The F1 2015 thread…

Hamilton defo in cruise mode – although i think he played a little game of fastest laps near the end to force a mistake so he could pass Rosberg – i do believe Mercedes want the 2nd spot all sewn up and Hamilton was not allowed to pass.

Renault takeover of lotus seems dead in the water – i suspect Bernie, annoyed that Renault would stop supplying other teams if they became a works Team, has told them they wont get the 50-odd million due as a “historical” team….
this has probably resolved the RBR situation and they will run with Renault 1 more year.

Ferrari looked a disaster ! both drivers seemed to be unsettled in the car – perhaps they have stopped all work on the 2015 car and look to 2016.

McLaren took a step forward last race – and 7 back this race!

In order to change the status quo for 2016 the FIA is seriously going to have to allow pre/in season testing before next years start…..

Manor are about to die? think the Merc engine deal is dead….

And Force India are going to be rebranded Aston Martin F1.

The silly season is in full swing already.

In order to change the status quo for 2016 the FIA is seriously going to have to allow pre/in season testing before next years start…..

This would have to be available to all though, so nothing would change.

Next year will be a repeat of this – the next big shake-up will be 2017 with the new regs.

This would have to be available to all though, so nothing would change.

Well, with stable regs, the fastest cars will tend to have less improvement available to them so there is some natural closing of the gap over time.

what is the deal with booth, lowden and Bell leaving. Rumour has it Bell has gone to Lotus / Renault.
It would be a big shame if they disappeared after such a fight to be on the grid this year.
I’m suprised no one has approached Mercedes about a similar deal Haas has done with Ferrari

Remember the token system means that this year mchonda can’t change the fundamentals that need fixing to get their engine progressing. So my guess is they’re bringing forward some changes to support the new engine and so have got half this year’s engine and half next year’s. No wonder it don’t work too good. I really hope they’re going to get closer to the rest next year.

The news on Manor

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2015/10/mercedes-boss-describes-departure-of-manors-booth-and-lowdon-as-a-blow/

With the latest disagreement between LH and Mercedes,and the latter’s”warmth”as LH is putting it towards the spoilt brat, is it likely LH will not bother renewing his contract when it runs out?

Not if it’s still the best car. LH is a decent driver, but he knows he isn’t going to win championships without the best car – nor is anyone else of course.

I think LH’s suggestion was that the team were quite happy for NR to win as they felt it would sooth his disappointment somewhat and likely help with longer term team harmony. I’m pretty sure he’s not suggesting they’ll be favouring NR long term – it seems pretty clear that for Merc, LH winning is a good thing in terms of marketability.

More likely is that if 2016 plays out as this year has (eg NR gets comfortably beaten again) then he’ll be off to another team at the end of the year rather than becoming a whipping boy for LH. It’d also suit the team as they can look for some new talent should LH get to a point of retiring or even considering a move to Ferrari (if they look like they could be competitive) to complete the racing driver CV (though Vettel will likely be a blocker to that though maybe a swap between Merc and Ferrari…)

IMHO in a few years if McHonda look competitive he’ll be persuaded to return to them to “emulate” his “hero” Senna…. Lewis has never mentioned Ferrari at all IIRC, where-as Vettel grew up watching Schumi in a Ferrari.

I still dont believe Alonso will be in a McHonda for the first race of 2016.

Actually, if this interview is accurate, he does seem to be writing off any chance of going to Ferrari…

http://www.express.co.uk/sport/f1-autosport/616042/World-Champion-Lewis-Hamilton-end-Mercedes-ruling-out-Ferrari-move

I can’t see him going back to McL at least not while Ron is in charge unless they have an obviously better car than the competition. It’s clear that being able to be himself is something important to LH and he’s not going to be allowed to do that at Ron’s McL.

I’m amazed Ron’s still at McL. His intention was to buy out the Arab investors and take back the company – he has no money to do this, due to no income from sponsors, and i wonder how long he can keep blaming Honda for being at the back.

when we saw a glimpse of that Honda engine 2 races ago they were midfield at best, yet, the car still looked unstable compare to the likes of RBR and Merc – if you look at all the flaps and winglets and little aero bits on the Car, i think Ron’s view of just getting the engine power up is not going to cut it next year, when Honda can turn round and announce they have an engine with parity of Ferrari or Mercedes. (not that i think that will happen either, i think Honda will sell out end of next year)

i dont think the Mclarens have the talent in the aero department anymore, in fact thats been the case for about 3 years now.

Shame to see S. Wolff retiring – but the writing was on the wall when Williams overlooked her when Bottas hurt his back , considering she was labelled the official reserve driver. All it was , was a promo stunt for Williams (yes i know a womans in charge there too) to get more Press.

