Forum menu
Probably the safest prediction you can make. Every time there is a big regulation shift everyone thinks they know who nailed it and then testing starts and the order looks completely different. I am just hoping for a proper mix up instead of one team disappearing into the distance again.Just getting in there to make sure the thread title is proper and correct! 🤣
I'm not going to predict anything for next season - far too many variables!
Constructors:
- Ferrari
- Mercedes
- McLaren
- Red Bull
- Haas
- Alpine
- Williams
- Audi
- Racing Bulls
- Cadillac
- Aston Martin
I think that's almost the same as my list but it pains me to say as a fan, but I think you've been quite generous to Williams there. I think they'll be behind Audi and Racing Bulls.
My top ten
1. Russell
2. Leclerc
3. Hamilton
4. Norris
5 Piastri
6. Verstappen
7. Antonelli
8. Gasley
9. Hadjar
10 Bearman
I think 4-7 could be in any order though Frankly
I think that's almost the same as my list but it pains me to say as a fan, but I think you've been quite generous to Williams there. I think they'll be behind Audi and Racing Bulls.
I’ve definitely been harsh on Racing Bulls. I’m sort of gambling on Lawson and Lindblad not bringing home the bacon.
Williams, yes, at the moment they look poor. But I think they’ll improve. A handful of decent upgrades and they could be on a par with Alpine. Obviously it’s all wild speculation 🙂
I’m sort of gambling on Lawson and Lindblad not bringing home the bacon.
My guess is that Lawson will either be better or worse than everyone expects.
Wow - you don't mince your words! 🙂
Wow - you don't mince your words! 🙂
I'd have loved to see Alonso have a proper challenge for race wins again before he retires. I expect AM and Honda will resolve things but probably not soon enough for Nando 😐
Bummer, similar or maybe worse than the problems they had with Mclaren in 2015.
A bit from the press conference here:
I've worked with Japanese companies before, and I think making addressing it in public this way will go down like an absolute lead balloon...hope they can get it sorted quickly before it goes completely sour
I'll bet Alonso is proper seething inside...
They're obviously setting up the narrative for an early exit at the weekend. Turning up to avoid penalties and stopping due to 'driver welfare...'. 'GP2, GP2...' 😁
Sounds like a chassis problem to me rather than engine.
All engines vibrate - you're not telling me a tiny V6 turbo is vibrating more than a 3.5ltr V12 from the olden days!
Wouldn't surprise me if the team is up for sale within a year or two.
As Bernie says 'You can't buy F1 titles'.
All engines vibrate - you're not telling me a tiny V6 turbo is vibrating more than a 3.5ltr V12 from the olden days!
Hope I'm not teaching granny to suck eggs here... but a V12 is naturally balanced (hence the Rolls Royce £1 coin trick), whereas a V6 is not, therefore needs balance shafts/counterweights/dampers etc.
The problem is, it's rigidly fixed to the chassis in a racing car so everything comes right though.
I think they would be very optimistic thinking Lance Stroll will actually finish the race anyway, I'm sure the car will be wrecked way before vibrations are an issue 🤣
Alright - another comparison - they used to have a tiny V6 engines knocking out nearly 1500bhp back in the 80s bolted onto aluminium chassis and coped with vibration then! 🙂
I'm another in the camp doubting that this is a 100% Honda issue. That engine/powertrain will have had a massive amount of time in the dyno, monitoring for things like vibrations. We know Williams essentially dyno'd their whole car, so I assume AM did too? To get through all of that but only find this issue on track is very odd
What multi21 said. There were similar issues when they switched from V10s to V8s - I remember Williams losing a rear wing or something due to the vibrations of the new engines. However, the other teams seem to have managed to deal with it so it seems like it's an installation issue - the chassis will need to damp the vibrations.
We know Williams essentially dyno'd their whole car, so I assume AM did too?
I think that's the issue. The other factory teams could dyno the engine installed in the chassis whereas Honda dyno tested the engine in Japan and AM developed the chassis in the UK, apparently without doing dyno tests with the engine installed in the car.
The B-Sport channel on YouTube has a coupe of short videos on the Honda subject.
According to B-Sport Honda have chosen to put the MGUK next to the battery unit to have a slimmer package that is required for the deep undercut side pods that Aston are using. This placement is different from what was previously allowed and possibly different from other engine manufacturers. The MGUK placement is causing vibrations and rubbing on the battery casing which is wearing away and could cause a nasty failure if the battery casing was to fail. Hence Aston are able to run the car but not for long for fear of wearing a hole in the battery casing. It's not any easy part to manufacture with a long lead time so having plenty of spares is going to take a while. So Aston can't just bung another one in many time over the weekend to keep the car running.
According to B-Sport Honda have chosen to put the MGUK next to the battery unit to have a slimmer package that is required for the deep undercut side pods that Aston are using.
So basically size zero revisited.
