[Closed] The F1 2015 thread...

Hamilton proving he's every bit as gracious in defeat as Rosberg.

I did think it was a bit strange that hamilton didnt acknowledge Rosberg's win in the podium room. Also it was great to see a Brazilian and a German speaking Italian to each other.
I thought it was an ok race with a bit of potential that didnt really unfold. I wonder if Hamilton will rue that monaco result come the end of the season. On the basis of last year I still beilieve Hamilton will romp it after the summer break.
Is it just me that winces everytime Maldonado gets close to another car..

This weekend already looks a snooze fest and yet another nightmare for Mclaren-Honda.

Well predicted Dragon (Sky footage I watched), although 'Crofty' reckoned it was exciting so must've saw a different race from his commentary box.

why is Horner trying to wangle Brawn to step up to be some kind of F1 "sort-it-out-new-rules" leader - i'm not sure i get his angle,
for sure i think brawn could come up with a set of rules better than the current ones (a monkey could!) but why Horner is trying to push this i dont know.
perhaps because Brawn has not been running a team for a while and could be considered "neutral" - and perhaps he's already spoken to other Team leaders and they think its a good idea also.....but lets face it, even if they do think its a good idea right now, when it came down the nitty gritty of what Brawn's scope is, it will just be a pseudo-role for him, so they dont have to give up any real power so they can all keep creaming the money off for themselves...

Alonso managed a lap of the circuit after all...

[img] [/img]

I wonder if Horner will get the boot? Bet the rival team boss must be kicking his informant about putting his size 10s in.

The problem is I cant take anything RBR say at the moment because it just sounds like sour grapes as they arent winning at the moment. Every comment about honda is followed by renault. Its like Bob Fernley at force india moaning about dosh all the time.

it just sounds like sour grapes as they arent winning at the moment.

I think there is a bit of that, but equally from their point of view the position of Mercedes is now essentially locked in, as RBR and others have little chance of catching them up within the rules. That is the main problem of F1 right now, balancing 'reducing' costs while allowing enough development so that teams can close gaps between each other. Right now the rules achieve neither.

Simple fix for the fia would be to allow a second homologation during the year. The current tokens thing is a fudge for this year, so next year they'll officially be stuck with whatever they run at the first race. Allow a second homologation date just before the August shutdown, then that could allow development but not a spend frenzy.

Edit - weren't engines normalised in the last set of regs, IIRC merc had the lead then too but I think there was some equalisation. The problem then though was just power, not reliability and power and driveability

i also think the crackdown on engine development due to "reliablity" has hurt a lot of teams that would exploit this loop hole to catch up.

i think the key thing here is that do we really want a Formula championship where no one can make real gains in PU development during the season - if thats the case, then this is what we have, otherwise we have to free up the regs on the PU development but that would increase costs for teams, the gap between bigger and smaller teams in terms of performance would end up being huge - well -- bigger than it is now 🙂
especially as the introduction of all the hybrid stuff and technology in the gearbox and other areas have becomes so complex.

so, other option then is to totally restrict aero development and not spend millions on a new shaped carbon part under the car...
problem then is , if you have a team that went the wrong way with aero you cannot claw that back either, so we'd see complaints in that area too...

so the final option that gets kicked around is....custmoer cars... for smaller teams to buy "off the shelf" packages from teh bigger teams, even though they will be 'b' spec and let the bigger teams blow the budgets on whatever they want and it will trickle down...

yeah all of us who remember the good old days of a designer in a garage building and F1 car to take on the "big wigs" and winning think this is terrible... but those days are gone - and look at what the grid is now... 1 team winning, 2 teams whinning and 1 of the old guard teams unable to test/devlop and the rest struggling to pay for PUs gearbox's while building their own chassis....

would it not be better to at least have 30 car grids with 12 cars fighting at the front with unlimited costs/development and 18 cars in the middle having a B team dingdong battle?

i dunno - i kinda given up on the whole "where f1 should go thing" because everyone just cares about money

Isn't that exactly why Horner's idea is being proposed - the rules should be designed to produce a competitive formula free of the teams' self-interest. Of course, Horner wouldn't have been suggesting this when RB were dominant (and I reckon he'd be candid enough to admit it) but that kind of proves the point.

