Australian Grand Prix 2015, Melbourne - Race 1/19

el_dazza said:
I wonder if Manor will be quicker than Mclaren..
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Very unlikely.

2014 Qual times:

Chilton 01:34.293
Bianchi 01:34.794

McLaren this morning.

Button 01:31.422
Magnussen 01:32.037

So as bad as it is for McLaren, they're still likely to be a couple of seconds per lap ahead of Marussia.
 
zzzzzzzzzz Mercedes seems to be even more dominant. in for another boring season ahead w/ fewer cars. Think Lewis is going to do to Rosberg what Vettel did to Webber.


glad to see Ferrari smiling and slightly improved from last year, however they are still way off the top spot. Kimi and Seb seem to be on par. Alsonso is well ahead of that lot


Torro Rosso seems to be biting at the heels of Red Bull - only good surprise so far. never convinced by Kyv. he's certainly good, but not that good for a top team seat. JEV or Hulk would have been better choice, but not the Red Bull way. they like them young to sell their drinks.


McLaren - WTF! it's more than a mountain to climb. guess Alonso is going to take his time coming back. wouldn't blame him tbh. imagine Boullier will be on the hot seat sooner rather than later


Sauber shambles, makes Lotus look good


lastly. sad for Bianchi and guess we will never know. everyone raves about Bottas, but Bianchi was better than him in the junior series



PS Damon Hill is lame (boring on camera and nothing insightful to say - Brundle and Davidson make more interesting comments) and Sky should get rid of him. rather they signed up Mansell or Ross Braun - sure they prob not interested, and rather be at the FIA governing board ;) at least they got J. Herbert, great sidekick :)
 
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Skeeter said:
But as for engines, the Power Units are made of 6 parts. They have 4 of each of the parts. Every time they take a 5th or more of each part they get a grid penalty.

If however they throw the whole PU in the bin and replace the lot with a 5th or more of everything, they now get a stop/go penalty to take in the race.
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Thats well explained.
Thank you.
 
Shimmy said:
Honda have turned their engines down too in order to get some kind of running.
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Yep. The chassis could be good and the aero great, but at the moment they are well down on power just to last more than a few laps.

In theory it means its an easy fix. Once they sort out the issues they can just turn it up to 10 and should see instant gains of a few second per lap.
 
McLaren
McLaren remain an enigma.
It amazes me is that when decisions are made by committee, they are usually well thought out and very safe, as they have to be green lit by many people. Furthermore, Honda are also involved so they have their own people who can make the safest decisions. With this in mind, how on Earth have McLaren/Honda ended up in this situation?

We now also have the Alonso situation. The one shining light in the team. The team are now claiming that they arent sure when he will return. If he doesnt return in the next race, I'd be inclined to believe that he wont race for McLaren this year and may change teams in 2016.

I've been saying this for a while (like a broken record) that no engine maker can enter F1 and immediately be competitive. It will take at least 18 months (maybe longer) to be competitive. This means that McLaren have to produce a better chassis than their rivals, to make up the gap and/or have a better driver (which I'm not sure they have any more [see link above]).

I dont understand why they didnt introduce the engine last Summer and start testing it during races, taking penalties where necessary, so they could start this year better. Last year had already been written off.

This is a ****-up of epic proportions at so many levels, by so many people, in 2 different companies. I'm dumbfounded.

Merc
Well, we all knew that they were going to be fastest. So no big surprise. It looks like a an easy 1-2 tomorrow.

Ferrari & Williams
These two teams are vying to be a distant, best of the rest.
The only interest I have in these 2 teams is Ferrari - I want to see how Vettel compares with Kimi. Last year Kimi was whipped by Alonso. Can Vettel do the same?
 
Skeeter said:
In theory it means its [Honda engine] an easy fix. Once they sort out the issues they can just turn it up to 10 and should see instant gains of a few second per lap.
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Only time will tell if you are right, but I dont believe its as simple as you are making out.

