F1 2020 (spoilers abound)

I don’t get the love for Hulkenberg….seems to me he’s a mediocre mid-pack driver who stayed around way too long

Ross Brawn says Hulkenberg was their next choice as a driver if Hamilton hadn’t signed for Merc.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.if-hamilton-hadnt-joined-mercedes-hulkenberg-was-our-next-choice-he-deserves.6beM387uDFwwXHDR3ME9n6.html

Rumblings on social media of a possible return for Jerez and Istanbul for the tail end of this season to fill the gap prior to the middle east rounds. Istanbul esp would be a welcome return.

Claire realised that Toto already give them Engines and George ? pic.twitter.com/UgazbsXC0Y

— Ari TH Feeder | アリ TH フィーダー (@AriTHFeeder) August 12, 2020

So ‘Quali Modes’ to be banned after Spanish GP. Not sure how they’re going to police that? They’ll just add a dial that goes up to 11!…

Why the FIA told teams it will ban ‘quali modes’ after this weekend’s race

It’s not just qualifying modes.

During the race, they often turn the engine down for reliability, or save fuel or do the opposite to overtake.

The only way of doing it is to remove the ability of the driver to change engine settings at all.

What about changing the mode to start the car?

All seems a very big can of worms and a big change at such short notice.

The only way of doing it is to remove the ability of the driver to change engine settings at all.

That seems to be the intention. I’m not sure how the different modes work.

The max fuel flow is regulated and oil burning has been minimized. Obviously, they can control the boost level, fuel richness, and ignition timing. The qualifying mode reduces durability massively, so it stresses the engine much more than standard mode, but the increase in power is only about 50 hp. My guess is that Merc figured out how to run higher boost with a leaner mixture, leading to higher temperatures in the combustion chamber, hence the reliability problem. Apparently they studied diesel engine combustion when they started developing their engine, which probably means they were researching how lean mixtures combust under high compression ratios.

Problem is, the regulations limit the fuel flow, not the combustion characteristics, so Merc must have found some way to change the combustion characteristics for short bursts. Maybe Merc used oil additives to alter the combustion characteristics in qualifying mode, as an octane booster rather than a fuel. Apart from something like that, I don’t see how they can cheat if fuel flow is limited accurately.

wardee
Member

It’s not just qualifying modes.

During the race, they often turn the engine down for reliability, or save fuel or do the opposite to overtake.

The only way of doing it is to remove the ability of the driver to change engine settings at all.

What about changing the mode to start the car?

All seems a very big can of worms and a big change at such short notice.

That’s not he only way of doing it, but is the simplest. You could also for example mandate that the qualifying mode is also used for at least X laps in the race.

I just can’t see that the rule change will stick if it’s implemented as you’ve said, it’s too far reaching.

It’s not even proper Quali Mode! BHP so high you can’t measure it and an engine that melts after 2 laps – that’s Quali Mode! 🙂

the-muffin-man
Subscriber

It’s not even proper Quali Mode! BHP so high you can’t measure it and an engine that melts after 2 laps – that’s Quali Mode! 🙂

Yep, the good old days 🙂

May be we need to switch to this https://t.co/s31jyXj0AT pic.twitter.com/8SKZ9KCSdI

— Craig Scarborough (@ScarbsTech) August 13, 2020

Give them a manual gearbox as well while you’re at it.

Give them a manual gearbox as well while you’re at it.

Nah, flappy paddles are common on road cars so they can stay, but to echo road car technology they should only be able to choose from 3 engine modes – ‘Eco’, ‘Normal’ and ‘Sport’,

thepurist

Nah, flappy paddles are common on road cars so they can stay, but to echo road car technology they should only be able to choose from 3 engine modes – ‘Eco’, ‘Normal’ and ‘Sport’,

“scenario 7 please Lando, that’s Sport+ mode and air conditioning set to off”

my understanding is that they won’t ban quali modes, but will mandate that teams must then use those modes for a certain percentage of the race…presumably enough that it would either destroy the engine or use all the fuel (is that even possible with fuel flow restrictions?). I assume the FIA have a way to check what modes were used for how long

I’m still struggling to see the point of the fuel regulations. Can’t help but feel that “here’s x litres for the race, off you pop” would be far simpler and more entertaining whilst still having eco credentials

I’m still struggling to see the point of the fuel regulations. Can’t help but feel that “here’s x litres for the race, off you pop” would be far simpler and more entertaining whilst still having eco credentials

agreed. but then I struggle with a lot of F1 regs at the moment. Now they’ve agreed a budget cap, they should throw away half the tech regs and just allow teams to innovate to their hearts’ content within that budget cap (even if it’s impossible to police)