Peter Prodromou and his team from RB might disagree about no talent at McL 🙂

The view of those in the know seemed to be that Mexico backed up that they had a decent chassis with IIRC .3s gap to the car on P1 in the 2 twisty sectors and .8 on the 1 sector with the long straight.

Susie is the Williams test driver, not reserve IIRC – I know it’s a slight difference but important in that context but I agree that it made clear she wasn’t going to get a drive at Williams and without sponsorship, she wasn’t going to get a seat at a smaller team.

deputy team principal Claire Williams said Wolff would not be under consideration – although she refused to confirm the likely deputy.
“Susie Wolff is our test driver not our reserve driver,”

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/formula1/31893787

Button has been on record saying McLaren won’t win a race in 2016 either. The current chassis is an odd one, BBC noted mid season that most in the paddock felt it was between 5-6 from best, which is quite a way down the pecking order.

McLaren as a team have a huge hole to dig themselves out of both aerodynamically and with the Honda PU. Currently they seem to be perusing the wrong strategies. Whether Peter Prodromou can get them thinking in a different way aerodynamically remains to be seen. And Honda seem to be in a mess, with fundamental flaws all across the PU.

It is so bad right now that Alonso only started the Mexico race for the PR, they knew that his car was bust before it took the grid.

Wasn’t that he was feeling rather blue… 😉 He could well be right of course but they shouldn’t have another season like this one – they will be able to fix the fundamental issues on the engine (compressor too small/can’t spin fast enough) fairly easily and the chassis seems reasonable at worst – bear in mind that because of the poor PU output, they’ll be compromising the aero to reduce drag.

Or Honda might do a Renault and make the new engine even worse 😆

@nemesis, umm i think your over simplifying how Honda can claw back the massive deficit, considering neither Ferrari or Renault have been able to all season starting from 3rd position on the grid. Yes they could make up to the mid field in 2016 if everything goes ok with out of season developments, but its a law of diminishing returns – the last 1 second to make up being the hardest to find.
Button is a realist, and thats exactly how he stated it about no wins in 2016.

Despite what people may think, those in the know, know that aero & chassis is totally linked to the engine, because it has to react to a lot of factors other than top speed, how the engine retards/braking, acceleration forces / pitches and kers harvesting, and of course torque.
even the best CAD modelling for the chassis and estimates of these figures from Honda cannot create the exact environment the chassis / engine combination will be running with.
so even if Honda turn up in 2016 with a mega powerful engine, there still need time to mate it to the chassis and aero package – even if McLarens current one is the best of the field in 2015 (not that i am saying it is) thats no guarantee it will mean they will fight for wins in 2016

…and you also missed out from the report you quoted :

“The team does not have a designated reserve driver, with only test driver Wolff and development driver Alex Lynn on their books in addition to the race drivers.”

So given that your options are – bring in a driver who has never driven the car before, or, use your TEST driver as your reserve driver…..seems straight forward to me…

anyhow, clearly Williams didnt want her to step up to a RESERVE driver either 2015 or 2016, so i dont blame her in leaving, although i am surprised she didnt go for a smaller team and at least get a race seat – but as we know, big money usually needs to go with them, and i am not sure she got any sponsors/backers….

You appear to have just answered your own question – nobody gets a seat at a smaller team without major backing, and sadly it’s quite difficult to get that as a Scottish woman (as opposed to being the leading driver in your country).

Ref McL – I’m not saying that they will, just that with fundamental issues, they’re relatively (note that word) easy to fix and get a significant benefit – same as Ferrari did from last season to this. I would say that best case for 2016, they end up with a car similar in relative pace to this year’s RB – not quick enough to win on it’s own merit but throw in a wet/topsy turvy race and it could win.

Ref SW, I guess I don’t agree with the statement that bringing in a driver who doesn’t know the car is always worse than using the test driver. Just look how Pedro De La Rosa did whenever he raced and he was extremely well regarded as a test driver.

Similarly Luca Badoer was a disaster when he subbed in for Massa in 2009.

Testing and racing are different skills.

or Renault have been able to all season starting from 3rd position on the grid.

Renault have offered some updates to RB, but were slapped down. They are probably keeping the real leaps forward for next season when they won’t have to deal with RB at all. Unless they own them.

Renault’s ‘upgrades’ started off claimed as something like .8s per lap and then got downgraded as time went on to IIRC about .2 benefit. Hardly worth RB going for on an unproven reliability given Renault’s recent history…

There’s no point holding upgrades back as it’ll reduce their ability to upgrade the engine next year – hence why Merc introduced their new engine which is the basis for the 2016 engine.

claimed as something like .8s per lap and then got downgraded as time went on to IIRC about .2 benefit

Cobblers. RB spin machine on full. Any advantage would be taken on and tried if they were serious.

