Bahrain Grand Prix 2015, Sakhir - Race 4/19

[deuse]

Hamilton should be good for pole.

 

[SS-89]

Hamilton should be good for pole.

Pretty much a given, Merc's one lap pace has been leagues ahead.

 

[drunkenmaster]

TR seem to be a bit where Sauber were last year, problematic rear brakes with not a lot of confidence in them. Brake by wire system comes with the Renault engine, both Renault teams having unreliable brakes and over heating brakes that lock up more often. If you can't rely on the brake by wire then you end up running less aggressive harvesting both losing you power and putting more pressure on the actual brakes rather than engine braking.

Verstappen has had trouble with locking up in all the free practices, his particularly good late braking overtaking becomes even more impressive when you realise they are probably not running brakes as aggressively as they want to.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Does anyone actually know how Stevens is regarded in motorsport? I know knowing about Formula Renault in it's various different numbers and names. Is a 4th with 1 win 1 pole and 7 podiums decent in Renault UK or would an F1 driver be expected to utterly destroy everyone and have completely dominated it?

What I'm getting at is Mehri is again a mile behind Stevens, 1.3 seconds is a bit of a joke. How bad Mehri is depends on how bad Stevens is. I suspect you have a average to poor driver in Stevens and a terrible driver in Mehri.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

The cars spark so much this year.

Seems like mercedes are comfortably ahead again, although the heat will probably reduce the gap slightly.

Mercedes might have this year in the bag, but they will have to innovate next year or they will be caught.

 

[steve45]

Love how the night races look, cars are beautiful under the lights.
just hope we can have a good race to go along with it.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

Red flag. Looked messy, but vettel had a braking failure! Why is vettel getting cross, why SHOULD Perez give him room? Perez doesn't know that vettel can't stop.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Yeah, though, it's odd. At some point you would expect the slower car to have left more room and when he is still there in the corner you should be looking for it.

The problem is Perez probably wasn't looking inside because if you see him start braking and he's paying attention to the Sauber... he might simply have expected Vettel would have continued braking and wouldn't be there. Because in normal circumstances you'd see Vettel slowing, Vettel obviously knew he had to let them go and would back out and then you can ignore him.

Vettel and Perez a bit silly there, I mean Vettel shouldn't presume Perez has seen him, he knows that isn't normal and could have simply pulled onto the grass to stay out of the way, it's not a race, he's not going fast, he didn't HAVE to make the corner for any reason.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

Good, vettel now apologising.

Kimi and hamilton being investigated? Leaving the pit lane incorrectly? What? Red bull did the same and they had nowhere else to go anyway. How silly.

 

[drunkenmaster]

I mean, it's a hard one to call, these days cars do practice starts on both pulling over to the right and from the normal lane at various times. I can just about think that Kimi may have pushed it a little with a Sauber at an angle coming out of his own pits and going right the way around is a little cheeky. Hamilton got there though and you just had one awkwardly placed Sauber really just holding everyone up and he didn't go anywhere near as close to the garage as Kimi seemed to.

But the RBR did same as Hamilton... FIA thinking... how can we get more viewers but knowing the RBR will be further back anyway?

 

[Dimi]

Mercs as usual will be 1-2 in qualifying trim, race pace looks good on the Ferrari though.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Depends how hard the Merc's were pushing, they have the hardest pushed engine on the grid and with Ferrari moving to new ICE's that will boost their comparative BHP. Are Merc worried about reliability, would they go slower than they would like in FP2 and just extrapolate the lap times, they have software and teams of strategists/numbers guys for that kind of thing. But could that effect how hard they'd push in this race. THey might take a new engine after FP3, or even qualifying, in other words using this engine up as much as possible and saving the next engine a few sessions. Who knows, we'll see how it plays out.

This year could be strange, Ferrari have opened a second engine, meaning even if they haven't taken all the new parts they are locked in spec now so if they had token upgrades for any part they only get them on engines they haven't used when the upgrades are made.