I’m still struggling to see the point of the fuel regulations. Can’t help but feel that “here’s x litres for the race, off you pop” would be far simpler and more entertaining whilst still having eco credentials

Me too.
You’ve got 100 litres of fuel. If you can make a 7L V16 with 3,000hp get to the end of a race on that then hats off to you, that would push innovation. Next year you’ve got 90 litres…
.
Talking of engines and quali modes though, a serious question. Why don’t Williams (and Haas/Alfa) engines go pop more often?
Take Williams in 2019 for example. Pretty much guarrenteed to be last, but can pretty much get through a season on the required number of engines. If they turned them right up for one race, what could they do, almost certainly score points, maybe good ones. OK, this would effect reliability and they would go bang at the next race or the one after, but then put a new one in, take the penalty and start at the back (as they would anyway) and repeat next time. Better to get half a dozen points finishes and a load of DNFs than a season of 20th places surely? Wouldn’t work for the big teams, you need points almost every time to stand a chance in the championship. Might be expensive, but money is shared out according to success so maybe cost-neutral or even beneficial?
What’s the lap time difference between pootling around preserving engines and giving it full beans? With fuel on board and tyre wear it will be slower than quali but should still get them well into the midfield (briefly)

They will be easily able to police the Qualy mode use thanks to the standard ECU. What I think they’re going after is the way that the factory teams will have multiple maps to use all the time whereas the customer teams only get the basic maps and nothing more. I remember Williams and then-Force India both saying that they didn’t get the same maps for their engines as Merc had a few years ago. It could also be a way of siplifying things for the general audience who will understand having 3 different modes (Eco, Sport, Sport+ as thepurist mentioned) as that’s similar to their own cars rather than having 10 modes that can have a massive effect on the car’s performance.

Personally I think it’s a waste of time as the modes are no different to the previous generations where the drivers had turbo boost or just used more revs for a small amount of time. I enjoy the skill and strategy of using their equipment cleverly, balancing reliability against outright performance or simply running out of fuel. I feel it’ll be like team orders, the teams will find ways of doing it anyway so it’ll be made legal again soon.

. If they turned them right up for one race, what could they do, almost certainly score points, maybe good ones

They really wouldn’t. They’d run out of fuel before the end of the race for starters.

they’ll just run a relatively “high” output map and change the rev indicater/gear change indicator lights 1. quali normal 2 quali fast 3. race normal 4. race push 5. race economy. and a ultimate rev limit for each

The fact that there are only four engine manufacturers in the sport including three works teams must make for a certain amount of pay to win among the customer teams.

Both Williams and McLaren appear to be now neutral in the wake of Mercedes’ defence of Racing Point. McLaren will have pissed off their engine supplier, let’s see what happens next.

Regarding Williams and their engine maps, they may not be able to afford new engines when they go pop. They probably analysed the situation and think they will get better gains from spending that money in other areas.

No real surprises there. Albon needs up his game, 8 tenths off max!

Just had a meet up with the usual local F1 clique.
A guy with a son at Mercedes was told they didn’t use party mode in qualifying, they’ve saved the engine for more presses of the overtake button.
We shall see. Really looking forward to this afternoon.

A guy with a son at Mercedes was told they didn’t use party mode in qualifying

https://the-race.com/formula-1/the-numbers-that-show-the-true-extent-of-mercedes-dominance/

blimey that ferrari is a dog

I thought initially when I saw a red car facing the wrong way, it was Vettel spinning it again…

absolute master class, cooked max for 15 laps then waltzed off into the distance. (makes the fishy tire choice for the aniversary gp smell a little more foul)

ferrari running 5th in the constructors!

Didnt see the race but just saw the Albon Interview, first thing that came to mind with the way he was talking is he’s been told he’s being replaced.

no doubt total rubbish but he looked like a rabbit in a cars headlights.

Surprisingly enjoyable race thanks to the midfield action. Masterclass from Hamilton, looked like they had bags of pace left.

Vettel/Ferrari relationship sounds FUBAR

Ended turning the race off, combination of mediocre race and C4 going to advert s every 5 mins

Wow, vettel ended up doing 37 laps on used softs…well deserved driver of the day imo!

Vettel: “you need to let me know now what you want me to do in terms of pace.”

Ferrari: “go faster”

Vettel: “for how long?”

Ferrari: “3 laps” …. “all you have” …. “no more saving”

(*a few laps later*)

Ferrari: “What do you think about going to the end with this tyres”

Vettel: “Oh for **** sake! I asked you this before and now I’ve been pushing for 3 laps!”

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Vettel leave Ferrari before the last race, he really is losing it with the team!