Hence Aston are able to run the car but not for long for fear of wearing a hole in the battery casing.
A few layers of Duck tape should sort it.
According to B-Sport Honda have chosen to put the MGUK next to the battery unit to have a slimmer package that is required for the deep undercut side pods that Aston are using. This placement is different from what was previously allowed and possibly different from other engine manufacturers. The MGUK placement is causing vibrations and rubbing on the battery casing which is wearing away and could cause a nasty failure if the battery casing was to fail. Hence Aston are able to run the car but not for long for fear of wearing a hole in the battery casing. It's not any easy part to manufacture with a long lead time so having plenty of spares is going to take a while. So Aston can't just bung another one in many time over the weekend to keep the car running.
But surely a genius like Newey would know this and not design a car that allows this rubbing to happen.
According to B-Sport Honda have chosen to put the MGUK next to the battery unit to have a slimmer package that is required for the deep undercut side pods that Aston are using.
But which came first:-
a) Honda choosing to place the MGUK there so it allowed for a deep undercut?
b) Aston dictating they wanted a deep undercut leading to the new compromised layout?
But surely a genius like Newey would know this and not design a car that allows this rubbing to happen.
The PU design is on Honda. This sounds like Honda just didn't understand how brutal the flexing and vibrations are out on track compared to running on a dyno.
(One of my favourite anecdotes is that the Saturn V designers used to set off explosive charges in the rocket exhausts to simulate the vibrations and shocks in real world rocket launches - they just didn't have modern simulation tools back then so just tested to destruction the old fashioned way.)
The PU design is on Honda. This sounds like Honda just didn't understand how brutal the flexing and vibrations are out on track compared to running on a dyno.
I’m not going to believe that Honda designed the pu and Aston the rest of the car in splendid isolation from each other and they just assumed it would all fit together with no issues. It doesn’t stand any credible thought that 2 organisations with people as experience as they have would not have held detailed conversations over the winter right trough the design process.
I think the big issue is the Honda team that built the engine that powered the Red Bull for the last seven years isn't the same team that built this engine.
A lot of skill was lost when they 'withdrew' and cut down to a skeleton crew just to maintain the previous hybrid spec engine.
I’m not even going to they and explain what’s going on here. My main takeaway is that they’ve screwed up these regs so badly that they’re now having to tweak them race (well quali to be exact) on race
I was about to renew my subscription to F1TV. I think I'll go for the month-to-month option rather than annual as I sense a complete shit show is about to happen (and maybe Bahrain and Saudi get cancelled...) 🤷
"I was about to renew my subscription to F1TV. I think I'll go for the month-to-month option rather than annual as I sense a complete shit show is about to happen (and maybe Bahrain and Saudi get cancelled...) "
Im doing the same thru Apple TV (in the US)
If the season turns out to be bobbins I will cancel and watch Youtube Highlights. I thought >85% of the races last year were dull AF, irrespective of the 3way battle.
P1 proving these cars are actually ok to watch and listen to. Better than last year I’d say.
I bet there’ll be loads of folk all over anti social media apologising for suggesting they will sound like milk floats and go not much faster……… idiots.
Not watched any of the practice sessions yet, but this just popped up in my FB feed. Aston properly throwing Honda under the bus - zero chance that Aston didn’t know Honda’s staffing position - and if they didn’t who the hell is running that team!!!
Aston have become the new team to wish for an implosion - while Red Bull crack on with new found support!! 🤣🤣
https://twitter.com/autosport/status/2029813397332631947?s=46
Sporting regulations Article B2.5.4 has been revised.
Bottas won't start with his grid penalty from the end of 2024
Last year's pole: 1:15:09. Piastri: 1:19:72 in FP2, and the Aston martin is doing 1:24:62!
zero chance that Aston didn’t know Honda’s staffing position
This is fundamental to the way Honda work and always have done. They see F1 as a training place for their new young engineers. I was reading in Motorsport Magazine about their history, and every time they come to Formula One, they seem to start from scratch with young engineers with little or no experience.
Their approach is to develop something, run it to see what fails, do a clear root cause analysis to understand the fundamental problem, do something to address that fundamental problem, release it, run it to see what fails.......
This ends up with a really well developed, well thought out solution; however, it takes time, more time than Formula One allows.
Aston martin is doing 1:24:62!
big oof
Not watched any of the practice sessions yet, but this just popped up in my FB feed. Aston properly throwing Honda under the bus - zero chance that Aston didn’t know Honda’s staffing position - and if they didn’t who the hell is running that team!!!
bigger oof
That Newey quote is silly IMHO, obviously he's under a lot of pressure but why is he throwing Honda under the bus publicly at this stage of the season? He should just be saying "there are some PU issues that unfortunately didn't come to light until the car hit the track, we're working with Honda to resolve them".