Aside from that, the rumours of CVC being bought out seem fairly strong and if that happens, I'm sure we'll see some changes.

To customer cars, the issue for the smaller teams is that it effectively completely destroys any intrinsic value their teams have - Force India for example is worth X millions. If they become just a customer team then they have no fundamental value so those X millions are wiped out. Not an attractive prospect for them and obviously it comes back to the question of what F1 is. For me, if they do go down the customer car route, it needs to be centrally run (as Bernie has proposed - 2013 RB car IIRC), with equivalency rules (which seems to work well at Le Mans) to make them right on the tail end of the big teams but with no customer rules to avoid them competing. Also allow some limited aero, etc tweaks so that the teams can keep some value.

Why not have in essence a second lower championship for lesser teams, all running a stock engine (PU). It happened previously when a lot of lower teams all ran Cosworths.

The head of Manor has some good points about F1 not having a strategy and not asking the right questions. Instead teams are cherry picking ideas that suit themselves.

I personally dont like the customer teams as it really just masquerades the problems, after all what if one of the manufacturers pulls out because they have a bad season. How will the money be shared out to the smaller teams . It all sounds a bit like motogp with satellite teams against yamaha, honda and possibly ducati.

The difference is that in Motogp they provided concessions and unlimited development for ducati and new entrants whilst frozen the the big boys. This at least provided Ducati with some success in getting parity.

Sauber highlighted how DTM allowed Mercedes to catch up whilst freezing dev for BMW and Audi to improve competition. I guess no one wants to see a 1 horse race except for the leading horse.
All the while Bernie sees it as a show to make money from sponsors nothing will really change. Hence his comments about drivers adding value and how Lewis is good for marketing F1.

bye bye kimi, Bottas will replace him even perhaps the last 3 races....

and perhaps sooner than we think its going to be bye bye bernie and CVC....

bye bye kimi, Bottas will replace him even perhaps the last 3 races....

Confirmed or speculation still?

Yes, this is pretty big news b2b. Have you got a link at all?

The discussions are almost certainly taking place but it's really speculation as to whether Williams will go for the cash over the driver - who else would they get? Hulkenberg maybe? Not sure he's considered as highly as Bottas.

Unless it's a lot more money, I reckon selling him would be a pretty negative statement from Williams on their road to recovery.

http://autoweek.com/article/formula-one/ferrari-formula-one-team-courting-williams-valtteri-bottas

one more rumour not yet out there too much....hello williams to a spanish driver....

Yawn. Another rumour not out there at the moment is that Jean Eric vergne will be back in to replace ricciardo at Red bull. That's because I just made it up., but at least I admit it.

Somber reading. Idle control keeps revs at 4100 and prevented change down to first gear, you cannot engage the clutch when the steering wheel is at full lock. The car rammed itself into the truck despite de Villotas best efforts.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-33248493

Just read that Jambalaya, horrible 🙁

Looks like the FIA are finally waking up and doing something - lots of the suggestions seem like a good idea, reducing driver coaching, more flexible tyre choice, more driver control of starts. Not sure about changes to the quali/race format though - the current quali format seems the best since the open 1 hour (well, 2 hour) format from years gone by.

Oh and surprised B2B/Hora haven't posted wild speculation about what Hamilton needed to see the quacks about that was so important. Is it teh bad cat aids? Is he pregnant???

you cannot engage the clutch when the steering wheel is at full lock

That is not what it says. The report says...

She had previously told engineers she could not operate the clutch when the steering wheel was at full-lock

Which isn't quite the same.

The decision to skip testing may comeback to haunt LH

The decision to skip testing may comeback to haunt LH

Apparently he had a doctors appointment!

On other news - good to see Manor have a new sponsor.