Good fun in the midfield, plenty going on with different strategies that relied on overtaking to work.

Ended turning the race off, combination of mediocre race and C4 going to adverts every 5 mins.

I’ve spotted that if it’s a boring race C4 put more ad breaks in the actual race coverage than they do for a good one. Not really complaining about it though as you know that you’re not missing anything. Plus it’s 10x better than having to put up with Crofty’s stupid shouting at anything more exciting than paint dry.

Didnt see the race but just saw the Albon Interview, first thing that came to mind with the way he was talking is he’s been told he’s being replaced.

I get that feeling too – at the minute they’ve not even got a decent No.2 driver. 8th in a car capable of podiums isn’t good enough.

I’m not sure Gasly is a good option either. But honestly don’t know who else they could go for. Hulk or Vettel aren’t long-term options, and they’ve no-one ready in their driver development programme.

Would love to see Vettel vs Max in that car. Mind you, sounds like it’s a right handful to drive, and Vettel hasn’t exactly shown himself to be able to drive around instability in the car…

Horner has been pretty clear in saying they’re not interested in Vettel. RedBull is now more of a one man team than Ferrari was under Shumi – the #2 driver just needs to be there to stop other teams taking poihts, but Albon is not doing a great job there. I have zero sympathy for RedBull though – they had a promising young driver line up but have squandered them by first preferring Seb and now Max, leaving the #2 drivers riddled with doubt about their own ability. They’ve got a couple of options in their junior programme in F2/F3 – none are setting the world alight with their pace at the moment but my feeling is that they will reshuffle the pack for 2021 switching Kvyat or Gasly back to be Max’s punchbag and Albon back to AT, and look for new talent in 2022 when they have more of a chance of beating Merc.

Albon is not doing a great job there.

It’s hard to judge from the outside. The car appears to be difficult to drive. Verstappen, despite being an annoying, arrogant ****, seems to be extremely talented, on the level of Senna, Schumacher, Hamilton, etc. Verstappen has the confidence and reflexes to drive it right on the limit despite it being very unpredictable. Merc have a similar situation, with cars over the last few years that have often been very difficult to get the best out of. Hamilton has generally done better at that than Bottas, but Bottas seems to be a fairly decent driver. He’s just unfortunate enough to have a teammate who has credible claim to the Greatest of All Time. Same problem for Red Bull and Albon – he seems to do better in races than in qualifying, but he’s driving a difficult car and being compared to a truly exceptional teammate. Red Bull will have a better picture of what’s going on, but they need to produce a car that’s a bit more predictable before writing off young drivers.

I must say I’m kind of on the same page as Retro here. While he has had quite a fall from grace I thought Vettel did a pretty good job of making those tyres last and keeping the train of clearly faster cars behind him. Yes, it helps that Barcelona is not the easiest track to overtake on but there is also an element of skilful and tactical driving and I thought Vettel did a very good job yesterday.

I think Albon has potential to improve. He has shown that he can be a brave and optimistic driver with some great drives, in places. I think he deserves a bit more time. I have also been impressed with George Russell this season. Despite being in a pretty uncompetitive car he has achieved some impressive results. In some ways I am surprised that Mercedes have given Bottas another year and not gambled with Russell.

At first I also thought that the comments from Seb sounded like major meltdown in the relationship but, again, thanks to retro’s post I have the context that we didn’t see in the highlights, and they make an awful lot more sense. Also, Vettel did have a more rational conversation on the radio a bit later in the race and seeing both of these together makes me think the relationship is not quite as toxic as might be suspected if you only heard the “Vettel: “Oh for **** sake! I asked you this before and now I’ve been pushing for 3 laps!” line

The Red Bull has been twitchy so far, remember that Verstappen ended up thumping the wall on a formation lap a couple of weeks back.

We know from Albon’s promotion in 2019 that he’s quick and capable of delivering the goods. It’s evident that Albon does not have a confidence inspiring car underneath him.

It’s hard to judge from the outside. The car appears to be difficult to drive. Verstappen, despite being an annoying, arrogant ****, seems to be extremely talented, on the level of Senna, Schumacher, Hamilton, etc. Verstappen has the confidence and reflexes to drive it right on the limit despite it being very unpredictable.

Yup, there’s a good chance that Albon is the one showing how good the car actually is

Bet you didn’t know that Kovalinen was faster over a lap than Prost? 😂

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.hamilton-schumacher-senna-machine-learning-reveals-the-fastest-f1-driver-of.3DwwPLW4glCmlunjciH1Cz.html

The stat I liked from the weekend was Kimi’s overall distance in F1 races has now beaten Alonso’s 83,846km.

Nearly 84k Km in F1 races – blimey.