The F1 2015 thread…

if they stop supplying engines then probably a merc rebadged as inifiniti 🙂 . I forgot that actually it was Infiniti RBR so Renault did have a chance to promote the company name.

I don’t think Mercedes would let them have such close access to their engines!

Rumour is that Manor could get the engines Lotus currently use and become a Merc ‘B’ Team.

McLaren would quite like Manor too I reckon – feeder team and also to allow more mileage/testing of the Honda PU (Poo unit).

If Renault buy Lotus, they’d use the Renault engine as suggested but many in the know reckon that Renault are working towards an exit rather than buying Lotus.

I thought manor and Mercedes had already done a deal?

If they have it hasn’t been formally announced yet. Wouldn’t be a surprise though.

So it’ll be Ferrari Vs Merc to see how many times they can lap the Honda 🙄 Wow what a dull series.

What’s the money on Red Bull pulling out soon as well?

So it’ll be Ferrari Vs Merc…

Possibly – not sure how Ferrari are going to service 6 teams though! They are in line to supply…

Ferrari
Red Bull
Toro Rosso
Sauber
Haas F1
Manor (if Renault don’t buy Lotus).

Bernie needs to be making some calls to make sure Renault stay.

or give honda teams the ability to use 10 engines a season. Its going to be a long 2016 season for everyone. I cant see any engine manufacturer jumping on the f1 bandwagon without 3-5 year preparation time.

Mehri out, Rossi in.

And Merhi recently announced he was quitting Formula Renault to concentrate on F1 – Bad timing! (or has run out of money?).

Mehri out, Rossi in.

That’s Haas’s ‘no inexperienced drivers’ problem sorted for next season then.

I wouldn’t mind if we had only merc and Ferrari as major engine suppliers. Back in the day most of the grid ran the ford dfv with a few oddities like ferrari and alfa romeo, and that was what some people think of as the golden age. Trouble is that at the moment there’s only 2 teams with both a serious budget and a decent pu, so everyone else is also rans. Homologate the pus and mandate a budget cap and you never know, we might get some racing…

@thepurist

the difference back then is Ford did not have a works team (IIRC) and supplied everyone with the same spec engine, next year it will Merc + Ferrari works teams and the B-spec rest…with Honda chasing the newly faster Manor-Merc at the back….

The Renault + Lotus deal is all but done, its bernie thats holding up the issue on if they meet the ‘rules’ for a “historic” team and get a nice 30m bonus cheque from him to enter next year just as RenaultF1.
…something about not counting Benneton Renault championship….
again these “rules” come down to simply Bernie discretion it seems

IMHO they are they only serious contender to break up the Ferrari/Merc domination at the front 2 spots – if they dont produce a good car for next year we could all be looking at a repeat of this year! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

edit – Ford : ok i was slightly wrong but also slightly right :WIKI:
“Initially, the agreement between Ford, Cosworth and Lotus was binding on all parties, and Ford as the funder had no plans to sell or hire the DFV to any other teams. However, it occurred to Hayes that there was no competition: the Ferrari engine was underpowered; the BRM complex and too heavy; the Maserati unreliable; the Honda overweight; while Dan Gurney’s Weslake motor was powerful but unreliable.[4] Only Brabham’s Repco V8 engine provided a usable combination of power and reliability, but its age and design left little room for further improvement. Hayes concluded that Ford’s name could become tarnished if the Lotus were to continue winning against only lesser opposition, and that they should agree to use the unit in other teams, and hence potentially dominate Formula One.
At the end of 1967, Copp and Hayes gently explained to Chapman that he would no longer have monopoly use of the DFV and in August 1968 it was announced that the power unit would be available for sale, via Cosworth Engineering, to racing teams throughout the world.[5] Hayes released the DFV initially to French team Matra, headed by Ken Tyrrell with Jackie Stewart as a driver. What followed was a golden age, where teams big or small could buy an engine which was competitive, light, compact, easy to work with and relatively cheap (£7,500 at 1967 prices[6] or about £90,000 in 2005 money[7]). The DFV effectively replaced the Coventry Climax as the standard F1 powerplant for the private (mostly British) teams.”

EDIT URL to wiki page because its such a great read about the engine
wiki
the paragraphs about F1 really show that back then it was all about experimentation, initiative, creative and exploring the limits of everything from engines, turbos, aero and drivers.

and what will wiki tell us in a few years about this ear of f1…..

Should’ve said that I’d include fuel, lubricant and engine mapping as part of homologation. That cuts out a lot of the works team advantage – guess they could still play with packaging to shift rads etc around. Agree that while merc have their secret super Mario engine mode on the car nobody else will match them for power.

Well silly season is coming, apparently the summer break marks start of the contract process.

Here is the current lines up. Whos staying and whos going? In Webber’s sky interview he mentions a lot of drivers that shouldnt be on the grid. Who is he referring to?

Pretty much the only seats are Lotus, Manor,Haas and possibily half of Mclaren

Personally I’d like to see the drivers get round the track without mashing up their cars on the first few laps etc. It would be less of a spectacle if Pastor wasnt there. Oh and there is the Haas team as well ( ‘experience needed there’ )

Scuderia Ferrari Ferrari Sebastian Vettel / Kimi Räikkönen

India Sahara Force India F1 Team Sergio Pérez / Nico Hülkenberg

Lotus F1 Team Romain Grosjean / Pastor Maldonado

Manor Marussia F1 Team Will Stevens / Roberto Merhi /Rossi

McLaren Honda McLaren-Honda Fernando Alonso / Jenson Button

Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team Nico Rosberg / Lewis Hamilton

Infiniti Red Bull Racing Daniel Ricciardo / Daniil Kvyat

Sauber F1 Team Marcus Ericsson / Felipe Nasr

Toro Rosso Max Verstappen / Carlos Sainz, Jr.

