Bahrain Grand Prix 2015, Sakhir - Race 4/19

Caporegime
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Well Jenson's car lasted 1.1 laps then the engine stopped, session quite likely to be over. Though the engine stopped incredibly quickly and totally, no Verstappen style hearing the engine literally killing itself. SO maybe electrical, get into the pits and reset it but doesn't look great.


36c air and 54c track temps, which will likely increase, well the track temp, through this session but later in the evening air will come down but track temp will likely come down loads. Even so 54c is a mile away from the 65c that made Malaysia actually cause issues and this looks a bang on two stop race anyway. The biggest difference in Malaysia was that the tire life was pushing Merc(and almost everyone) towards a 3 stop while Ferrari could just get into two stop, if Malaysia was a nailed on 2 or 3 stop for everyone Ferrari wouldn't have gotten close.
 
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Soldato
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Well Jenson's car lasted 1.1 laps then the engine stopped, session quite likely to be over. Though the engine stopped incredibly quickly and totally, no Verstappen style hearing the engine literally killing itself. SO maybe electrical, get into the pits and reset it but doesn't look great.

I thought it looked like the rears locked up causing him to spin?
 
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I thought it looked like the rears locked up causing him to spin?

Engine sound was gone practically as he started spinning and that turbo winding down started instantly. Engine basically turned off and probably caused the spin/weird rear tire action. If he had just stalled it you'd pretty much expect it to stall at the end of the spin and anti stall would normally keep it going anyway.

Soon as I heard it I thought engine turned off(but not necessarily dead), Bruno pretty much said exactly the same as well, sounded like engine turned off for whatever reason.
 
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Hmm, tempted to put BBC on, didn't realise it would be. While I actually really like Bruno doing practice commentary, Crofty/Ted constantly banging on about how Nico was or wasn't in the right is boring as sin. Crofty keeps banging on from the view point Hamilton was possibly costing them the 1-2 and Ted is talking nonsense about how the Ferrari threat meant they changed tire strategy and Hamilton was scared about tire life.

He was absolutely backing Rosberg up, why shouldn't he, Merc will walk the title, if it was ever a real issue that they might not THEN you drive for the team but right now he's managing a points gap to his main title rival. Difference is Hamilton is doing it himself where recently the team and no.2 driver would have done it for Vettel or Alonso. Seeing Hamilton using actual driving skills to try and extend the gap between him and Rosberg is so much better than watching a team radio message doing the same. Difference here is Rosberg was complaining about being completely out driven, get over it.

Bah also just talking about Massa and Crofty saying he was unlucky last year as he was taken out in a few incidents that weren't his fault.... the massive majority were his fault, maybe all though can't remember every contact. Popular driver in not getting the blame for his own mistakes shocker... :(
 
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Vettel having an engine problem, not seen an updated list yet for engine parts

http://www.fia.com/events/fia-formula-1-world-championship/season-2015/event-timing-information-2

down in the technical reports section they list pdf's with that kind of data. The one they posted yesterday is there, the one today will show who broke out new parts for FP1, Kvyat/Verstappen for sure, Mclaren made some reliability parts changes on the ICE which suggests they don't intend to take a 3rd ICE straight away.
 
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Nobody needs to really push in FP1 as it's a night race so FP2 is more in line with track temperatures and conditions for the race and qualy. I'd expect merc will be back at the top come FP2 even if I hope it remains Ferrari :p.
 
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http://www.fia.com/sites/default/fi...ort_doc7_-_new_internal_combustion_engine.pdf


oooh

so the rumour was true, both Ferrari's , Kvyat and Hulk take a new ICE. That is the first Ferrari engines to be changed and the first Merc engine on Hulk's car.

Hulk/Kvyat also get themselves a new TC, MGU-H and MGU-K.

Verstappen only with a new Turbo, everyone was convinced with the way his engine made so many truly horrific noises as it stopped that the ICE had gone. SO surprising he hasn't taken a new ICE. It's possible it really was only a new turbo that went but I guess also possible that they managed to fix his first engine and have gone back to that one.

RBR the only car(as yet, could be more new bits tomorrow) so far to be on the 3rd ICE on both cars. At this rate, 4th rate, 3rd engine and Ricciardo's was used last week... they are on course for something nuts like 10+ engines for the year.
 
Caporegime
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Nobody needs to really push in FP1 as it's a night race so FP2 is more in line with track temperatures and conditions for the race and qualy. I'd expect merc will be back at the top come FP2 even if I hope it remains Ferrari :p.

I think really they are thinking about reliability more than track differences. All the data goes back into complex models back in Brackley for strategy guys to work out lap data. Track conditions are often different for the race, they predict track evolution and can predict performance if the race is hotter or colder than they thought. THe further out the track conditions are from expected the less useful the data will be, but not useless.

Ferrari have had to use a second ice, which locks the entire second engine to the current specs. If Merc were to have 7 tokens to use for maybe a Barcelona update then they would have 3 new spec engines to Ferrari's only 2 new spec engines. This year is strange, they normally play around with engine allocation, use a brand new one for the hardest tracks and then use it for easier tracks, or one engine longer with no hard track on it. They use them out of sequence. This year because of the token situation the longer you can get into the season on the least engines the better.

I still think that is ultimately the sensible thinking behind Hamilton's slow pace last race, screwing Rosberg(or the potential to) was a happy by product, he was saving his engine as much as possible.
 
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Looks like no updates to ferrari PU and was replaced due to possible cracks found. Not the end of the world but a bit annoying.

It's really unclear if there have been changes. In fact they really don't portray changes in the tech of F1 very well at all. They talk about the aero stuff but, teams can and do submit requests to change the design of parts on the engine and the FIA says yes or no. I've seen something saying Mclaren made a bunch of requests maybe before China including this one about the mgu-h and the FIA approved some(no clue what they were) and seemingly said along the lines of "are you having a laugh" with the "can we have a completely redesigned mgu-h and also move it's location" request.

If Ferrari changed the engine spec should be communicated easily to the viewer, I say that because I've heard they had some of these smaller reliability updates maybe ready to go, there is talk about the Barcelona spec being potentially not a token change but just several reliability changes being introduced at that point.

It's all very unclear which seems stupid. I presume quite a lot of reliability updates were made to all three engines last year but you basically didn't get told about any of them..
 
Caporegime
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Button had a new battery and control electronics after FP1, stops in FP2 again, hope that is more a mistake/rush job putting them in than managing to brake something else in only a few laps.

Button certainly going to have a compromised qualifying though, barely any running but barely any night time running at all. Fp3 just being that bit earlier it won't be as useful, fp2 running will be pretty crucial for getting a feel of how the car will feel in qualifying/race.

Seriously can't stand adverts in general usually, hate sky ones normally, but this voting/election lipsync thing is pretty amazing.
 
Soldato
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Both kimi and seb messed up on the final sectors of their quali sims. Annoying that neither of them put together a clean lap.

Engineer confirmed seb lost around 0.5 second.
 
Caporegime
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Kimi's wasn't great but he didn't mess it up as badly as Seb, but Kimi went 3/10th's faster on the second flying lap. Vettel was about 2/10th's down on his second flying lap. I think largely because he was about 4/10th's up on his first flying lap before he went off in the final corner. So just taking that little more performance out of the first lap meant he dropped time on the second lap. Kimi being slower on the first was faster on the second.

It's Kimi's thing though, he has a looser front end, under steers, has less good ultimate speed but holds his tire life better as a result.
 
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