In silly season news...

• Renault will buy lotus which means there's a Merc engine deal going. Now I think there's a team which isn't entirely happy with their Renault engine, perhaps they may be interested!

I don't think a Merc engine will be on offer to that team.

have we done the new Force India nose?[img] [/img]

Well Im at Silverstone for the GP for the first time in 6 years and I'm must admit Im looking forward to hearing how the cars actually sound now. Practice is about to start...

Been wondering: why do the new turbos "need" (do they?) an air inlet (what are they called?) above the drivers' heads now? Thinking back to 1988 when there were turbos and NAs running together the MP4/4 and FW12 (for example) had very different cowlings with their turbo/NA engines respectively...

Really disappointing progress with the Honda PU, I really hope that the token update after the summer break actually works.

Been wondering: why do the new turbos "need" (do they?) an air inlet (what are they called?) above the drivers' heads now?

I would guess its more to do with roll hoop regulations now. These have to be much stronger and at a minimum height than they were in the 80's. So if you've got that stuck out the top of the car you may as well use it for something.

Really disappointing progress with the Honda PU, I really hope that the token update after the summer break actually works.

Same here - I though they'd be knocking on the door of the top ten by now. At least they've been given another full power unit to play with now.

There's just been a graphic on the F1 coverage...Fastest lap set in 2006 was a 1:20, now these cars are doing a 1:34 🙄 same track layout

How can a sport can call it's self the pinnacle of motor sports by going more slowly?

But wasn't Silverstone reworked in 2010? Therefore different layout from 2006 I think...

start finish and pits were moved, track has been the same though.

nope 2010 is when the new configuration started
lap record was 1:30.8 (in a race I think?)
pole today was 1:32.2

Not quite right there nickc, the layout did change in 2010 as at the time Silverstone had "lost" the F1 contract and the British GP was going to Donnington. The layout change was due to Silverstone bidding for, and getting, MotoGP. Those changes made it a more bike orientated track, the current turns 1-4 or 5 are the new section. I prefer the old layout for F1 but with the extra paddock work I think Silverstone still does well for a F1 car. I still prefer the old track layout though, was proper balls out fast for the whole lap. That's why the lap time difference is so great.

More here - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_history_of_Silverstone_Circuit

Oh yes, final piece of the story was Donnington going bust getting their track work done for F1, which is why it's still at Silverstone!

oh yeah, that's right, they come right don't they!

that'll be way they're slower I guess.

The old Woodcote Corner was a real man's bend. I saw GT40s and T70s side by side through there. Brilliant stuff. I'm not keen on the current layout.

The old [i]Silverstone[/i] in it's entirety was a man's circuit, but it could never stay as it was, Woodcote used to be 170mph in an F1 car, next to no runoff with railway sleepers between cars and spectators. The fantastic Nigel Roebuck reckoned "... In all my years of watching F1 drivers, I have never seen anything better than Ronnie {Peterson]’s Lotus 72 through Silverstone’s original Woodcote Corner." It was heck of a turn. 🙂

F1 trivia time - whilst researching this post I found a video of the 1977 GP - one of my earliest memories was being there on a practice day and seeing James Hunt (well - a McLaren, to be fair, but I like to think of it as James, he must have been circulating at some point), and hearing the start of the race from Cousin Bridget's house. That race marked the F1 debut of two particular things, one a driver and the other a technology of note even today. A point for each, and if you google them you're a tit. 🙂

turbo engine (renault ?)

Mansell ? ? ?

Gah - 1 out of 2. Does it make it trickier if I don't tell you which one you got right?:)

Silverstone 1977 should be best known for David Purley's enormous accident.

If you are going to Google it, have a look at the pics of his car and marvel at how he survived that. Just. Or go to Donington and have a look at the wreck.

Well I enjoyed yesterday but can't wait for the race today. I loved being able to hear more than just exhaust noise.

Silverstone 1977 should be best known for David Purley's enormous accident.

Don't think it was Mansell.