The F1 2015 thread…

So why has the mirrorsport got this and no one else?

Because its such old news… As mentioned above this conversation between hamo and the team was talked about on the day.

Also, for some reason, the Mirror have got it in for Hamilton. Or so I’ve heard anyway…

Not sure why the director didn’t show this, but it’s Sainz almost taking out Ericsson… bet it was twitching like a rabbits nose

The reply was: “Ok, copy, copy. Box. Box.”

There’s nothing wetter than folding when someone simply wants an instruction confirming.

In Ross Brawn’s day he would have got ‘do as you are told’ and that would be the end of it.

Ham should have then asked which is it then, stay out or come in, but I suppose the pit entrance was too close.

“Are you sure it’s the best thing to stay out ? These tyres have lost all their temperature and everyone else is going to be on [faster] options now.”

Strange noob question that one. Given that it was Monaco, he definitely have enough experience to know that even running on the rims it’s still almost impossible to get past?

the thing that gets me , is hamo must know these things yet here is sulking around and smashing into the ‘3rd place’ sign and being coy around interviews instead of saying ‘ yeah i made a call to come in because i thought it was right ‘
he has the attitute of “i can do no wrong and its always someone else to blame” rather than be seen in a bad light/some weakness

Strange noob question that one. Given that it was Monaco, he definitely have enough experience to know that even running on the rims it’s still almost impossible to get past?

Clearly he should run his strategy decisions past you.

he has the attitute of “i can do no wrong and its always someone else to blame” rather than be seen in a bad light/some weakness

It won’t be the last time we see that from him, one of the reasons I dislike him

i can do no wrong and its always someone else to blame

Errr, particularly in this case he hasn’t blamed any one else has he? Since the first interview he hasn’t apportioned blame.

As for the slow in lap and crashing into the sign, if I’d just given away a couple of places in a very high profile race I’d be pretty narked & upset, even more so if it was my fault….

he has the attitute of “i can do no wrong and its always someone else to blame” rather than be seen in a bad light/some weakness

It won’t be the last time we see that from him, one of the reasons I dislike him

Now see, I don’t agree. He admitted he was part of the call, and therefore the mistake. What you seem as petulance and sulking at others I see as a guy who’s passionate about the sport / his chance of winning the championship being angry and annoyed about the situation. Granted its not very “mature” to run into the sign etc, but within the bounds of decency do we really have to turn our sports people into boring robotic politically orientated speakers?

Clearly he should run his strategy decisions past you.
POSTED 1 HOUR AGO # REPORT-POST

Seems like a reasonable suggestion if he and the team can’t get it right I suppose

it still seems that there is a communication issue. His race engineer gets berated for talking more than others. I’d hate to be in his side of the garage on a bad day.
Its funny how Hamilton is now stepping up to “lead the team” when the same has been said of Alonso and Vettel for years. The relationship between the each team and Hamilton have never really been harmonious with a tinge of conspiracy most of the time. Clearly we only see the bad bits of the race ( wheels falling off etc)
He’s 30 now and still racing like a 17year old ( swapping shritswinger for K Jenner 🙂 And why not if you can!

i think some of you only hear what you want to hear in the post race interviews cos i heard hamilton saying different stuff like “i dont understand why i was called in” and “need to see why this happened and why they called me in”

the the Team staff have to defend themselves with the press onslaught (partic. bbc and sky-love-lewis-f1)

i never heard
“i was worried about the tyres so i decided to tell the team i was coming in and changing them , it didnt work out , it was my call, so you cant blame the team”
did WE HEAR THAT???????????????
N EFFIN O!

Maybe because he didn’t actually make that call. I’m not exactly a LH fanboi, but some of the haterz on here make yourselves look a bit silly with suggestions like that. Of course he didn’t make the call, as he didn’t have the information to do so – if you can avoid applying your bias to what was actually said you might notice that LH just queried whether he should come in, and as already pointed out several times, the team should have just told him no.

LOL @ “i think some of you only hear what you want to hear”

aracer +1

@aracer – are you not reading the links above to the radio transcripts…?

