Soldato
The future is bright for F1 audiences if over 20% of this forum consider this race 8/10...
Poll: Brazilian Grand Prix 2017, São Paulo - Race 19/20
- Thread starter Shimmy
- Start date
Man of Honour
It was a rather boring race. Without Ham and Ric coming through it would have easily been a 1/10.
Deleted member 651465
D
Deleted member 651465
I voted it a 7 on the basis that there were 2 good drives through the pack, mid-field battles (Alonso, Massa and Perez) and the tension at the end with Ham and Rai.
Without the latter two aspects, I would have given it a 4 or 5.
Without the latter two aspects, I would have given it a 4 or 5.
Soldato
It was good but lacked much in the way of excitement, bar the last couple of laps with Raikkonen/Hamilton and Massa/Alonso/Perez.
2 drivers of the race that I can't really separate. Hamilton for a strong but expected rise through the field, and Alonso for keeping a Force India behind him all race and his consistency for largely staying in Massa's slipstream/DRS bar the short time after the pitstops. McLaren have to do the opposite to most teams to stay in touch - usually you'd drop back 2 seconds or so, but McLaren have to run as close as possible just to keep up and keep the fuel usage down.
Terrible error by Magnussen in turn 2, and too harsh a penalty on Grosjean (it's like they didn't review the accident and realise Ocon was in the process of spinning himself - that said, it was Grosjean's spin that put Ocon out of the race).
2 drivers of the race that I can't really separate. Hamilton for a strong but expected rise through the field, and Alonso for keeping a Force India behind him all race and his consistency for largely staying in Massa's slipstream/DRS bar the short time after the pitstops. McLaren have to do the opposite to most teams to stay in touch - usually you'd drop back 2 seconds or so, but McLaren have to run as close as possible just to keep up and keep the fuel usage down.
Terrible error by Magnussen in turn 2, and too harsh a penalty on Grosjean (it's like they didn't review the accident and realise Ocon was in the process of spinning himself - that said, it was Grosjean's spin that put Ocon out of the race).
Soldato
Ric was the driver of the day imo
Easily 7 with that new engine. What's interesting are the different spec bits. I thought Mercedes locked in some engine changes prior to the new oil burn rate to take advantage of that. It looks like now they've won they've got some free testing on a lower oil spec machine.
Soldato
This race really showed up the implications of the current rules. The whole race was dominated by the effects of cost cutting and consequent unreliability. It was not a formula 1 race.
Six cars were limited by unknown engine problems and the resultant de-tuning (Renault, Torro Rosso and Red Bull). Two cars limited by last years engine due to bad payments from the championship (Sauber). Two cars with the best engine were hindered by a lack of funds on the overall car (Williams). Two cars limited by political disagreements between engine and car manufacturers (Mclaren). Two cars limited by lord knows what (Haas) !
Add to that the failed cars involved in collisions for minor places leaving us with 2 Ferraris and a Mercedes that followed each other. The only car doing what a car should do in a F1 race was one Mercedes.
I wonder if Liberty see it that way?
Andi.
Six cars were limited by unknown engine problems and the resultant de-tuning (Renault, Torro Rosso and Red Bull). Two cars limited by last years engine due to bad payments from the championship (Sauber). Two cars with the best engine were hindered by a lack of funds on the overall car (Williams). Two cars limited by political disagreements between engine and car manufacturers (Mclaren). Two cars limited by lord knows what (Haas) !
Add to that the failed cars involved in collisions for minor places leaving us with 2 Ferraris and a Mercedes that followed each other. The only car doing what a car should do in a F1 race was one Mercedes.I wonder if Liberty see it that way?
Andi.
Soldato
That's f1 for you, very rarely been anything else.This race really showed up the implications of the current rules. The whole race was dominated by the effects of cost cutting and consequent unreliability. It was not a formula 1 race.
