans type series, but i find the reality of watching it a bit hard to do, although MotorsTV at least is doing a good job of covering the rounds, i still feel a bit “out of it” compared to F1 in terms of the technology in the car, the pits and what they do and think about and a general lack of info to keep me hooked in.

so it appears the McLaren announcement is Thursday – just why has this taken so long— all will be revealed???

just why has this taken so long

Money. How much of it could they get now Alonso is aboard…

There’s an entertaining rumour that Alonso has actually signed with Honda and will have an option to jump team the following year if McLaren don’t produce a decent car.

McL were pretty adamant that Alonso’s contract is with them, not Honda…

Mind you, I expect there will be some pretty stringent performance clauses in there..

hmmm i wonder if Alonso was waiting for the data from the first test of the McLaren Honda before committing slightly longer than 1 year with them. not sure if he’d have gained anything from the actual running that they ended up doing.

Honda (this time round) have not mentioned about having a full works team, but if there are a number of teams “on the market” in 2015 after yet more cost crisis issues, and mcLaren are not performing….

Thing is as Merc teams have found this year, there’s a big difference between being the works team or not – eg Williams et al didn’t have the same options (eg power) available to them as Mercedes did. In that sense, I reckon Ron is spot on in going away from Merc as they’ll probably not win a WC otherwise (now they just need a decent car…)

Williams et al didn’t have the same options (eg power) available to them as Mercedes did.

As far as I’ve read all Mercedes powered teams had the same spec ‘engine’ from Mercedes – it’s the energy recovery systems that differed between the teams, and Mercs was better than anyone elses.

Same engine, etc but they have not allowed customer teams the same boost, etc – eg time that they can run at full power and so on.

My understanding was that the ERS is standard for each engine too since it’s part of the PU these days and so closely integrated. Back in the days of KERS, Renault for example didn’t provide KERS which was one reason that they were behind the curve with their engine (also because they made a load of people redundant).

Maybe they do share all their info, but I can’t see how or why merc would divulge evverything about their engine. If they’ve developed it from scratch they will surely know more about the engine and it’s tolerances than their customers even if they give their customers the same engine?

even Ron doesn’t go as far as to claim they’re lacking power compared to the works engines
http://adamcooperf1.com/2014/10/04/ron-dennis-frustrated-by-lack-of-engine-parity-with-mercedes-works-team/

(I checked a few other articles and they all say much the same, that there is no difference in the customer engines)

From what I understand, one of the biggest issues was fuels and lubes, Mclaren used Mobil, the rest of the Merc teams used Petronas, who worked closely with Merc to develop fuels and lubes specific for the engine.

conspiracy theory #1
Berne asked mercedes to give more info on how to get the best out of tyre/engine/chassis combo to williams about midway through the season to gives fans something to shout about as Merc were so far ahead and RBR and Ferrari so far behind….

I’ve been trying to find where I read it but without succuss so far. It was specifically about Williams and one of the races where (Bottas?) was racing/chasing one of the Mercs and there was a comment about how much full power running Mercedes (the engine guys rather than the racing team itself) would allow them (Williams) to use through the race.

The suggestion was that the Merc cars were allowed to run more than the customer teams.

Was that a general rule Nemesis or was it at that specific race? Maybe the Williams had an older engine in and they were more concerned about reliability?

No, it was a general thing – the Merc techs in the Williams garage tell them how much boost they can use, same as at the works Merc team but it seemed that the customer teams got less than the works team which was also reflected IIRC in speed on the straight (don’t forget the Williams this year was designed to be slippery at the expense to some extent of downforce) at some races – particularly when Williams ended up getting close to Merc.

A mate of mine used to work at Merc HPE. As pointed out above a lot of development work is done with lubrication etc, but even though the basic ICEs are stuck on a dyno to sort the “best” ones for the factory team the difference in HP is v. small and not enough to account for the gap in single lap performance or race pace.

The fact is that Merc did a much better job than anyone else this year – as usual in F1 people single out one thing (the engine, double diffuser, bendy wings, blown diffuser etc.) but it’s actually the whole package working together that makes the difference.