Would a 3rd/4th here but opening out a new engine with 50bhp more next race at Barcelona and having that 50bhp more for 3 engines over the season be better for them than taking a 2nd engine here, winning but having 4-5 races 50bhp down on where they could be? That is pretty much where Ferrari are, new engine here but by taking it IF they had 50bhp update ready for Barcelona, have they now lost that extra power for multiple races?

Strategy on reliability due to the in season changes has changed how people will use their engines completely compared to last year.

 

[Dimi]

We'll see how it plans out, I'm sure they have it figured out. It was Allison who saw that they could work on the engines with this token system.

Considering what he's already done for the team and seeing 3 Ferrari engines at the top of the speed traps is saying something after last years misery.

I think I saw somewhere that they had more tokens than the Mercs too with Renault having the most.

 

[drunkenmaster]

I would somewhat suggest seeing the Ferrari's at the top of the speed trap is an indication of most the Merc engine cars taking it a little easier on the engine.

It's an odd one actually, another factor in the upgrades is. Lets suggest that Ferrari now want to use this engine up before introducing the update... where does that leave Sauber. Again say for arguments sake their update brings another 50bhp and Sauber make it to Barcelona where again for arguments sake it was due. Do they release the update and let Sauber have a new engine in barcelona with more power than the works team has? Or do they hang Sauber out and basically force Sauber at some stage to take a second engine of the current spec. Depending on how much stronger the expected new engine is we could see Sauber and Ferrari plan to only do 2-3 races or something on the next engine, take more life out of it because the stronger engine in more races but one penalty late in the season is a trade off they'd be willing to make.

Same goes for Merc, if they get forced to take a second engine would they delay any update to not look bad as opposed to a Williams or something... though with the disparity in the other Merc teams I doubt any one would close on them unless it was a monumental update.

Even taking that argument further, what if Nico or Hamilton's engine dies here(before the race) and they take a second one but they had planned a stronger engine for barcelona. Do they let one team mate have 3 of the new engines?

I think people are VERY unfairly crapping on Sauber(mostly a lot of the commentators/pundits) about having a dire car last year and thus attributing the entire gain to the engine. Look at the customer Merc cars, all have the same great engine both years and are varying distances behind Merc, none coming close. Sauber had a bad engine but a terrible car last year, they've got a much better engine and of course that helps, but they fixed some other problems with the car or it wouldn't be as strong as it is.

 

[smr]

Ferrari race pace...

 

[smr]

Rumours that lewis may join ferrari next year lel

 

[steve45]

No penalties after FP2.
no further action on the Vettel/Perez incident
Kimi got "reprimand"
Lewis, no action taken.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Rumours that lewis may join ferrari next year lel

Not next year, but they've massively upped the budget in the team, 270-370mil in the past year and apparently happy to raise it again. Fiat/Ferrari seem happy to go after being a dominant team again as it's good for the brand no doubt, also being floated on the stock market(don't actually know if they have been or it's coming) could make a difference in how valuable they perceive the Ferrari F1 brand.

If Ferrari were genuinely competitive next year then Merc offer no advantages, Ferrari would pay more. The best drivers move to the best cars at any given time, well try to... Alonso


Apparently Kimi got a warning and Lewis wasn't even summoned to the stewards in the end, much as I thought when I saw it, Kimi pushed his luck but was just trying to get round a stupid Sauber, you can't stack up from that angle to do a practice start, go round, do a lap and come through the pits to do it.

Several teams asking FIA to investigate if Vettel's front tire was actually on properly or if it was an unsafe release. FIA haven't and don't look likely to investigate but then even if it was, as long as it wasn't completely 100% obvious then having Vettel start what 5-10 places down wouldn't go down well when thinking about the title fight.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

Rumours that lewis may join ferrari next year lel

With vettel I guess? Ferrari could be in a strong position if they continue as they are. Hamilton and vettel would be ideal in terms of getting the best out of the car, but I can't imagine it ending well.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

No penalties after FP2.
no further action on the Vettel/Perez incident
Kimi got "reprimand"
Lewis, no action taken.

As it should be, anything else would be crazy.