Just to make it clear I’m not a Merc or LH fan.

LH gave feedback on tyres and voiced his strategy concerns. It was for the Pit wall to make the right decision as they had information LH simply didn’t have access to. They got the gap wrong and should have never called Lewis in.

I don’t think they got the gap wrong, just made the mistake of thinking others would be coming in too. Which is amusing considering that someone must have been aware that Rosberg was staying out. Mind you I think it’s quite healthy if the two sides of the garage are allowed to run their own race without interference or even knowledge from the other side.

Which links?

I’ve read the quote from the mirror where LH asks whether he should come in. asks

Why don’t you stop making yourself look silly by reading it without your LH hater glasses on, and working out who has the required information to make the call, and therefore who does ultimately make the call.

As I pointed out above, I’m not particularly a LH fan (but don’t expect me to be unbiased about the other Brit who scored points).

Do we hear from b2b and other haters when he wins again and again – N EFFIN O!

errr mashiehood – yes i am more than happy to congrats lewis when he wins, read some previous pages…
lewis loverz just seemz to like saying zems not loverz anymore but really are…

Not sure if its been discussed before …

How do people feel about active aerodynamics? Would this allow more close wheel racing?

From what I understand, part of the problem is the dirty air coming off the car in front reducing the effectiveness of the second car’s aerodynamics so it doesn’t have the grip to stay at the same pace.

What if cars where allowed to increase the their down force by changing the angle of the front wing? You could have a similar system to DRS, whereby if you are within 1 sec of the car in front, you can increase your front wing angle through certain sections.

I’m certain I’m not an aero genius and this has been thought off before and dismissed by the F1 people? But why? what are the downsides?

How do people feel about active aerodynamics? Would this allow more close wheel racing?

As you point you, it’s the kind of thing we have already with DRS. To be honest, it comes across as very artificial with DRS zones and the fact that the follow car has to be within a certain distance before the flap can be deployed. It’s all a little bit Playstation for my tastes.

I think you’re suggesting that we go further and give ownership of active aerodynamics to the drivers? If so, I think that the idea has merit.

A driver in an under powered car could potentially make up time by reducing downforce, perhaps this could be coupled with a “drag penalty” applied to the faster cars in qualifying – ie the front three rows have an additional aerodynamic drag load applied, or have to run higher wing settings as a minimum?

I would argue that this approach too would come across as a tad artificial, but there’s potential to tighten up the grid.

Hmm, I’m not sure handicap racing has a place in F1. Of course all drivers in all cars could reduce their downforce and increase their speed on the straights. For this reason I think it would be a bad idea in general as it would remove the element of choice and allow cars to work better all round (see the Williams which is optimised for higher speeds).

I also doubt it would help much with the close running issue. If anything allowing them to increase downforce when in close proximity might make things worse, as they’d then be even more affected by dirty air.

Just allow ground effect – that’ll be much less affected by wake than front wings are. You can then get rid of DRS. As the cars get faster, you can fairly easily reduce speeds by restricting the size of the venturi tunnels, etc.

You then keep the wings (to keep F1 cars looking like F1 cars) but make them much simpler/less effective, similar to mid 90s cars – eg straight wings, constant section with simple end plates.

Mind you they are making some good changes – widening the front wing will help (a little) with following closer to a car in front.

Active aero is overly complex I reckon – keep it simple(!) and understandable.

What is needed for ground effect in F1, is it simply allowing the cars to run lower?

What’s the current reason for not allowing this? Safety reasons, in case cars bottom out and go out of control?

From what I understand, part of the problem is the dirty air coming off the car in front reducing the effectiveness of the second car’s aerodynamics so it doesn’t have the grip to stay at the same pace.

Partially. Most of the current issue is that the front wing is quite narrow, the ‘dirty air’ issues pretty much affects only the ends of the front wing, the middle is largely unaffected, so in theory the rule changes for ’17 when wider cars come back ‘should’ make a difference. (by making more of the front wing “the middle” you decrease the effect of dirt air)

Jairaj – The rules state flat bottoms to the car (with a step for the plank to ensure a certain ride height). Remove that and allow venturi tunnels of specified size and job done. No skirts though, those were silly

Currently banned to control speeds. You’re right about bottoming causing problems of the grip disappearing suddenly but you could still retain a plank of some sort with ground effect or using tunnels massively reduces the issue (since they’ll always be above the ground.

