Formula 1

[likeaking]

2 minutes ago, PepeLePew said:

An extra 5kg from next year. Not heard from the teams yet at to whether that is enough to stop all fuel saving. 80kg minimum driver weight is a good idea.

I was repeating what was said on the tele.

[PepeLePew]

On 19/04/2018 at 17:08, likeaking said:

I was repeating what was said on the tele.

Yes, F1 announced it was the aim to allow drivers to use full power all the time. How that pans out is down to individual engine efficiency. Perhaps some will some won't, perhaps they all will.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/features/2018/4/what-you-need-to-know-about-f1s-2019-rule-changes.html

Fuel allowance tweaks to allow drivers to push

The new generation of F1 cars are spectacular to watch. But that has come at a cost, namely heavier cars and more downforce, which has led to more time on the gas and therefore more fuel burned.

With the race fuel allowance set at 105kg, this has forced drivers to at times lift and coast in a bid to save fuel and get to the end of the race, rather than being able to push flat out for the entire race distance.

Fuel saving has long been a part of motorsport at the highest level, but it is something that F1, the FIA and teams have been keen to do something about.

So it has been agreed that the allowance will be increased by 5kg to 110kg with the aim of allowing drivers to use the engine at full power at all times. 

The most efficient engines will still be rewarded, while the thirstier engines will be punished. But it is hoped the move will ease the need to fuel save.

And don’t forget, a team could be strategic and choose to run less fuel and drive economically at certain stages of the race to gain track position. 

 

[Kim Jong Il]

Azerbaijan it is this week.

Qualifying is done and its Vettel.....for the third time in a row

                                              Hamilton

                                              Bottas

The two Red Bulls taking 5th and 6th.

Exiting part....probably Gasley almost being taken out by Hartley in Q3.

Kimi had a few missed turns and was looking really good on his last flying lap until he came out of a corner almost sideways to put him down in 6th.

Could be an interesting race re strategy as Kimi wore out all of his potential 'start  tyres' and will be the odd man out of the front runners starting on the ultra softs.

[eXplosief]

Anyone noticed Vettels lip? Looks a lot like Riciardo 2 weeks ago. Have they been making out?

[Kim Jong Il]

Race over and what a race....nothing boring or predictable this weekend!

Hamilton

Raikonnen

Perez

Very early safety car followed by some good racing between the Red Bulls and the Renault's with the two Renault's coming out on top.

Some decent overtaking all the way through with a huge scrap taking place between the two Red Bulls which ultimately ended up with them coming together..... and going together!

The last round of pit stops took place under the safety car with Bottas coming out in the lead due to this being his first stop. 

On the restart Vettel shafted himself going for the overtake on Bottas and dropped back to 5th.

Almost unbelievably Bottas got a puncture a minute later and handed the race to Hamilton.

This puts Hamilton into the championship lead.

Always something interesting seems to happen at this race.

Williams picked up their first points, Mclaren had decent points and Sauber picked up points.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Kim Jong Il

[eXplosief]

For sure it wasn't a boring race. 

[mikeyboy]

Wow , what a race !

Sorry for the Red Bull team , as Christian Horner said , it's not just about the 2 drivers on track , the RB team numbers 800 people . 

He also said that they would be allowed to race each other still , which must be good for the sport .

Just what Lewis wanted , and Seb Vettel didn't seem too disappointed afterwards .

Roll on Spain in 2 weeks .

Mikeyboy

[PepeLePew]

It's been an odd start to the season imo.

[mikeyboy]

22 minutes ago, PepeLePew said:

It's been an odd start to the season imo.

Unpredictable would be my word .   but nothing turns me off F1 more than domination and predictability .  I know the teams / drivers would each like to dominate every race .   

This season with  overtaking  , and a healthy mix of collisions , near misses ,  punctures , good luck ,  bad luck  its been much more exciting .

New rules to be introduced next season to make overtaking easier have also been announced , not to some teams liking .

Mikeyboy

[PepeLePew]

Unpredictable yes but not really for pure racing reasons. Of course luck will always play a part in racing but I'd say that not 1 race has been won this year on pure merit, Danni Rics victory comes closest but even he benefited from a safety car & then Max's shenanigans.

I fail to get excited about any new rules for overtaking. they've been making them ever since I can remember with little good effect imo. The current cars were a result of such rules, the wider tyres supposedly providing more mechanical grip but along with the aero and the Desire to make them super fast it didn't work. Anyway no one wants 'easy' overtaking in F1, it's supposed to be difficult, we just want it to happen a bit more often. Making cars that any old peddaller can easily overtake with is not the way forward. I have great hopes for the budget cap but they also need to get a grip on the aero. The front wings are pure works of automotive art but only seen when the car is stationary and they prevent cars from following. Simplify them is my advice.

