Australian Grand Prix 2015, Melbourne - Race 1/19

Adam Cooper @adamcooperF1 said:
"It can go in a number of different ways," a member of VDG's legal team tells me. "That's what makes it interesting..."
Just to clarify the Swiss arbitration judgement, and the Aussie court order, still stand. The contempt of court action is dropped
Judge/lawyers made point that this was an extraordinary case - started on Holiday Monday, result, appeal, contempt action, ends on a Sat!
GVDG: "With respect to the interest of motorsport, and F1 in particular, I have decided to give up my legal rights to race this weekend"
GVDG: "As I am a passionate race driver this decision has been very difficult for me"
GVDG: "However I also wish to respect the interest of the FIA, Sauber Motorsport, as well as Nasr and Ericsson"
GVDG: "My management will continue talks with Sauber early next week to find a mutually acceptable solution for the current situation"
GVDG: "I am confident such solution will be found and I will inform the media once done."
So now we know - as I said, it's still a fluid situation and really this is just a step to get through this weekend
From yesterday there was no desire from VDG camp to stop NAS and ERI racing, so no surprise at the way that worked out
Click to expand...
 
Show started off saying they thought Ricciardo could fix the engine but apparently Ted has got it confirmed direct from Horner that the ICE on it can't be fixed, so 3 left now. I honestly think the 4 limit down from 5 will cause significantly more penalties this year than last year. It will be a tactical choice I think of many teams to take full engine at some point where they just don't think they will get many points anyway then take the time hit run around at 80% power and effectively plan their season around having 5 engines + one bad race.


RBR looking problematic, software on Kvyat's car is a huge issue. Car actually powering forwards when he's breaking, looks like Kers harvesting isn't working right, pushing under breaking or just not harvesting and helping engine brake properly. That is going to be crazy unsafe, even crazy slow speed he looked worried as hell.
 
hehe, to be fair it's not his fault. Renault partners are being screwed monumentally. The thing is 4 engines isn't outrageous because Ferrari and Merc really had very little problem last year and some reliability issues I think somewhat helps the sport. There was a time where someone might be fast but dnf half the races a year. We got into a point of the sport where you would be more surprised by a Ferrari DNF(excluding Massa hitting something :p ) than surprised if a team went the whole year without a reliability based dnf.

Merc have achieved it and Ferrari are reliable. Renault really have just made a crap engine, it's both slow and unreliable, that isn't RBR's fault.

They were just saying TR had a gearbox damaged by the Renault engine not behaving under shifting.

Problem for RBR is they have no car business in the slightest so would have only F1 to gain from if they bought out the Renault F1 department/manufacturing and then brought in new people/invested more money, it would take them years and much more money to make their own from scratch(though they have the cash and can bring in the right people to do it). While Merc and really Mclaren would never get a Ferrari... would it really matter if RBR switched to a Ferrari engine? I see a lot of people say RBR can't take a rivals engine but I honestly don't think it matters.

I remember was it TR winning a race(or more?) with I think a Ferrari engine and a RBR chassis while the RBR struggled with a worse engine.
 
Ricciardo, such a nice guy(or appears so), got screwed here last year (by his team), looking like it's not going to be a great weekend for him this year either.

EDIT:- in terms of Merc pace, yesterday people are going on about stint length and today the Mercs are bouncing around making crazy sparks suggesting they are loaded with fuel... then banging in 1:29.3's and afaik staying out for multiple laps so clearly not in qualifying mode at least fuel wise.

I think the closeness of Merc/Ferrari stint length was just Merc doing some tire testing.

Hamilton did a bunch of laps there, went off several times, then went ahead and did a lap over 2/10th's faster than Rosberg.


Yeah, Ricciardo straight out so more of a coming out of the pits then immediate call to shut it down because something worried them. Got him back in and car goes out very quickly. Nothing died thankfully.
 
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Has Ferrari been sand bagging? quali is going to be good.

1 Hamilton
2 Vettel
3 Rosberg
4 Bottas
5 Massa
6 Raikkonen
7 Grosjean
8 Maldonado
9 Sainz
10 Nasr
11 Verstappen
12 Ericsson
13 Hulkenberg
14 Perez
15 Ricciardo
16 Magnussen
17 Button
18 Kvyat
 
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I don't think they were sandbagging, they looked good in preseason. I think they looked stronger than Williams. Williams may have them in qualifying, yet to be seen. Vettel loves a track with flowing fast corners and this doesn't suit the Williams in general. Williams will be stronger places like Monza/Canada than here. If you think back a few years we had a superb Mclaren or more recently a Merc that had the lower downforce good for one lap pace, but the overall race pace with a heavier car favoured RBR's higher downforce setup. So here Williams might edge qualifying but I'd think Ferrari have the edge on them in race pace.

Of course, we haven't seen any close racing yet, some aero designs suck behind other cars, some aren't too bad. I think Merc weren't doing all their faster runs, maybe not even Hamilton's lap, with qualifying levels of fuel. Hamilton went on and did I think maybe 2 slow laps, then burned around again and did two even faster sector times then pitted... I think he had he finished there would be another 4/10ths there at least.

Last season there was also the issue lots of teams talk about, speed traps early down a straight didn't always favour Mercedes, sometimes Ferrari were ahead, but that engine kept speeding up right to the end of a straight where Ferrari/other cars topped out earlier. Again this is a track that really doesn't have the real top end speed in it. We'll see, I think Merc could have a bigger gap than they showed come qualifying and Williams might just pip Ferrari.
 
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