Phew!

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119318

No refuelling…

Is that all? I thought there was an issue with having a step change from lots of downforce to none when the airflow went wrong – not only because of bottoming, but also because of air escaping out of the sides if hitting a bump. If it’s really possible to engineer those issues out (and possible to write the rules in such a way that teams are forced to do so, rather than taking a chance on a setup with more downforce but with a risk of losing it all), then it appears to be an obvious thing to bring back.

Are you expert enough on this to be sure that you can control it through regulations sufficiently to limit speeds? I’m wondering if there’s something we’re all missing which is preventing them allowing it?

I think somebody’s having a dig at Bernie: “This was so obvious it was going to be a non-starter even a blind man could see it.

What’s the current reason for not allowing this? Safety reasons, in case cars bottom out and go out of control?

The problem – and solution lies with the profile of current F1 tyres. The rims have been 13″ for as long as I can remember and as such F1 tyres have an unusually tall profile not seen on the road since the 1960s. A knock on issue is that such a large air volume will increase significantly depending on the air temperature inside the tyre, so the ride height of an F1 car on cold tyres is considerably lower than a with the same car on warm tyres. The theory is that this is what caused the Senna crash in 1994 – his tyres cooled after the safety car period and the reduced ride height caused a bottom out that ultimately threw him off the course at Tambourello.

If we were to run lower profile tyres on larger rims, then this would reduce this effect and teams would be able to maintain an optimum ride height…which would allow cars to run some underfloor venturi more reliably.

As above the issue with reliance on ground effect is the sudden loss of downforce when the airflow goes wonky. But write the rules to allow say 15% of downforce from ground effect and you reduce the aero wake issue a bit. Wings are important for advertising, like the rear wing side plates that don’t do much other than make money

Wings are important for advertising, like the rear wing side plates that don’t do much other than make money

This is accurate and sums up the entire problem of F1 for me. It used to be about manufacturers racing one another to sell cars. It’s now about a money-circus for one ageing little turd who’s increasingly out of touch with the fans.

I rather thought the ban on skirted ground effects back in the eighties was a safety issue – firstly because in the case of contact cars had been taking off rather scarily (ref Gilles’ and Didier’s 1982 crashes) and secondly because they had to run the cars almost completely solidly sprung to maximise the downforce, which with the suspension technology and track surfaces of the day made them physically painful to race. With modern tracks and suspension tech, the second would be far less of an issue, I think.

Be interested to know if switching back to ground effects WOULD allow closer racing, it’s still going to rely on tidy airflow in and produce turbulent airflow out, isn’t it?

PJM1974 when F1 was cheap you got numpties like Andrea Mode and Life etc who didn’t really have a clue but could afford to fund a team for a season or two. I remember the days of pre qualifying, and they make Manor look like world champions. Now it’s gone too far the other way – circuits and hosting fees fall to squinty which is why they chase off to brand new circuits in the middle of nowhere in countries that have no real motorsports programme of their own, but the teams need more money than before because they’ve got so big with specialist teams for wing mirror fixing bolt design and the like. The engines are a small factor in the overall cost of running a race team of hundreds of people, with expensive facilities, high end computing and exotic materials. If you want to make it more affordable then yes bernie needs to know when he’s rich enough, but you also need to put a thousand or so people out of work.

How do people feel about active aerodynamics? Would this allow more close wheel racing?

I’m all for it! I think it’ll make the cars look like a cross between a jet engine and the tumbler from batman. Brilliant 🙂

In fact, if F1 really does want to represent the cutting edge them this the way to go. You already have it a little bit on some supercars and it makes sense in my head to continue with this type of technology much further.

Had to cringe when they pulled Hamiltons car out of the barrier. Looked like the type of recovery you’d see down the banger track on a Sunday morning.