I’m not even going to they and explain what’s going on here. My main takeaway is that they’ve screwed up these regs so badly that they’re now having to tweak them race (well quali to be exact) on race
God these PU regs are so cack. 😂
The annoying thing is, even youtubers were doing the maths and pointing these issues out a year or more ago.
Hopefully they figure it out, otherwise we're going to be hearing a lot of boring talk from the commentators about recharging, lift&coast, deployment etc on the tracks where there is limited braking zones.
That Newey quote is silly IMHO, obviously he's under a lot of pressure but why is he throwing Honda under the bus publicly at this stage of the season? He should just be saying "there are some PU issues that unfortunately didn't come to light until the car hit the track, we're working with Honda to resolve them".
Because this was supposed to be his time to shine and prove how amazing he is. Now he has a lemon on his hands and if it cant be his fault then it has to be Hondas. Im quite sure the PU has alsorts of problems, but we dont know if that is all of it or if the car is part of the problem as well
There will also be some real cultural differences to work around between Aston & Honda (compared to 'Honda' of the last few years which was actually a mostly British team of engineers in Milton Keynes). When I was at McLaren during the last Honda era we had several training courses explaining the way their society and businesses operate and it was really interesting but you could see why things like this could easily happen. Mistaking a response to a question as being the answer, when in fact they were confirming that they understood the question and the answer would follow once it had been discussed with their superiors to agree the response was one of the most common issues. And the timescales in this going up and down the team hierarchy will not have been useful in F1-speed development.
My colleague worked at Prodrive alongside the Subaru engineers some years ago, the engines would arrive sealed and nobody was allowed to work on them other than the engineers sent from Japan. They wouldn't last even one day on the stages without blowing up but there was 'no problem' with them and any questioning of this was met with complete denial and hostility. In the end they had to resort to coming back in the evenings and rebuilding the new engines overnight once everyone had left in order for them to run reliably.
I'm not saying this to mean that it is Hondas fault at all, just that when people say "they can't both have been working in isolation on/unaware of these issues" I can very much believe that could be the case due to lack of information sharing & communication issues in both directions.
Because this was supposed to be his time to shine and prove how amazing he is. Now he has a lemon on his hands and if it cant be his fault then it has to be Hondas.
From what I've read, Newey deliberately focused on getting the basic architecture of the car (and PU) right, without worrying too much on short-term reliability and performance. The idea is that, if the underlying architecture is good, the car will be fast once it's fully developed. I have no doubt that Newey will be able to develop the AM car to be competitive, as long as Honda can do the same. So, the big question is whether the Honda is basically a decent engine that needs development or whether they have made fundamental mistakes in the architecture. That won't be obvious until the second half of the season or next year.
I'm a very casual watcher these days, I watch the highlights on YouTube and that's about it. But I saw somewhere that Lewis Hamilton is worried that it will be difficult for viewers to see/understand what's going on, and I think he's right. E.g. I've seen clipping mentioned a few times - I don't know what that is. And I did see the difference between boost mode and overtake mode somewhere, but I couldn't confidently say what it is now. I could go and find out obviously, but my interest is currently going in the opposite direction.
I've seen clipping mentioned a few times - I don't know what that is.
It's been a part of F1 for over a decade, basically the cars run out of battery to deploy before the end of a straight so they lose power and start slowing down. The difference this year is that more of the total power comes from the battery so the slowing effect is more severe. Drivers used to moan about it, then the engineers etc got on top of it and the only noticeable effect for viewers was the red lights flashing on the back of the car.
Given time I expect something similar will happen with these regs - optimal solutions will emerge and the issue will be less obvious.
Don’t worry, they’ll be yet another explanatory graphic to take up a further 30% of your TV screen space and make the coverage look even more like a computer game.
I'm a very casual watcher these days, I watch the highlights on YouTube and that's about it. But I saw somewhere that Lewis Hamilton is worried that it will be difficult for viewers to see/understand what's going on, and I think he's right. E.g. I've seen clipping mentioned a few times - I don't know what that is. And I did see the difference between boost mode and overtake mode somewhere, but I couldn't confidently say what it is now. I could go and find out obviously, but my interest is currently going in the opposite direction.
This is what I was alluding to above, it's boring to explain and too complicated. And nothing is shown on the screen when it's happening either.
Clipping = for one reason or another the battery is not delivering maximum power, so the total output is dropping. Usually it just means the car either stops accelerating or slows very slightly.
Super clipping = not only is the battery not delivering power, it's actively taking energy (up 335BHP) from the petrol engine output and storing it in the battery for the next straight. This can be very noticeable, it slows the car a lot.
You can see super clipping at turn 8/9 here. Listen from :33 seconds in, the revs rise, rise, rise, normally then start to fall around :42. This is when the car slowing down because it's diverting power to the battery instead of the wheels.
https://twitter.com/F1/status/2029890990484640056
The other annoying thing is the long lift+coast into the corner, when the drivers used to really brake late and attack that. So yeah, not my favourite.