[eXplosief]

The upcoming changes to improve overtaking are a change to front and rear wing design. 

[Kim Jong Il]

What would like to see change to make it more interesting, less predictable, more overtaking and overall more entertaining?

A few suggestions.....

Get rid of the hybrid setups and go back to just a gasoline engine. Lots of penalties are given out due to failure of not so much the engine itself but all the 'recovery' devices fitted to harvest battery power. It would probably reduce the power train costs and reliability as well which would help the smaller teams and maybe bring more engine manufacturers in. If you want electric racing watch formula E.

Unlimited use of tyres. Let the teams run whatever they want. You will still get the unpredictability of pit stops but without drivers having to manage the tyres so much.

Refuelling????

Go back to the old method of qualifying where all drivers were allowed on track all of the time. The current system works well in as much as it usually the fastest drivers at the front of grid, and yes that's good because these guys are at the front on merit. But the old system meant that for lots of reasons the fastest may not be at the front.....weather, crashes, slower drivers on their hot lap etc. When you sometimes have the quicker drivers a few rows back then the need for overtaking increases along with the entertainment.

Anyway, that's just a few thoughts. Agree or disagree but what would you like to see change.

[PepeLePew]

On 02/05/2018 at 10:12, Kim Jong Il said:

What would like to see change to make it more interesting, less predictable, more overtaking and overall more entertaining?

 

The Hybrids are here to stay for the moment, and rightly so in my opinion. For a start the manufacturers want them and have spent a small fortune developing them to this stage. They have been largely unfairly maligned. For a start the noise issue, which for most people wasn't an issue. I think it was better as you could sometimes hear the tyres and the grip over the noise of the engines. They should have given them a bit of decent PR, did you know that they are getting 50% thermal efficiency on the bench, 48% in the car. A few years ago engineers would have claimed that figure was impossible. In comparison your average car will be about 20-30%, Toyota recently were very proud of achieving 38% in a road engine. If you wanted to extract maximum fuel efficiency from an F1 car it would go much farther on a litre of fuel than any 'fuel efficient' car available to the public, although at race speeds it drinks about half a litre per Km The new rules are supposedly going to aim to simplify them, to allow new manufacturers to join in, which is 1 of the things that Ferrari is sulking about.

Unlimited tyres wouldn't help overtaking or 'the show'. Forcing teams to change compound at least once and limiting compound choice is something that helps spice things up sometimes. Letting run with their fastest set all race is a recipe for boredom (see refuelling)

Refuelling - Worst idea ever. Remember the Schumacher era. He was a qualifying expert, then you gave him a car which, thanks to refuelling and a new set of tyres was in qually trim the whole race. Setting up the car to run between 0 and 20 litres of fuel is easy, or certainly a lot easier that setting up a car that will be balanced and nicely handling with 80 litres of fuel or 2 litres. You have to find a huge compromise and be aware that you either start with an easy car or set it up to come to you in the later stages. Even that doesn't always work with the variables and it's why sometimes you see someone charging through at the end or someone defending a lead against a stronger opponent. All that is gone with refuelling.

Ah yes, the old 1 hour of track time, see what you can do. I much preferred that. Sadly the attention span of most people these days didn't and they couldn't 'understand' why the track was empty sometimes for the first 20 mins. The fact that the chaos in the last 20 made up for it didn't fly with the TV execs and bernie changed it to the sham of a show we have now.

Really the only thing to be done with overtaking is in the aero and the tracks.

The cars are massively fast at the moment but no one really notices that they are quicker than last year. Fast means harder to overtake on most tracks. Notice in Azerbaijan there was plenty of moves. It's because it's huge with great big long straights into  tight (not hairpin) bends. We need bigger tracks with bigger straights for bigger faster cars that are aero reliant. Stupidly they've put a chicane in the middle of Paul Ricard now, something to do with gearing apparently ffs!

Stock front and rear wings, simple ones will slow the cars down in the bends and put onus on mechanical grip. Couple this with active suspension and you could probably get similar corner speeds to current cars.

 

 

 

[Kim Jong Il]

^^^^^^

Good reply.

By the way, I'm not saying the things I wrote should be done, I'm simply trying to stimulate some conversation in areas other than 'race day' and see what people would like to see to make things more 'interesting'.

[Kim Jong Il]

Barcelona it is this weekend. If we need any translating then we have our resident Barclelonian (is that a word?) in the form of Pussey loving Jorge to help us out!

Good quali.

Merc's on top but closely followed by the two Red Bulls with the Ferrari's a little way behind after the first Q3 runs but that changed after the second run.

