Bahrain Grand Prix 2010, Sakhir - Race 1/19

sunama said:
Wider tyres: increase mechanical grip, allowing a car behind to follow the car in front, closer.

Narrower wings: reduce aerodynamic downforce, once again, allowing the car behind to follow the car in front, closely.

The 2 must happen together. If only one happens, the designers will develop the car to such a point that the reduction in downforce will be negligable and you will be back to the situation where most of the grip is aero and not mechanical.
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If the rules banned the aero add ons (winglets, barge boards etc) then the designers wouldn't be able to get the aerodynamic grip to compensate for the loss of mechanical grip. This way the car shapes will be simpler & the airflow won't get so disturbed & as such it will enable cars to follow closer.

Ultimately there has to be a balance between mechanical grip & aero grip. The cars in the 70's etc didn't have the added winglets or always have massive tyres yet the racing was probably the best of any era.

The closest forms of motorsport are always the ones where the cars are most similar & of simple aerodynamic designs.
 
Bernie Ecclestone talking some sense for once?!?!

A lot of the comments from team principals after the race suggested the sport should focus on making changes to the tyre regulations – perhaps by forcing drivers to make two mandatory stops during a grand prix.

However, Ecclestone thinks other tyres rules should be looked at – including forcing teams to have available just one soft compound tyre for the race.

"Some might wonder why the teams have options on tyres at all," he said. "Maybe if we only gave them a soft compound they would have to stop twice, but I am not sure that they will vote unanimously for a mandatory two-stop race which Red Bull proposed.

"It is basically the same problem we have had for the last few years about downforce and cars not being able to get close to the one in front to create more overtaking.

"The teams know this but they won't do anything about it because each team looks after its own interests: trying to win.

"I had a meeting with the teams and tried to explain to them what our business is about - racing and entertaining the public. It's not about playing with computers and going fast over one lap."
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dannyjo22 said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8569435.stm

Good little piece on Button V Hamilton as I suspected Button didn't get any clean air to run in, his fault due to qfying performance but the gap to his team mate was flattered by Hamilton getting clean air. I suspect if they had been directly placed on the track they would have been similar paced.
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Button never matched Hamilton's pace though, even when he was in clean air. I agree drawing strong conclusions from a single race is a mug's game but to reject that Hamilton came out better from this one race is foolish.

As for the notion that Button noticed the changed wind direction and Hamilton didn't, I simply don't believe it. More likely Hamilton, unlike Button, didn't let it get to him.
 
The article suggests button was never in clean air and I cannot remember him being in clean air for more than a lap or so either?

Of course hamilton came out way better, yet again as in the 2nd half of the season last year Button needs to sort his qualifying out.
 
dannyjo22 said:
The article suggests button was never in clean air and I cannot remember him being in clean air for more than a lap or so either?

Of course hamilton came out way better, yet again as in the 2nd half of the season last year Button needs to sort his qualifying out.
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I'm guessing you fell asleep for the middle 50% or so of the race then?

For a long time after the first stops he was ~4s if not more behind schumacher, not the ~1s needed to be affected by the car in front,

Even in the first stint he dropped off the back of webber to around 2s or so iirc, due to 'saving his tyres' apparantly...
 
There is no need to get closer than that though is there. Thats not clean air as such. Putting in 3 or 4 hard laps would then just put him in that 1 sec window where the car starts to hurt.

These boys have spent so long racing for pitstops they have forgotten how to pass on the track.
 
I'd imagine you'd want to stay within 2s of the guy in front, close enough to take advantage of any problems/mistakes but not close enough to worry the tyres.

Not sure the exact gap throughout the whole race but there where plenty of laps where he was at least 4s, if not more back, maybe he was just cruising, but personally that's not the impression I got from watching the live timing screen during the race...

Back to the 'lack of overtaking', just actually bothered reading a link posted in another forum:

http://www.cliptheapex.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=822

In that thread they list the number of overtakes per track and per season, with a few exceptions listed in the first post.

For the Bahrain circuit there were apparantly 19 overtakes at the weekend, but that's the second highest number of overtakes for a race there.

I think perhaps we were all getting hyped up that the drivers/cars/no-refueling would all add up to some huge spectacle which obviously didn't happen, rather than actually noticing that it wasn't much different from most other Bahrain GP's...
 
According to Autosport, the teams are having a meeting on Thursday to discuss possible rule changes.

I can't say I found it exciting, but then it was Bahrain. Not exactly a great track, even with the changes they made.
 
Lakeland said:
I see where you're coming from but Button is notorious for moaning about his car setup, if something doesn't go to plan it's the car's fault
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What else is there to blame, it's him, the car or the circumstances.

So it's to be expected he will blame the car and the fact he was 'stuck' behind another car, he won't say he is a worse driver than Lewis.

But I do think it's too soon to judge people now, the same goes for Schumi being 0.5 seconds slower than Rosberg all weekend.
 
Lakeland said:
Button was hinting in a TV interview that the car isn't designed or easy to setup for him or his style. Roll on the excuses :)
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No he didn't, I watched the interview and he said he was lacking in certain areas but he knew where and how they were going to try to get over it. He said he just lacked time in the car to get used to it. He looked relax and comfortable for his first race with mclaren. I didn't hear one bit of bitching. Feel free to point me to the bit in the f1 forum where he moaned.

He was also one of the few not moaning about how hard it was to drive on full tanks.


Lakeland said:
I see where you're coming from but Button is notorious for moaning about his car setup, if something doesn't go to plan it's the car's fault
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No he isn't, infact I'd go so far as to say he doesn't moan enough. Last year when things were not going right he shouldered as much of the blame as he could for lack of performance, despite the car developement going missing or wrong.
 
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