Abu Dhabi Prix 2015, Yas Marina - Race 19/19

Skeeter said:
We both know that there could be the most amazing racing from 3rd to 20th every weekend, and 90% of people would still declare it boring simply because a Mercedes won.
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The most important position in a race, is for the lead.
Most people don't care who finished in 15th place. You only have to look at newspaper headlines - they write about who won the race, not who finished in the minor places.

Most people want to watch a race, where the winner is not decided before the race start.
 
Ignoring your attempt to try and say "I told you so", you have a point.

Honda have used 3x the allocation of engines than they were allowed this year, and all their tokens, and made zero progress. People will be seriously doubting their ability to make steps over the winter now.

The big risk for McLaren is Honda pulling the plug. They have shown in the past (2008) that they are prepared to drop everything and leave in order to avoid embarrassment, so McLarens biggest threat is being left without and engine at short notice, in a formula where there is no desire from any other manufacturers to supply rivals.
 
Seeing as it needs a complete redesign of the turbo and energy recovery, which isn't possible in season, then any real progress was only going to come on the ICE.
 
As we're at the end of the season I thought it might be fun to look back at how the cars looked the first time they took to the track for testing in Jerez this year. Anyone remember the crazy Red Bull paintwork and the fact that they didn't even have a front wing when testing started?!



Nico Rosberg by Greg Kingston, on Flickr



Daniil Kvyat by Greg Kingston, on Flickr



Jenson Button by Greg Kingston, on Flickr



Marcus Ericsson by Greg Kingston, on Flickr



Sebastian Vettel by Greg Kingston, on Flickr
 
Re Honda, going the wrong way with engine design for 18 months to the season is one thing, being completely incapable of making that particular design at all reliable is an entirely different and much much bigger problem. With a year of updates both token spend and free for reliability reasons this engine is still no where near reliable, it's pathetic.

That all comes down to testing in the lab, designing, testing then bringing that piece to track. Testing away from the track should find 99% of all issues, Honda are finding no where near that and bringing unreliable pieces to the track.

Merc and Ferrari are both finding that dyno testing allows them to find 99% of problems and reliably measure performance and have this all translate to track. Renault have trouble with performance testing but reliability isn't that bad, don't forget the majority of their problems came from rushing through an update that wasn't tested properly, not that it was tested and they missed all the problems.

Honda have problems with both and that is troubling. You make an update, test it for literally thousands of miles on a dyno then bring it to track and doesn't perform how your tests say it should, that is one thing, but it you can't find the problems in testing and they all appear on track... you're screwed.

Currently the situation stands that even if they make dramatic changes to the engine and they believe they will improve performance, if they still can't test and find all the problems with the new engine they will have dire reliability next season also.
 
Duke said:
Seeing as it needs a complete redesign of the turbo and energy recovery, which isn't possible in season, then any real progress was only going to come on the ICE.
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They brought a new compressor and mgu-h to Canada, they both used 3 engines iirc across the first two races with the new engine without finishing either or even getting close.

This just reiterates my point, a big change in engine is one thing, if they design new parts and bring them to track without any reliability, what difference does it make.

Even worse frankly is that Honda/Mclaren appear to be playing down how big the changes they will make to the engine will be for next year. Though in reality I think they are fudging the truth about this years engine concept so that next years seems less big a chance and consequently they don't have to admit this years engine is a huge **** up.

IE they have gone on record as saying their concept is fundamentally similar to Mercs and will continue to be so next year. Their abstract reasoning appears to be the mgu-h is between the compressor/turbine thus is the same concept as Mercs... so if they move the compressor out of the V and to the front it's the "same" both years. In reality the concept of the Merc is a giant compressor outside of the V which necessitates the mgu-h in the middle. Honda's concept is a tiny compressor inside the V which happens to have the mgu-h in the middle. They aren't close to the same concept. Hell Honda's is a tiny package compromised for aero while Merc's is as powerful an engine as possible at the expense of aero(to some degree).

Honda will try a front mounted compressor but they are framing the argument that it will somehow be the same concept as this years so they didn't screw up.
 
The_Abyss said:
Hamilton's complained about balance in the past four races more than Jenson has in his entire career!.
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Whether or not Hamilton is hungry still is just really a debate on here if you want to find excuses for his performance or Rosberg doing better. At no point in Hamiltons career even when he had the Mclaren dogs did he show anything other than to win absolutely every thing at any cost. Even if it came to cheating and lieing and the sacking of a team member. There's no way he's content to let Rosberg have the largest dessert let alone a race win and pole. :D

The bigger issue for me is how a small car change can turn him for totally dominant god to shadowing someone everyone on here pretty much agrees is a putz. That's the real story about how required a modern F1 driver is. When a tyre pressure change can switch him from dominance to following home someone who isn't even in his class. That if this was how the car started and there was no tyre pressure issue Rosberg could well have been champion this year. One way or another they need to get the car to driver % heading back towards the driver.
 
Well hang on, he's hardly fallen off a cliff. He's been out qualified by Rosberg, but that's nothing new, and then he's been faster than Rosberg in pretty much all the races, but just not by enough to make a pass easy, so he then falls into the F1 dirty air issue. At which point he's then settled for second because he can. Or because the team have prevented any strategy difference to avoid upsetting poor little Rosberg.
 
