The Official 2013 F1 Thread...

I think Fred will outlast Kimi since he's younger, is more focused and has a much better work ethic. He's got his brand on Ferrari now, and will be seeking to measure up to Schumi's legacy. He's not caving in to anyone. At least that's how he has appeared up to this point.

I like Kimi, hope he does well and that the intra-team rivalry is friendly. But I do think he's running on natural talent only and may not have the mental toughness to deal with engineering/setup problems the way Fred does.
 
I'll be at the ALMS race at COTA this weekend; shoot me a PM if you are.
 
Without a strong and current Honda reputation in F-1........

On a side note: Ted Klaus hinted at bringing in a Ayrton Senna type person. Any thoughts on who would be a good candidate from the current F1 pool of drivers?

I'd say nobody. Honda might be making a name starting in 2015, but only with the hardcore F-1 fans, not the general public.

And although Ayrton may have actually voiced some opinion of the car's handling, I doubt they'd ask a pro race driver to actually help develop the car now. Not with all the CADD, wind tunnels and current development tools that were very crude in the 80's. Not to mention there's a plethora of drivers/instructors who can actually relate to what a layman driver will do with the car on the street. Klaus and Honda just need a pretty and famous face, right?

With that as a premise, he could get a flashy guy from IndyCar like a Helio, Hinch, a Dario or a Tony K. (oh wait, that nose.........NO) to pose with the car and talk some pseudo engineering advertising shit. That should be relatively cheap.

To go one toke over the line, he targets the well funded gentleman racer/Walter Mitty type and actually relates the car's image to LeMans racing. They do plan to race it in LeMans, right? And ideally, Honda would contract a Top Gun Tom Kristensen type driver to not only drive the race car but be the advertising image.

One might hope that Honda will Go Big or go Home. But since they did the exact opposite with the first gen NSX, I'm not holding my breath.

JMHOWTFDIK?
 
Ted made a good point about the tools F1 uses to design and build cars compare to say pre-2000 which it was much more about driver skills than the car.
I don't remember which team Seb Vettle was with when he 1st started in F1 but he knows to stick with Adrian Newey if he wants to win. Mark Webber never saw the podium(that I remember) until he signed with Red Bull. Ross Brawn got it right for Jenson to win in 09, before that???? Ross got it right for Michael Schumacher for so many years but MS was impressive at Spa in 93 in a Jordan to show off his skills for his 1st race...that was epic.
This year, McLaren got it wrong and their season is already over. Ferrari doesn't have it either but Alonso is smart in the race. I love Kimi for his raw talent.

The rules also play a big part of being boring for a long time and by simply adding DRS/KERs, the slower drivers don't have to work as hard to pass. Bring back the full tunnel instead of little diffuser, refueling, 2 tires suppliers, and testing. The small guys can go play with GP 2 or Le Mans LMP2 or Formula E.
Now the cars can pass so its more exciting to watch but for the wrong reasons....well, this suppose to be the pinnacle of this racing series.
Now is more tire/fuel management/pit strategy to win instead of outright battle on track. Its more about marketing and new markets to make the few even richer. Seems like in 2014, you are given even less fuel than 2013 so perhaps you can drive slower and make it to the checker flag and not fight as much with the front runners to win cuz they not able to cross the finish line.

I don't remember in recent history any Indy driver moved to F1 and makes it. Seb B. never came close, but was a Indy champ for many years, M. Andretti was a disaster in 93 but he blamed on no testing(valid), wrong engine(Cosworth instead of Renault), living in the US but racing in Europe and various reasons unknown. Granted, I was glad he came in 3rd at Monza but that was his last race at mid season. But Michael teamed with Ayrton who showed why he is the best of the best in a wet Donnington passing 5 cars in less than one lap, was the wrong thing to do. Michael might survived longer had he started with a mid-field team learning the tracks and different way of doing things in F1.

I think all the neat toys are at Le Mans as the rules are more open to allow creativity and innovations.
 
For those of you who went to the USGP last year, where were the shuttle pick up points? I'm planning on flying in just for the race, either late Sat night or early Sunday morning, and flying out that same evening.
 
Räikkönen was at Ferrari 2007–2009, and did great things there right from the start. Sure, maybe the car was that good, but so was the driver.

Alonso took over for him at Ferrari 2010 - 2013, and didn't do much, but we can blame it on the car, right? And the competition from Sebastian Vettel was unbeatable in those years.

2014, going into the turbo era, Ferrari may be at a disadvantage due to their limited resources to develop both the chassis and the engine. Now we put two top-line drivers into possibly noncompetitive cars, which surely gives the other teams a big opening to score some wins.
 
^^I do not worry for Ferrari next year it's time to do better car than Adrian so many quality peopele in their garage.

And for Kimi-Fernando relation,I belive Fernando will showe he is No1 driver on grid.

For future few races I suggest Seb to take a break that would be the end interesting.
 
^^I do not worry for Ferrari next year it's time to do better car than Adrian so many quality peopele in their garage.

And for Kimi-Fernando relation,I belive Fernando will showe he is No1 driver on grid.

For future few races I suggest Seb to take a break that would be the end interesting.

I like your idea Sandro. Perhaps the FIA can find some controlled substance on him (or the car) and give him a 3-5 race ban!

Miner
 
I like your idea Sandro. Perhaps the FIA can find some controlled substance on him (or the car) and give him a 3-5 race ban!

