Poll: 2008 Brazilian GP - Race 18/18

Your prediction(s)?

  • Hamilton wins the race

    Votes: 68 24.0%

  • Massa wins the race

    Votes: 107 37.8%

  • Hamilton gets a puncture and loses everything

    Votes: 13 4.6%

  • Hamilton gets owned by the FIA's EMP weapon like last year and loses everything

    Votes: 40 14.1%

  • Hamilton is too hot headed at the start and loses everything

    Votes: 35 12.4%

  • Massa takes the refuelling rig with him again and loses everything

    Votes: 12 4.2%

  • Alonso takes out Hamilton and Hamilton loses everything

    Votes: 25 8.8%

  • Kimi takes out Hamilton and Hamilton loses everything

    Votes: 8 2.8%

  • Wet or partially wet race

    Votes: 116 41.0%

  • Dry race

    Votes: 14 4.9%

  • Some sort of penalty given to Hamilton

    Votes: 36 12.7%

  • Some sort of penalty given to Massa

    Votes: 5 1.8%
  • Total voters
    283
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Duke said:
... Button kept getting slated for doing nothing when it was clear they won't be going anywhere anyway :) Did you hear any moaning from the drivers? Nope.
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I actually slated Button for staying in a team that were consistently bad. On top of which, he wasnt as good as Barrichello for the latter half of the season. And we know that Barrichello is about average.

The mark of a very good driver is when he totally out-classes his team mate. For example, what Alonso did to Piquet and what Hamilton did to Heikki. Button actually scored fewer points than his team-mate and I placed Button in my bottom drivers of the year, along with the likes of Piquet and (the accident waiting to happen), Coulthard.

I admire your belief in Button, though.
 
Unless teams can shed some weight the .3 seconds per lap that KERS should yield will be swallowed up. Bridgestone already believe that the KERS system will cause issues with grip.

Newey has it all in hand trust me.
 
Cavallino said:
True, but he had a team mate who was taking valuable points away from him.

This year he didnt even need to think about his team mate, and really was only racing 2 other drivers on the grid for the championship.
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Maybe it took him a little while to get used to no TC? As for being slow in this race, he had to take it easy as I'm sure they were worried about drivechain failure (engine on 2nd race, gearbox on 3rd, Kovi had 2 engine related DNF's this year etc. etc.).

CS||nuTs said:
Unless teams can shed some weight the .3 seconds per lap that KERS should yield will be swallowed up. Bridgestone already believe that the KERS system will cause issues with grip.

Newey has it all in hand trust me.
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Yeah, but the teams add ballast already to get the cars up to weight, do they not? They will be more limited where they can place the KERS device, but I wouldn't think the cars would be much heavier, and when all teams have them it'll not really matter one way or another. I'd ask how the RB KERS device was coming, but I'm sure you're not allowed to say!
 
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sunama said:
A good article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/7711153.stm

It would appear that most of Honda's resources have been directed to 2009. I doubt that any other team has invested so much into 2009.
The test times in January/February should be very very interesting.
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Honda have said this for the last 2 years I think. They're fast running out of excuses and need a return to form. Can't remember what year it was but there was a time when the BAR was an alright car. (I swear I'm not lying :eek: )
 
sunama said:
I actually slated Button for staying in a team that were consistently bad. On top of which, he wasnt as good as Barrichello for the latter half of the season. And we know that Barrichello is about average.

The mark of a very good driver is when he totally out-classes his team mate. For example, what Alonso did to Piquet and what Hamilton did to Heikki. Button actually scored fewer points than his team-mate and I placed Button in my bottom drivers of the year, along with the likes of Piquet and (the accident waiting to happen), Coulthard.

I admire your belief in Button, though.
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I completely agree he hasn't been great in the last year or two (being beaten by Barrichello is quite bad) but he just needs a reasonable car to begin with imo.


Emlyn_Dewar said:
Can't remember what year it was but there was a time when the BAR was an alright car. (I swear I'm not lying :eek: )
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2004 and 2006 :)
 
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Honda have always been able to produce a very useable engine. They got hit by the FIA lockdown as did Renault. Renault now have an agreement with the FIA inplace, not 100% sure if this coincided with Renaults improvement over the last few races but, it seems likely.
 
philjohn said:
Yeah, but the teams add ballast already to get the cars up to weight, do they not? They will be more limited where they can place the KERS device, but I wouldn't think the cars would be much heavier, and when all teams have them it'll not really matter one way or another. I'd ask how the RB KERS device was coming, but I'm sure you're not allowed to say!
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Ballast is small enough to add to a Midplane or a Mainplane on the front end, the KERS system is quite bulky and will not allow the flexibility of ballast owing to its size.