Skeeter said:
Well hang on, he's hardly fallen off a cliff. He's been out qualified by Rosberg, but that's nothing new, and then he's been faster than Rosberg in pretty much all the races, but just not by enough to make a pass easy, so he then falls into the F1 dirty air issue. At which point he's then settled for second because he can. Or because the team have prevented any strategy difference to avoid upsetting poor little Rosberg.
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Sorry Skeeter - you're a sensible chap as your post history shows, but the last comment seems deliberately designed to be inflammatory. The strategy has been the same all year - the difference has been that Hamilton's the better driver at challenging the car in front.
 
Just a heads up that the BBC F1 coverage has been moved to BBC2 starting at 12pm to make way for the Davis Cup on BBC1.

There's going to be some complaints from those with timers set to record one or the other! More so because there's no obvious reason to switch sides, as the tennis was scheduled to be on BBC2 anyway. :confused: And it's going to make Bernie sad.
 
Personal opinion whatever Hamilton would say about trying his hardest or not etc. He's won the title even if he thinks he's trying 100% mentally he's probably 1 or 2% off his game now and at this level of sport that's probably enough.

Nothing what has happened since Austin means squat in terms of 2016.
 
this_is_gav said:
Just a heads up that the BBC F1 coverage has been moved to BBC2 starting at 12pm to make way for the Davis Cup on BBC1.

There's going to be some complaints from those with timers set to record one or the other! More so because there's no obvious reason to switch sides, as the tennis was scheduled to be on BBC2 anyway. :confused: And it's going to make Bernie sad.
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Bit late with that! It still hasn't changed on the Sky EPG either.

BBC1 tends to always get bigger viewing figures than BBC2 so that's why they've probably done it. In addition to the fact it's potentially historic as we haven't won it for 70 odd years.

Also shows that F1 is probably lower than a snakes belly in terms of BBC's interest in it these days :p probably the last ever race on terrestrial TV as well.
 
The_Abyss said:
Sorry Skeeter - you're a sensible chap as your post history shows, but the last comment seems deliberately designed to be inflammatory. The strategy has been the same all year - the difference has been that Hamilton's the better driver at challenging the car in front.
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Seems like a fair comment to me? Hamilton has twice been held back or forced into a strategy after already becoming champion. So the decision wasn't to benifit him, so it must be to benifit Rosberg.

Yes Mercedes strategy has always (well, since mid last year) been that both cars run to the same strategy, but the reason has been in order to fight for the WDC and WCC. Now that they have both the only reason to continue that strategy is to avoid upsetting the guy who hasn't won, Rosberg.

Perhaps calling him poor little Rosberg is a bit unfair, but you can't deny that the team are trying to hold things level in order to keep him happy.
 
Psycho Ned said:
Bit late with that! It still hasn't changed on the Sky EPG either.

BBC1 tends to always get bigger viewing figures than BBC2 so that's why they've probably done it. In addition to the fact it's potentially historic as we haven't won it for 70 odd years.

Also shows that F1 is probably lower than a snakes belly in terms of BBC's interest in it these days :p probably the last ever race on terrestrial TV as well.
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The likely deciding match in the Davis Cup which we haven't won for decades vs a procession around a boring track in a Motorsport series that's already had the champions decided. I know which one I would stick on my primary channel.
 
Skeeter said:
Well hang on, he's hardly fallen off a cliff. He's been out qualified by Rosberg, but that's nothing new, and then he's been faster than Rosberg in pretty much all the races, but just not by enough to make a pass easy, so he then falls into the F1 dirty air issue. At which point he's then settled for second because he can. Or because the team have prevented any strategy difference to avoid upsetting poor little Rosberg.
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I think it's extremely easily explainable, before this season Rosberg always set his car up for qualifying, he always showed a very large pace difference in races. Despite out qualifying Hamilton last year it didn't turn into beating him because race pace matters more. This year I think the reason Hamilton thrashed him easily in qualifying till recently was Rosberg finally set himself up similarly to Hamilton, for race pace. That means he dropped a few tenths in qualifying and gained a couple in races. He still wasn't fast enough but he was closer.

Once the title was basically gone I think Rosberg went back to qualifying setup because it's better to come second in the title and have a reasonable qualifying record than get spanked utterly in both as he was en route to.

Out of 5 poles in a row he won two, the two where the tracks aren't remotely conducive to overtaking between similarly paced cars. The massive majority of real passes in Mexico and Brazil were cars on fresh vs old tires. Very few team mates or just similarly paced cars passing each other except in different tire strategy situations.

Same happened last year, Rosberg in Brazil, Ham 8 seconds back after the final stop and gained it back embarrassingly fast couldn't pass a car with equal straight line speed. What has changed is Rosberg went back to his last years qualifying setup to save some face and maybe take a couple wins at the non passing tracks.
 
Skeeter said:
Yes Mercedes strategy has always (well, since mid last year) been that both cars run to the same strategy, but the reason has been in order to fight for the WDC and WCC. Now that they have both the only reason to continue that strategy is to avoid upsetting the guy who hasn't won, Rosberg.

Perhaps calling him poor little Rosberg is a bit unfair, but you can't deny that the team are trying to hold things level in order to keep him happy.
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I think they're just being consistent. I doubt they want to open a Pandora's box of trouble by changing the approach during the season. I don't think it is to keep Rosberg happy.
 
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