But Renault don’t have to give any advantage, however small, to a bunch of sore losers who refuse to work with you due to ‘Hopelessness’

RB’ll be reaping the benefit of that next year. Maybe with a Judd V8?

LOL – Judd – there’s something we haven’t seen for a while 🙂

Any advantage isn’t an advantage if it means not finishing so it’s hardly that clear cut.

I agree with the general point about RB’s behaviour though – I see this very much as a situation of their making. Marko in particular.

We’re going to need a new thread soon – I have a feeling most of the discussion is already about next year now both championships are done and dusted, and the only question is which irritating German comes second 😉

they will be able to fix the fundamental issues on the engine (compressor too small/can’t spin fast enough) fairly easily

Not sure about that. The Honda engine has the compressor sited in the V between the cylinders to keep the package as small as possible – I think they were told by McL to keep it small/tight for aero reasons – which means a small compressor.

The Merc has a bigger compressor sited on the end of the engine driven by a very high speed shaft that runs through the V.
Apparently the common wisdom at the time was that this couldn’t be done as the shaft was spinning so fast that there would be tolerance issues – someone forgot to tell the Merc engineers and they found a way to do it.

Honda are keeping the compressor in the same place for 2016 as it would entail a complete engine redesign.

I’m sure that Merc will remain top of the pile but it’s generally agreed that Ferrari’s engine is close enough that it’s not going to determine the overall performance of the car. The point being that they improved significantly from 14 to 15 by correcting fundamentally wrong decisions on layout.

Similarly Honda’s engine and turbo is based on the compressor spinning much faster (IIRC 130k rpm vs 100k) than others and hence being able to be smaller but they can’t actually do it without the thing falling to pieces so it’s only running at the speeds others are and hence is limited in its potential to recover energy.

And regarding the tokens, by all accounts you can near enough redesign the whole engine with the tokens on offer given that several non-critical parts of it wouldn’t need redesigning.

Red bull are going to have to pull a major rabbit out of the hat if they’re going to be racing next year. If I were an employee (and assuming they know as much as we do) I’d be touting my cv round all the other teams to be sure I had a job next year. So they could get an engine but lose key staff, which may well damage them more than taking a 2015 spec Ferrari.

I think this engine dominance will last 2 or 3 years more at most. A similar thing happened with the last reg change and eventually everyone saw sense and they more or less equalised the engines. Ferrari Renault and especially Honda can do a much better job than they have this year, so I’d expect them to have the capability to make bigger gains than merc as there will be a limit on how much power you can get by burning a given amount of fuel. Delivering it is the tricky bit…

Some interesting insight there sharkbait, thanks for that!

I agree with what nemesis and a few others have been saying, the sooner we can get parity between the engines te better. As much as I’m a Hamilton fan I would still prefer to see a tightly contested championship!

The whole Red Bull thing is probably the most fascinating thing happening in the sport right now. Is got some incredibly enticing elements to it- not least the all dominant wünder-team brought crashing down by their own hubris. I’m following it with much attention.

I’m sure they’re far more ignorant than all the experts on here, and I thought RBR had reassured the staff that they wouldn’t be sacking anybody whatever happens, just redeploying skills onto other projects.

Maybe a way of equalizing performance would be to rule that manufacturers could only keep their engine spec ‘secret’ for a limited time and thereafter would have to be published for other teams scrutiny!

It’s a shame it’s all so complicated but one simple change would be to make the only pit to car comms a simple light system of red – stop, amber – caution, green – pit or something similar so the engineers can save the engine if they have to and let the drivers thrash it out.

Probably naive and will just lead to other cans of worms but the drivers need to be able to race flag to flag and that’s the only thing that’s going to save F1.

Speculation but stranger things have happened…

Exclusive: Red Bull secure an engine for 2016

Reported here too, so not wild speculation…

http://en.f1i.com/news/32461-are-red-bulls-engine-problems-solved.html

Who would they blame when things weren’t going right?

LOL

Who would they blame when things weren’t going right?

Thatcher

Do you think Red Bull could be setting themselves up as the ‘independent’ engine supplier?

They get to design an engine exactly as they want, and then sell it to others for a few million to recoup some of their expenditure.

Could do though I’m not sure I’d see RB being keen to share their designs and be a supplier – they’re not a car manufacturer afterall but maybe if it made good commercial sense they could. And I guess as we’ve seen recently, if you have an engine you can choose who to provide them to.

I don’t see any suggestion of them doing that.

I don’t see any suggestion of them doing that.

At the minute no – but the speculation seems to be they’ll taken the Renault block and develop their own ERS gubbins to go with it. If they develop that well (which seems to be the hard part) it’s only a small (in F1 terms!) step to develop the whole thing.

With the rule changes for 2017 the engines may become a little less complicated too.