Six cars were limited by unknown engine problems and the resultant de-tuning (Renault, Torro Rosso and Red Bull). Two cars limited by last years engine due to bad payments from the championship (Sauber). Two cars with the best engine were hindered by a lack of funds on the overall car (Williams). Two cars limited by political disagreements between engine and car manufacturers (Mclaren). Two cars limited by lord knows what (Haas) !
I wonder if Liberty see it that way?
Andi.
Soldato
It must be really frustrating for the promoters of the final races. Not only have the championship been decided everyone put there in a sub standard car.
Not sure what the answer is but I do hope the playing field can be levelled put a bit.
Andi.
Soldato
Soldato
That will be because Ferrari won plus Lewis and Danny R were heroic. The rest was predictable.
Andi.
Soldato
Another boring race. But driver of the day goes to both DR and LH.
The last race and then we have the Failo
The last race and then we have the Failo
Soldato
Mercedes were already at the lower oil burn rates before the other teams. At least that was what I got from Wolf when he was interviewed around the time Ferrari and others were bringing in their updated engines.
Deleted member 651465
D
Deleted member 651465
Soldato
I remember the fuss that was made at the time, but like englishpremier said, Wolf did state in at least one interview that the current spec engine was already comfortably below the new 0.9l oil burn limit, whether or not that was entirely truthful (in all engine settings...) i dont know, but the new engine that did require to run to the 0.9 limit showed no sign of being any less powerful, if anything more so... however that may have been because they could run it in higher engine settings for longer considering it only has to complete 2 races.
Deleted member 651465
D
Deleted member 651465
He did say that but the FIA allowed them to run the higher limit, so it’s kind of a moot point.
I’m guessing he was talking about race mode and not quali mode but the new spec didn’t look like a slouch... perhaps the competition were the ones hardest hit by the change?
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
It's not a moot point, if the engine was designed with heavier oil burn in mind then it wouldn't have run comfortably without it. If oil was the reason they were so fast then running less than that amount would have been detrimental.
The oil burn news came out pretty much in this order, Horner accused Mercedes... FIA investigated all engines for all burn, Ferrari were deemed to have extra oil tanks and rumours they were told to cut that **** out.
In general the rule of thumb for F1 politics is, don't call out Ferrari, you'll get caught in the backlash. I fully believe that Horner called out Mercedes to intentionally get the FIA to nerf Ferrari engines, which has absolutely happened and helped RBR be even more competitive. Mercedes don't care because they know the deal, weren't burning oil anyway(not any more than most performance cars) and they like that Ferrari got caught.
THe issue isn't if they were allowed to use more fuel, it's that they haven't been harmed by reducing it by any noticeable amount at all while in fact Ferrari seem slower since and including Monza in reality. There have been some very very strange fuel numbers recently in terms of how much Ferrari are using in races compared to Merc, personally they seem to outlandish to be believable, but losing the additives available in a larger amount of oil burning which can significant improve the efficiency of your fuel burning would actually be a reason for them to suddenly be using an awful lot more fuel than the other teams.
Ferrari were competitive with Mercedes, even in Spa, Monza was a disaster for them, Singapore their FP2 runs were actually horrible compared to Hamilton and RBR, Malaysia Vettel got caught behind ALonso for 7 laps, and almost everyone else quite literally pitted as he approached them so he only had to pass I think 3-4 cars the entire race and even had Mercedes and Bottas help him by not pitting. Had they pitted before Vettel, he'd have had to pass Bottas on track and somehow Mercedes missed that one. Even still he only got as close as 18 seconds back from Verstappen but used too much fuel doing it and finished 37 seconds back, conservatively he'd only have got within ~25 seconds of the front had he not used too much fuel in the first place. Conversely Ham finishes 5.4 seconds off the lead in Brazil, Max finishes 12 seconds off Hamilton in Cota and realistically all three tracks 95% of the overtakes were done in 2 corners at the end of straights.