Hamilton's second run was pretty impressive to give him pole with Bottas coming up to 2nd. Ferrari's improved and took 3rd and 4th followed by Red Bull's, separated by 2 one thousandths of a second, coming in 5th and 6th.

So the first three rows have a bit of a Noah's ark look but could well be an interesting race tomorrow.

[Kim Jong Il]

So it finishes 

Hamilton

Bottas

Verstappen

Absolute walkover for Hamilton who was never under pressure from the red light going out to the finish.

This points finish for Lewis means he sets a new record for most consecutive points finishes and most wins from pole position.

Decent drive from Max considering he lost an end plate after clipping the Williams when the virtual safety car was switched off.

Ricciardo well down on overall time but still managing to set lap record after lap record smashing the the existing lap record by more than 3 seconds.

Pit stop under virtual safety car didn't work out for Vettel this time and he lost 2 places during the pit stop which meant he dropped from second to 4th where he remained till the end.

Hamilton now leads the championship by 17 points and Mercedes take over at the top of the manufacturers leader board.

[eXplosief]

Usually I can understand most things happening. This time however there where a lot of things that just didn't make sense. 

First round Grosjean going off track was understandable. Him doing a burn out and as a result putting 2 other drivers out made no sense at all. He will probably be punished for that. 

Then the virtual safety car. Why did Vettel make a pit stop? He had a pretty sure 2nd place. Now he ended up behind Verstappen. Then Verstappen loosing his front end wingplate, just stupid. However it seemed he didn't seemed to slow down because of that. 

And lastly that Vettel wasn't able to attack Max in Ferrari on slightly newer tires. 

[eXplosief]

Almost forgot. How can Verstappen be 7 seconds behind Bottas before the VSC and 12 after if all need to drive a reduced speed. 

[Ludhamlad]

I hope this encourages Lewis to sign a new contract, he's definitely much happier in his interview after the race.  No need for him to retire yet, it'll be years if ever we see another British driver in his class.

[Kim Jong Il]

45 minutes ago, eXplosief said:

 

Then the virtual safety car. Why did Vettel make a pit stop? He had a pretty sure 2nd place. Now he ended up behind Verstappen. Then Verstappen loosing his front end wingplate, just stupid. However it seemed he didn't seemed to slow down because of that. 

And lastly that Vettel wasn't able to attack Max in Ferrari on slightly newer tires. 

Vettel was the first of the front runners to change tyres on lap 19 which meant he would be struggling at the end on tyres that were supposed to be good for 40 laps.

In the interview with Vettel at the end he said they were struggling with tyres, even the third set were knackered and so could not challenge Verstappen. He also said Ferrari just didn't have the pace.

Edited May 13, 2018 by Kim Jong Il

[Stokielad]

Has to be said it was a very dull race, F1 is going to lose all credibility as a format if cars just cannot overtake each other.

[cbmgolfer]

Today was F1 hell ... Hamilton will clinch w 4 races remaining ... here we go again!

[eXplosief]

11 hours ago, Kim Jong Il said:

Vettel was the first of the front runners to change tyres on lap 19 which meant he would be struggling at the end on tyres that were supposed to be good for 40 laps.

In the interview with Vettel at the end he said they were struggling with tyres, even the third set were knackered and so could not challenge Verstappen. He also said Ferrari just didn't have the pace.

You're absolutely right. But I didn't know that at the time of posting. 

[mikeyboy]

14 hours ago, Ludhamlad said:

I hope this encourages Lewis to sign a new contract, he's definitely much happier in his interview after the race.  No need for him to retire yet, it'll be years if ever we see another British driver in his class.

I don't listen much to anything Lewis says , he changes like the wind  .

Watching him drive is the deal , although he was so far ahead in this episode we didn't see much of him .

Mikeyboy

[PepeLePew]

Grosjean floored it to stop it from stalling, it's muscle memory kicking in though in that instance hitting the clutch would have been a better option. He claims he thought he had the momentum to get to the other side of the track and away from the other cars but I call bullshit. Anyway the stewards have dropped him 3 spots for Monaco for 'making the wrong decision'.

I wouldn't worry to much about Hamilton's dominant drive. Yes it does seem that at last Merc has begun to understand their car and lewis has finally found it's G spot, those 2 elements together plus the low track temps which favour merc and he was gone however things like that can and do change from track to track. Obviously Monaco is as different as it gets so doesn't really count. Canada is after and that will be interesting to see if they've really got a handle or it or hit a lucky settings/tyre temp sweetspot in Spain.

Ferrari conversely really struggled with their tyres, a mix of the low temps and the new surface and that made them look less effective than they actually are. Had they had a good weekend they'd have been pushing at mercs heels. Trouble is Red Bull have no such excuses. Ferrari made them look better than they actually were. Max managed to keep up his record of hitting someone in every race though!