Williams Martini Racing Felipe Massa / Valtteri Bottas

Who is he referring to

Mehri, Ericsson, Nasr, Stevens, Maldonado

A couple of those I’d argue are a little unfair but…

so as i stated previously a while back about RBR maneuvering to leave f1…. so, they are are now in a position to exit F1 before the 2020 agreement without penalty (because renault are not going to supply customer engines in 2016 and RBR might not take up a Ferrari engine option, and the agreement states that teams can leave if they are without a competitive engine supplier)
lets see what comes up in the next few months because bernie might step in/rule change/do something to try and keep RBR around with a decent engine…but…its not like ferrari and merc are going to want to do that in a hurry….

certainly it could end up my Red bull exits, someone else buys the team and runs it with a customer engine and it will probably have a name change!

It’ll be bad for F1 short term, but good riddance I say. They came into F1 stating they wanted to be F1’s good-time team, appeal to the youngsters and have some fun.

But have turned into the biggest bunch of old-fart whingers in F1 history.

RBR wouldn’t get good value for their team if they leave now. Mateschitz might appear to be somewhat emotionally driven but he’s a businessman foremost and won’t want to sell while the team is at its lowest value.

Far better to get a deal with Ferrari, prove next year that the team is still competitive (Because this year’s chassis with a Ferrari engine would be top 2 or 3 team) and then sell it.

Maybe if rbr had conducted themselves with a bit more dignity they wouldn’t have so much trouble finding a new engine deal. For once I agree with b2b about this being an exit opportunity for them. They’d be too pricey for Renault to buy though so that’s not a factor in the Lotus delays.

That’s certainly true. I reckon that the Merc board would have signed up for it if they hadn’t figured that there was a strong chance that if RBR weren’t winning they’d soon enough blame Merc for not giving them the same spec of engine (which they wouldn’t do to be fair but you don’t hear Williams complaining or at least not directly).

8)

Slacker, he’s left at least a couple of cm spare there 😉

Maybe if rbr had conducted themselves with a bit more dignity they wouldn’t have so much trouble finding a new engine deal.

Yep – I bet Ferrari want to insert loads of ‘You can’t say this, you can’t say that’ clauses into any contract!

nobody should look at this as RBR wanting to stay in F1 since the start of the season this year, if you look at it as the opposite, it all makes sense.

destroy your engine supplier’s reputation, have no one work with you or have an available replacement, and your all clear to exit without paying 20million a year for each year from now till 2020.

and your all clear to exit without paying 20million a year for each year from now till 2020.

And therefore keep all that ‘historic team’ funding that other teams don’t get.

And now it seems Eddie Jordan is claiming vw are planning a take over of red bull. Ferrari power and redbull sponsorship , with a vw pu arriving in a few years.

And alonso in 8th must be a sign that the chassis ain’t so bad once you don’t need the full ers effect. Make adjustments for the downforce they lose through having less power and they’d be in the mix. Ferdie just needs that miracle from Japan.

yeah because Alonso being 8th in practice has always reflected well in qualy………….oh no wait…………….. they are running qualy fuel mode while everyone else is working on race setup….why should mclaren when they wil retire the car with 4 laps from the end….

So I wonder how bernie feels about 3 teams going out of f1 by the end of the 2015 season.. Theres got to be some serious power broking going on there:)

I like the idea of VW entering the fray. But the problem is what happens when they have an economic downturn will the manufacturers go the same way as Toyota, bmw and ford before them?

is any car manufacturer going to enter f1 “clean” looking at the problems with Honda,

quite simply there needs to be a rule change , but the existing big teams at the top all have to agree it – and no one is going to do that just yet – i think if ferrari had been still midfield it would be a different story

i think everyone is waiting for what comes out of the pressures being applied for 2016 rule changes around testing and engine development – if f1 want newcomers, then the FIA and bernie are going to have force changes upon F1 and only then will new engines come in

Oh yes!!!!!!

should be an interesting race tomorrow !

nice to see the fact singapore was always going to suit the mclarens they were so high up – oh no wait………………………………..

I can’t believe Vettel qualified 1.5 seconds ahead of the Mercedes!!! Where the hell did that come from?!?! Gonna be a great race tomorrow.

funny that mercs were back to the straight wing, perhaps they don’t have a “high” downforce version.

Even if Singapore is a high down force low power track I just can’t get my head round why red bull would be in front of Mercedes when the mercs have walked it all season.

Some good explanation here.[/url] 1.5 seconds though, that’s pretty devastating!!

I’d like to see Max Verstappen pass a Mercedes tomorrow. That would certainly spice things up a little! 🙂

The start should be interesting.. i’m hoping kimi has his specsavers glasses on and gets out of the blocks. Personally would like to see kvyat get up there as he has been doing a great job on ricciardo.

Expect to see a safety car of some sort and probably vettel romping it home. The clash of the day will be rossi v stevens.

probably vettel romping it home

I’ve got this at the ready just in case