RBR have been simply faster than Ferrari since the oil burn reduction and Ferrari have gone from matching Hamilton to matching Bottas 20 seconds down the road and falling behind Verstappen in doing that. Brazil/Renault pace is basically ignorable. It's apparently not even directly reliability itself, as with previous races it's not like they care if they have to take new engines, the issue is Renault supposedly lack enough parts that are finished to build enough new engines if multiple engines died so they backed them off to have a shot of all the Renault teams starting the Abu Dhabi race. It's absolutely ridiculous but there it is.
The oil burn news came out pretty much in this order, Horner accused Mercedes... FIA investigated all engines for all burn, Ferrari were deemed to have extra oil tanks and rumours they were told to cut that **** out.
In general the rule of thumb for F1 politics is, don't call out Ferrari, you'll get caught in the backlash. I fully believe that Horner called out Mercedes to intentionally get the FIA to nerf Ferrari engines, which has absolutely happened and helped RBR be even more competitive. Mercedes don't care because they know the deal, weren't burning oil anyway(not any more than most performance cars) and they like that Ferrari got caught.
THe issue isn't if they were allowed to use more fuel, it's that they haven't been harmed by reducing it by any noticeable amount at all while in fact Ferrari seem slower since and including Monza in reality. There have been some very very strange fuel numbers recently in terms of how much Ferrari are using in races compared to Merc, personally they seem to outlandish to be believable, but losing the additives available in a larger amount of oil burning which can significant improve the efficiency of your fuel burning would actually be a reason for them to suddenly be using an awful lot more fuel than the other teams.
Ferrari were competitive with Mercedes, even in Spa, Monza was a disaster for them, Singapore their FP2 runs were actually horrible compared to Hamilton and RBR, Malaysia Vettel got caught behind ALonso for 7 laps, and almost everyone else quite literally pitted as he approached them so he only had to pass I think 3-4 cars the entire race and even had Mercedes and Bottas help him by not pitting. Had they pitted before Vettel, he'd have had to pass Bottas on track and somehow Mercedes missed that one. Even still he only got as close as 18 seconds back from Verstappen but used too much fuel doing it and finished 37 seconds back, conservatively he'd only have got within ~25 seconds of the front had he not used too much fuel in the first place. Conversely Ham finishes 5.4 seconds off the lead in Brazil, Max finishes 12 seconds off Hamilton in Cota and realistically all three tracks 95% of the overtakes were done in 2 corners at the end of straights.
RBR have been simply faster than Ferrari since the oil burn reduction and Ferrari have gone from matching Hamilton to matching Bottas 20 seconds down the road and falling behind Verstappen in doing that. Brazil/Renault pace is basically ignorable. It's apparently not even directly reliability itself, as with previous races it's not like they care if they have to take new engines, the issue is Renault supposedly lack enough parts that are finished to build enough new engines if multiple engines died so they backed them off to have a shot of all the Renault teams starting the Abu Dhabi race. It's absolutely ridiculous but there it is.
Ah, even so, those new specs are surely testing some 2018 requirements. They've only got 3 engines next season so making the things bullet proof is going to be pretty valuable.
Deleted member 651465
D
Deleted member 651465
He said that the engines weren't running the higher oil limit and the FIA allowed them to run the higher limit anyway. So...
Now, I do agree with the above statement, however, that isn't to say the engine is designed to work best with a lower oil burn limit... it just happens to be able to withstand the extra force of combustion with the higher oil burn limit (for a short period). You only have to hear the team radio to realise that Merc can't run in that engine mode for extended periods. I can't prove it but I suspect other teams (Ferrari) began investigating the extra horsepower that comes with oil burning and found engines dying. Perhaps they were happy that the limit was dropped as it reduced the Merc quali advantage, or perhaps they were gutted they couldn't ride on the bandwagon.
3 engines next year.is it worth sauber only competing in last half of season due to everyone else having penalties?
Nope, probably not because as Hamilton proved car gulf is so great that nothing can stop top 3 teams getting into the top 6 positions (or near enough)
Nope, probably not because as Hamilton proved car gulf is so great that nothing can stop top 3 teams getting into the top 6 positions (or near enough)