Australian Grand Prix 2014, Melbourne - Race 1/19

Just been listening to FP2 for last half hour and looking online. Have RBR located the camera within some sort of void/vanity panel within the nose, half way up?
 
Apparently everyone wanted to go off the track in the same 30 seconds. Grosjean and Hulk off, Kvyat coming very very close to going off.

Kvyat looks really nervous and slightly dodgy. Some real issues in terms of getting in the way on track, very poor when off the pace and being aware of others, complaining of having too much to do.

With that replay, Grosjean screwed his car pretty badly, left rear suspension looks like it broke, he broke, rear twitched maybe hit the wall before the corner and sent him off into the gravel track. Possible the suspension failed causing the contact with the wall as the rear did seem to suddenly change direction causing the contact.
 
Mr Jack said:
Wow. Six cars not even managing a full lap in first practice. Ouch.
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The only unexpected one was Hamilton who did plenty in FP2 and was fastest also. It was a sensor problem rather than an actual issue with the engine. Lotus just look, wow, woeful, dead engine parts already, potential mechanical failure on the Lotus in FP2 and aside from the Caterham and the other Lotus, the only car to do less than 25 laps in this session. 12 laps and I wouldn't be surprised if that turns out to be a rear suspension failure causing the crash. At best it was driver error which caused the crash and then damaged at least the suspension.

Quite surprised Caterham have done so little as they got so many laps done in testing, turned the engines up and they went boom? Who knows.
 
Williams not as quick as pre season testing, wonder where I have heard that before :P

Shame though was hoping they'd be right up there.
 
Duke said:
Just been listening to FP2 for last half hour and looking online. Have RBR located the camera within some sort of void/vanity panel within the nose, half way up?
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Yep, it looks that way. The camera looks to be at the same height and distance forward as the rest, but moved towards the centre line of the car so the whole unit is within the area covered by the nose cone. The camera then has a little hole just below the Casio logo to view out.

Effectively they don't have camera mounts. The camera kit it just inside the nose. They have gained a minor step in their nose profile which wasn't there in testing. I assume to replicate the dimensions of the camera mounts if they existed.

Trying to find a good pic.

Here you go. Its just above the Casio logo. There's a sort of hump where the dimeisons of the mounts are, then a hole for the camera to see out. I'm assuming the rules mandate the location of the camera mounts on only 2 of the 3 axis. I.e. no limit on distance laterally from the centre line.

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^Yup, does look very tidy.
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P1 & P2 times added to OP.
 
I can see everyone who is able too copying that idea. Ferrari and Mercedes won't as their noses are lower than the mandated height of the cameras, so they can't get them inside the nose.
 
Haha. As usual the F1 technical forum has a better grasp of the F1 rules than the FIA themselves :rolleyes:.

Not only can the camera pods be buried inside the nose, the only restrictions are that there needs to be no part of the car infront of the camera along the axis of its lens, and even then only the left camera.

So you can hide it inside the car and have a tunnel a few mm wide leading out the bodywork and it's perfectly legal. Basically making the cameras completely useless!

Good one, FIA! Doh!
 
The issue will come along with regards to the camera that can spin around. But I don't know what the rules are regarding it, teams have to use that camera, or can use that type of camera if they want. Do all teams have to use the turning camera a certain number of races a year(it appeared to be in a limited number of cars towards the end of last year, different every race?). Will they say at China be nominated to run the turning camera, will they just stick on one of these ickle wing's with a camera on when they are asked to but run their normal one at every other race.

I don't know if there are any regulations regarding this newer turning camera, it may simply be that no one is required to use it and so it doesn't matter. The only clear thing is that camera mount won't work for the other kind of camera. I suspect at some point this year we'll see them being asked to run that camera and they'll use an alternate wing for those races, and that other teams will probably copy that setup.

AFAIK Merc say their little winglets are aero positive. We could see RBR have the little wings and stick the camera on them as they find that aero is better with them than without. AS they said through most of testing, they had a lot of more important things on their plate and didn't or hadn't had time to test the aero effect of that style of camera mount. They may find it a benefit when they get more into aero development once they have a car that can finish races.
 
The rotating camera is not mandated and is used by agreement between the team an FOM. RBR simply won't be able to run it, and FOM can't force them.
 
Weathers now changed to rain for qauli with heavy thunderstorms around 6pm, but Sunday for the race now dry with rain clearing by 6am.
 
^ I know the rules in F1 exist to be challenged but that is really taking the Michael.

And as for red bulls time in FP2 I did not see that coming.
 
So all the pundits are saying the RB corner entry speed and stability is about the best, plus overall speed looks good (or much better than expected). Knowing how much they improve through the season, it's already pretty ominous :o

Good to see though that Hamilton missed an entire session pretty much, and still could put it top.

Lotus look absolutely awful, and Chipfat seems to like blocking people :p
 
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