Oh and what the blinking flip is going on in this pic?

Has Ron become a Bond villain who dresses his serfs in uniform? Is he invoking some sort of 70’s Gerry Anderson SciFi look on everyone at MTC?

I don’t know, what the blinking flip is going on there?!? Where did you get the photo from?

Some kind of memorial for JB’s Dad: Planet F1

Jb’s dad was famous for his pink shirt

Pink for Papa, isn’t it (the pink t-shirt thing)? Cos his Dad always wore pink shirts.

So Bianchi didn’t slow enough and they was a incompatibility with Marussia’s car design which meant the FailSafe system didn’t work:

http://www.fia.com/accident-panel

Findings also say:

It is not feasible to mitigate the injuries Bianchi suffered by either enclosing the driver’s cockpit, or fitting skirts to the crane.

Hurry up McLaren and announce your driver line for 2015!

Jenson would be the best choice both for the racing and business aspects of the Mclaren team.

So given that it is Mclaren, the obvious choice is Kevin Magnussen

So Bianchi didn’t slow enough and they was a incompatibility with Marussia’s car design which meant the FailSafe system didn’t work:

I wonder if this problem with the FailSafe system has something to do with Marussia finally closing their doors – future buyers wary of possible litigation from Bianchi family perhaps?

Jenson would be the best choice both for the racing and business aspects of the Mclaren team.

So given that it is Mclaren, the obvious choice is Kevin Magnussen

I fear this will be exactly the case 🙁

Jenson would be the best choice both for the racing and business aspects of the Mclaren team.
So given that it is Mclaren, the obvious choice is Kevin Magnussen

😆

But true. I still laugh about their strategy/pit stop changes with Lewis.

richmtb – Member
Jenson would be the best choice both for the racing and business aspects of the Mclaren team.

So given that it is Mclaren, the obvious choice is Kevin Magnussen

😆

prove us wrong McL…

I wonder if this problem with the FailSafe system has something to do with Marussia finally closing their doors – future buyers wary of possible litigation from Bianchi family perhaps?

Reading the article on BBC’s website, it seems what Marussia did was not against the rules, so I don’t think there would be any issues for any potential new owners?

Sauce

There’s obviously some internal strife at McLaren. RD is in favour of one driver, the entire board and investors another.

JB has had a good season in a lacklustre car and has demonstrated that he’s on top of his game. Pairing a rookie with Alonso next year is asking for trouble IMHO, given Alonso’s propensity for dummy-spitting there needs to be a stable element to the team.

On the other hand I wouldn’t be surprised if McLaren didn’t buy Bottas out of his Williams contract and swap him with Button…stranger things have happened and Ron Dennis has a weakness for Finnish drivers.

so whats the point of a failsafe system if its not failsafe then! i’m aiming it at the FIA not the team, but if there is something there for safety and a team can bypass its operation then it should go through some kind of FIA safety test first to see if its in contradiction to the failsafe system!

The problem is that loads of F1 cars deliberately apply both throttle and brakes to control the attitude of the car and adjust balance. Add in BBW and it’s massively more complex than just brake on/throttle off.

BBC need to get their facts straight. Bianchi was going alot quicker than 78mph.

This season, teams were allowed to tweak the parameters of their brake-by-wire system to suit a driver’s style and thus Marussia can be seen to have not broken the rules.

A guess- What if they by-passed and ultimately the driver passes away? I wonder if the Japanese authorities might want to press manslaughter charges.

Why was Bianchi driving so fast under double-yellows compared to say Lewis? What if a marshall had been killed? Bianchi was going to fast BEFORE he hit the tractor.

BBC need to get their facts straight. Bianchi was going alot quicker than 78mph.

Official FIA report says it was 126kph (78mph).

Re McLaren – Mercedes haven’t announced a new deal for Lewis yet! 😀

…but contracts mean nothing in F1! 😀

And F1 doesn’t really care too much about drivers who are just decent – they’re always after the next world champ – rightly so actually IMO – JEV is a great example of this recently – did a reasonable job at Toro Rosso but it’s clear he’s not ever going to be a standout driver so they gave him the boot.