Miner

Sandro, dont know if you are old enough to remember the 1988 Belgian GP (!) I was at Spa that year and watched Senna take his 4th consecutive win, the seventh of a half-season! For the first time, i heard booing (french fans) and the race announcer joked that maybe Ayrton should take a break for a few races and let others win. All F1 Greats are often booed and overly criticized when they are active. They get their dues when they retire or God forbids, die.
(that race saw Senna briefly lose P1 to Prost in the first lap, re-take it and eventually destroy the competition to finish almost a minute ahead of Prost.....just like Seb did in Singapore last Sunday.)
 
bboxer I'm old enought (42),but that is not same thing.Seb has much faster car then others(looking at f1 portals they say his car was faster than Ferrari about 1.5sec per lap in Singapore)so we dont talk about same cars as Senna had.
I like Fernando's driving and think that he is best driver ,I belive lot people like him for his performance with weaker car.Let's wait for one season of more equal cars so we can find where is who.
 
The best are always accused........

of cheating.

Minardi makes his accusations.

And maybe they do cheat, just do it better than anyone else. But, like Schumi's domination, we may never know how much Adrian and RB crossed the rules line. and by rules line, I mean ignored or bypassed the intent and spirit of the rules even if the technicalities were not broken.

And I don't want to get into a long winded rehash of what is the letter and what is the spirit of rules; everyone here in the peanut gallery voicing an opinion on a specific application of a rule starts from a given and biased position. JMHOWTFDIK?

Anyway, I think the sound difference he noted compared to Webber's car especially does beg a question.
 
Anyway, I think the sound difference he noted compared to Webber's car especially does beg a question.

Hard to tell not being there but I do know many teams have spotters around the track and this would be an easy pick to question.
IMO, Vettle is good but not 2.5 sec. good....perhaps traffic held up other drivers? Hard to tell not being there.
I am sure if there were funny biz going on, FIA would hear about it directly from the teams.
JMHOWTFDIK
 
Maybe something interesting part from article about RB of Vettel.

So this would not be possible if there is no KERS! They can control (modulate) the output torque to the wheel axle to control (briefly say) charging the KERS. When the sensor to shock "survey" that car "coming down" from the bumps, they "enhance" recharging the batteries and reduce torque on the shaft, because then is little traction when the shock return to "normal" and traction is again higher return the torque on the shaft.
 
Real time torque modulation at the wheel by adjusting KERS charging rate at millisecond intervals, with trigger coming from shock absorber action instead of wheel spin sensor.
+1. Fascinating stuff.
the latest issue of Racecar Engineering raises an alternative, legal and highly innovative solution for the RB9′s mid corner performance, which could also explain many of Red Bull’s reliability issues.

It is theoretically easy to modulate the output torque and charging input torque to an electric motor/generator using capacitors, batteries, inductors and a feedback signal. Torque changes are instant and control is easy and legal.

If torque were to be modulated in response to the normal force of the tires against the track (in response to shock pressure for example) significant unused traction potential could be recovered during high pressure phases (upside of bumps) and initiation of full wheel spin during low pressure phases (downside of bumps) could be delayed. Yielding better turn exit acceleration, higher cornering speeds and stability. Especially on bumpy tracks like Singapore.

Article from RE


 
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Another Vettel dominating race.

I think it is all but over for the driver's championship; not that it already wasn't.

It is amazing to see how consistently RB has been the dominant car from the 2nd or 3rd race of the season, across fast and slow tracks, and how dominant they are now in the 2nd half of the season. It's almost as if everyone else stopped development.

Last year RB was not as dominant at the start of the season, although once they added the air channels from the side of the car into the diffuser, they chased down Alonso, and were almost as dominant as they are this year.

Someday Adrian Newey's secrets of speed, beyond organizational capability, will be revealed. Perhaps he has discovered a new fluid effect, and will be part of schooling. Or perhaps he'll explain how he exploited the rules better than everybody else.

Miner
 
Another Vettel dominating race.

Someday Adrian Newey's secrets of speed, beyond organizational capability, will be revealed. Perhaps he has discovered a new fluid effect, and will be part of schooling. Or perhaps he'll explain how he exploited the rules better than everybody else.

Miner

Probably all of those things and more Miner.

Actaully burst out in laughter at Webber's latest misfortune, when he was collected by the Force India. How can 1 man be so unlucky?? Probably helped an embarrassing last few laps being on the Options, although Ricciardo who was also on the Options was managing to hang on reasonably well, until his brakes broke.
 
RB's competitors must be scratching their heads right now on how complicated this TC setup must be to realize independent of the ECU.

They may have the money to attract the technical talent, but do the technical talent want to work for them?
 
bboxer I'm old enought (42),but that is not same thing.Seb has much faster car then others(looking at f1 portals they say his car was faster than Ferrari about 1.5sec per lap in Singapore)so we dont talk about same cars as Senna had.
I like Fernando's driving and think that he is best driver ,I belive lot people like him for his performance with weaker car.Let's wait for one season of more equal cars so we can find where is who.


Obviously you're not enough:) at the end of 1987, the FIA gave all the teams the new regulation changes for 1989 so ALL the teams except McLaren decided not to bother with a 1988 car and continue to use the 87 car with some improvements. McLaren's all new 88 car was the mighty MP4/4 which went on to win 15 of the 16 races that year. At the time, many said Senna was winning because his car was far superior to the rest of the field. As I said in a post earlier, i was there to hear the boos. Now we know that the car is not enough by itself but the driver is even more important. Seb may not have the charisma of the mighty Senna but he is becoming just as unpopular and successful as him.
 
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