These problems have been evident from the first test they did on the engine, many months ago. And since then, they havent sorted out any of these problems.

Drunkenmaster pointed out that rival engines (last year) had multiple teams using their engines, which helped get more test data, faster. Honda only have 1 team, which can barely complete a few laps in a day, which will slow down development.

I hope McLaren have a plan B for next year (ie. switch to Merc engine), if Honda show little improvement. The worst thing that can happen for McLaren is if they stick it out for 3 years with the worst engine in F1, which the Honda currently is.
 
Might as well stop doing race weekend threads I think. With the amount of people on here already saying "the season is boring and F1 sucks so I won't watch any more and boo Merc did a better job so they're ruining it" then there won't be anyone to contribute to the hugely in-depth discussions...
 
Flibster said:
Very unlikely.

2014 Qual times:

Chilton 01:34.293
Bianchi 01:34.794

McLaren this morning.

Button 01:31.422
Magnussen 01:32.037

So as bad as it is for McLaren, they're still likely to be a couple of seconds per lap ahead of Marussia.
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By the same measure Ricciardo was fastest in Q1 last year with a 1:30.775. I wouldn't directly take last year's time in the very first race when everyone was a tad conservative and assume that is all they could achieve this year.

Looking across multiple races, regardless of track length they tended to average being between 3-4.5seconds behind the Merc's eventual fastest Q3 times... which would most likely at this stage at least have them competing with Mclaren currently.

Ferrari also had the worst engine last year and have improved this year. I'm under the impression the main reason they don't have Ferrari 2015 engines is the oil tank moved and there isn't physically space to fit the 2015 engine into the 2014 chassis. When the 2015 chassis comes it should have the 2015 engine which seems a large improvement on last years which should give them a speed improvement.


There is this constant thing that Mclaren/Honda have worked well in the past thus they will eventually be successful this time. Aside from most of the engineers and main people involved changing, the concept that big companies can't make bad products is daft, that too big to fail concept people often apply. We keep being told they have problems because they went ultra aggressive on packaging, but while there is a possibility they could fix those problems and have a great engine, there is also the possibility they made a fundamentally bad engine that either can't be made reliable or isn't anywhere near as powerful as they believe.

Do people really think Ferrari or Renault intentionally made crap engines for last year? Just because Honda want to have made a great engine doesn't mean they have, and that they've rushed development with less time than any other team doesn't bode well for it.
 
sunama said:
Only time will tell if you are right, but I dont believe its as simple as you are making out.

These problems have been evident from the first test they did on the engine, many months ago. And since then, they havent sorted out any of these problems.

Drunkenmaster pointed out that rival engines (last year) had multiple teams using their engines, which helped get more test data, faster. Honda only have 1 team, which can barely complete a few laps in a day, which will slow down development.

I hope McLaren have a plan B for next year (ie. switch to Merc engine), if Honda show little improvement. The worst thing that can happen for McLaren is if they stick it out for 3 years with the worst engine in F1, which the Honda currently is.
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That's exactly the opposite of what I meant.

What I was saying was that the chassis could be good (Button certainly thinks it's good), so while fixing the engine problems isn't easy, once they do and turn it up to full the car could be immediately fast.

This is the inverse of what they have had in recent years where errors in their chassis design have left them with a slow car that's very difficult to improve.
 
MagicBoy said:
Don't let facts get in the way of a good tinfoil hatted rant. ;)
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Hes an odd one. It's not even like it was a vauge possibility, or possible but extremely difficult.

It was impossible. 100% completely impossible. Yet he persists on posting over and over about how they should have just run Honda engines last year as if it was an obvious thing and they were stupid to miss it.
 
The chassis may feel good, but it feels good running in it's current parameters.

For all anyone knows, when Honda resolve the engine issues and allow it to run at full capacity that may expose issues with the chassis ib terms of aerodynamic performance.
 
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