Not all teams will start 2009 with KERS running infact i would hazard a guess that very few will. Its limits have already been shown on certain tracks during our simulator runs.

I could'nt possibly comment on how well or how bad the KERS system is at present.
 
philjohn said:
Yeah, but the teams add ballast already to get the cars up to weight, do they not? They will be more limited where they can place the KERS device, but I wouldn't think the cars would be much heavier, and when all teams have them it'll not really matter one way or another. I'd ask how the RB KERS device was coming, but I'm sure you're not allowed to say!
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The KERS kit is reckoned to be of the order of 70KG which has to be either entirely next to the drive train in the case of a flywheel KERS or split between the drive train and under the fuel cell (by regulation) in the case of an electric KERS.

Now the teams think they'll need to move the weight forward to make use of the grip available in the slick front tyres. The question then becomes do we gain 0.3s with a potentially unreliable KERS or can we gain more than that by using ballast towards the front of the car? There isn't sufficient ballast available to move the weight distribution forward, have a KERS and keep to the minimum weight limit.

It's a pretty sure bet that KERS will not be fitted to every car on the grid at any point in 2009.
 
CS||nuTs said:
Unless teams can shed some weight the .3 seconds per lap that KERS should yield will be swallowed up. Bridgestone already believe that the KERS system will cause issues with grip.

Newey has it all in hand trust me.
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why would it cause trouble with grip? The drivers will just have to use KERS once they are upto speed, they wont be able to dump it all down just as they exit corner.

Im sure Newey does, just a shame you couldnt have got Alonso :)

CS||nuTs said:
Ballast is small enough to add to a Midplane or a Mainplane on the front end, the KERS system is quite bulky and will not allow the flexibility of ballast owing to its size.

Not all teams will start 2009 with KERS running infact i would hazard a guess that very few will. Its limits have already been shown on certain tracks during our simulator runs.

I could'nt possibly comment on how well or how bad the KERS system is at present.
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that could be interesting. some teams running without, but faster due to less wieght... then some teams running it, but having faster bursts of speed.

But your saying it as if KERS can be removed and added to the drive train with ease. But surely this isnt the case? If its connected to the Gearbox and the gearbox has to last 4 races then surely you are stuck with it for 4 races? etc?

Id think KERS would be useless at places like monaco because theres so few full throttle moments that would be safe enough to use it?


Im thinking both BMW and Honda will have active KERS at the beginning, not sure about the rest.
 
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No i have stated that it has been tested on a simulator and different circuits produce different results. Nowhere have i said KERS is easy to add and remove.
 
CS||nuTs said:
No i have stated that it has been tested on a simulator and different circuits produce different results. Nowhere have i said KERS is easy to add and remove.
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ah ok. For some reason i read that as some races it will be on, and others it will be off. Which i guess would be good if you could.


KERS in F1 is strange really, its the same with Hybrid road cars... They weigh so much more that it dents there improvement somewhat.


Will make the season different, you will have the light wieght cars mixing it up with heavy (or less ideal weight balance) meaning they are faster and slower on different parts of circuit. Fun? Time will tell
 
Nothing gets fitted to a car unless it is needed. A KERS system weighs 60KG which is a lot of weight to lug around. A well balanced and working KERS system will give .3 of a second lap improvement.
 
sunama said:
OK. Not unprecedented, but very very rare.
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I'm not even sure I'd say it was as rare as "very very" either. Torro Rosso went from scoring 8 points in 2007 to 39 this year including a win. BMW went from scoring 2 podium places to 11 in that same time frame. Toyota went from 8th to 4th in the constructors from '04 to '05. Though I'd certainly concede that it goes the other way rather more often....

Teams are more than capable of making large leaps when they get the chance to concentrate on things. The only problem is that it takes a massive workforce and lots of money to be able to concentrate on both current and next seasons at the same time - which is why every single constructors title since 1979 has been won by either Ferrari, McLaren, Williams or Renault (formerly Benetton). If you want an easy example of how difficult it is, look at Jordan. In '99, they had a fair-to-middling chance at nicking the drivers title with Frentzen until fairly late in the year, and thus concentrated on car development for that year rather than the next one. They ended '99 3rd, and slipped to 6th the next year not even scoring 1/3rd of their previous points tally.
 
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