F1 2011 season news / pre-season updates

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sunama said:
At the end of the day, every team/driver has the same number of tyres allocated. It is a level playing field. If drivers have to learn to look after their tyres better, then so be it.

The changing rules and driving styles, are all part of being a top class racing driver - something these men are highly paid for.

One of the reasons why I rate MSc so highly is that his career at the top spanned several generations of F1 car and various rules and regulation changes. Some drivers were unable to adapt, but MSc adapted to every change, successfully.
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Im sorry sunama, but you always come out with this "learn to adapt to be a good driver" argument, and I think its rubbish.

Hearing things like "after stopping on lap 2, Massa will not do the whole of the rest of the race on the same tyres" and "Lewis has had to stop chasing down Webber as he needs to slow to save his tyres" during an F1 race feels totally wrong.

As I have said before, F1 should be about the guy who pushes hardest and drives fastest for 100% of the race winning, not the guy who cruised around at 80% not overtaking anybody winning because his tyres lasted.

Mechanical grip is a major contributor to overtaking, but its now completely screwed by rewarding drivers for NOT pushing as saving tyres outweighs the cost of an extra pit stop.

There are different categories of racing that fit with different styles. Saving tyres and being economical with fuel and using energy recovery is ideally suited to endurance racing (which I love). But the push of it into F1 is ruining things.

Oh, and weren't the rules all pretty much stagnant for most of the early 00's, the time when MSc won a load of titles in a row?
 
FrankJH said:
by smashing everyone off the track through multiple eras :D (and being allowed to do it)
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Yes...well that is a skill in itself...surely :p

A driver or any sportsman must push the boundaries of what is acceptable and what isn't. Sometimes MSc pushed to hard and got banned. Was he not disqualified from the 1997 WDC (or sometime around there)?

Senna, Prost...even Hill have been guilty of unsportsman like behaviour...all of them World Champions.

Personally, I like it when drivers push the limits.
 
mctiny said:
Sunama some how manages to let this slip his mind;)
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I haven't forgotten anything. MSc is unquestionably, the most complete driver I have ever seen in F1.

If you want big points totals. If you want to win World titles, MSc (in his prime) would be at the very top of my shopping list.

If you want a sportsman, who will get you fewer points and win fewer races/championships, then look elsewhere. Mansell would be a good choice.
 
Skeeter said:
Oh, and weren't the rules all pretty much stagnant for most of the early 00's, the time when MSc won a load of titles in a row?
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From 1994 to 2006, during which time MSc was always a title contender, the rules changed constantly.

MSc saw off Hill, Hakkinen, J.Villeneuve and was finally stopped by Alonso.

The leading contenders kept changing. The rules kept changing. But MSc kept on delivering at the very highest level.

Since 1994, I cannot say the same for any other driver.
 
Skeeter said:
Except when they cant, because it will wear out their tyres to quickly...?
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You can push the limits of what ever tyres your car is wearing. Be they slicks on a wet track. Or intermediates on a dry track.

Push the limits and do the best job you can with the available equipment.

And if you don't have the same equipment as other teams (e.g. RBR cars are now consistently faster than everybody else's), hire the right agent to get you a contract with the team with the fastest car on the grid. Or better still, go on national TV and state publicly that you want to join XXX team, as they have the fastest car and that you are willing to drive for free...it worked for Senna ;)
 
Shimmy said:
Pre-season show on tonight on 5 Live at 8pm with Jake Humphrey, Anthony Davidson, Mike Gascoyne and Murray Walker.

Edit: show has been moved forward to 7.45pm to fit everything in.

BBC are also recording a pre season race show in the place of the Bahrain GP, so I'd imagine that would air next weekend.


And here's some technical analysis of all the cars so far in testing:

http://smibs.tv/the-flying-lap/2011-f1-testing
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Thank you very much :)
 
recording to Autosport, i found out today that Mercedez GP were 2 seconds off the pace.... or is this a publicity stunt? seems abit to much of a gap to be realistic since this team 2 years ago made Jenson Button world champion.

;)
 
Brawn said last night on the 5 live show that they were a second off the pace but think they can get that back with their upgrade package due next week. That doesn't take into account upgrades all the other teams will be doing though..
 
The team which made the car which was fastest out of the blocks in 2009 is long gone. BrawnGP had the benefit of a HUGE (Honda) budget/resource-pool.

The car we see now, is completely different (especially after the personnel/budget/rule changes). I too read that report, which stated that Mercedes are believed to be 2s/lap off the pace.

I believe that they are definitely off the pace (going by the comments by MSc), but I highly doubt that RBR/Ferrari (who will be the fastest teams in Race1), will be 2s/lap faster than Mercedes.

Bear in mind that anything anybody says before Race1, is simply making a prediction...that's all. Normally, in the final test of the season, teams will tend to do some mock qualifying runs, so the final test is a good guide of what to expect in Australia (Race1).

All shall be revealed in a few weeks though...not long to wait now.
 
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Shimmy said:
Brawn said last night on the 5 live show that they were a second off the pace but think they can get that back with their upgrade package due next week. That doesn't take into account upgrades all the other teams will be doing though..
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As you stated, everybody is making changes to their car as they progress through tests (and even the races, when the season begins), so this means that it is quite possible that Merc could go backwards, in the next test, after their new upgrade. Furthermore, just because an "upgrade" is planned, this does not mean it will work and make the car any faster. As we saw last year, whenever a team introduced a major upgrade, they normally struggled during the first race weekend that the upgrade was introduced. The benefits of the upgrade were usually felt 1 or 2 races after the introduction.

In some cases (and I'm looking at McLaren here, with their 2010 introduction of the revised back end), an upgrade may never actually work. Last year in the middle of the year McLaren were a race winning package (even scoring a 1-2). After their failed introduction of the upgrade in Silverstone last year (which they failed to use in the race), they went backwards and never regained their position as a race winning car.

In a nutshell...upgrades don't always work and cannot be relied upon to move a car up the field.

What I'm wondering is just how long MSc will be prepared to drive for a team which is producing cars which struggle to finish in the top 6 (assuming that Merc produce a car which is of similar performance to that which they produced in 2010).
 
well, after the riots in that little oil filled country, we have to wait a little more......to be honest Mclaren/RBR/Ferrari are the cars to watch, for all we know these times could be mock, when it comes to the real thing the times will tumble by about 0.5-0.7.
 
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