Soldato
Was up there today and got say that some of the cars sounded rough. Did the cars fart last year? Didn't realize toro rosso had changed engine supplier.
F1 Testing 2015: Week 1 Jerez
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Caporegime
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Unless I'm remembering the wrong team it was Sauber who seemed to struggle the most with brake by wire. They just didn't get it working through testing and really throughout the year. They locked up loads and loads as a result of trying to I presume harvest more energy but without ruining the braking and constantly locking up. Was it mostly rear wheel locking up they did?
The pics are still good though, I can't quite tell if Hamilton's bargeboard type bits at the side are broken. Looking at your pics yesterday it does seem like they are heavily shaped at the bottom and they look a little strange in general, I can't tell if they are broken/twisted a bit more on Hamilton's car today.
With Hamilton's luck I think you'll probably see a really nice warm sunny day tomorrow and storms all through Wednesday
Soldato
That engine sounded the roughest off the lot. They got some catching up to do.
Caporegime
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TR didn't, Lotus went from Renault to Mercedes. RBR/TR are the only Renault cars now(with Caterham being the 4th team last year). Ferrari/Sauber the only Ferrari teams now with Marussia out. With Mclaren to a filthy sounding Honda being the only other change.
Honda engine sounding bad is, well, not unexpected, I put a link or two up yesterday of last years and other engines sounded pretty terrible also. Tried to find a comparison vid throughout testing of engine noise last year. My recollection is they all improved sound pretty significantly pretty quickly as they got on top of timing issues. I just can't really remember how long it took till they sounded less insane.
Day 2 pics - http://imgur.com/a/Dm5WV
Soldato
The 1st couple of laps from the lotus where horrid.
Soldato
Great shout, yes it was mostly the rear.
What other records does it hold?
Alonso, why the **** did you just not stay put for another year. Oh well, hopefully someone can close the gap or this will be a very dull year.
Well said
Also hate the fact that they keep on claiming that they are chasing 'performance and not reliability' at this stage...what a load of! Muppets haven't done more than 3 laps consecutively and are chasing 'performance' lol!
Caporegime
RBR, no question.
Kvyat has nothing much to be embarrassed about; there's plenty of very good drivers that have made that kind of mistake early on in testing. If RBR had any kind of backup, they'd have made less of a fool of themselves and it's not like damaging a wing is an unforeseeable event in testing.
McLaren have problems, no doubt, but embarrassing like RBR's stuff up? I don't think so. They're on the back foot right now but until this continues a few more days I don't think it's a disaster. There's a lot of testing to come.
Soldato
Seriously - some people are reading far too much into initial development testing of what are prototype cars. What we're seeing is a result of private testing not being permitted. This sort of development used to be done behind closed gates, now the teams are having to do it in full glare of the public and 24 hour rolling sports news.
They get to be embarrassed when they break down in qualifying in Australia.
They get to be embarrassed when they break down in qualifying in Australia.
Soldato
We're not exactly short of tracks in the UK and France. Turn up with a chequebook and rent the circuit for a day and it's in their interest to keep the gates closed. If the teams are each at their own preferred circuit or a local airfield it's far less easy for the press to start nosing around.
Caporegime
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Well said
Also hate the fact that they keep on claiming that they are chasing 'performance and not reliability' at this stage...what a load of! Muppets haven't done more than 3 laps consecutively and are chasing 'performance' lol!
The thing that is bugging me most about it is they are acting like they have the tightest packaging(from eye they don't) and that they came up with the idea. They've taken Red Bull's now what 4-5 year old design and finally copied it, couldn't even do it themselves just paid RBR's own aero guy to come in and give them RBR's car.... then pretending like they are super awesome for going for a performance uber tightly packaged car, well done, you're finally doing what all the top teams have been trying for a few years. For me the Merc is more tightly packaged and it has reliability and performance.
Don't forget they tried media day(100km limit) testing with the engine as well and failed with that too.
I don't think the failure to run much is embarrassing, it's the media handling. AFter the previous failed testing they have made statements about how it's a shame but going into a spiel about how all their guys together with all of Honda's guys got together and found and 'fixed' every one of the problems and how they would be strong by the first test.
Mclaren/Honda media relations is so.. well people talk about them being corporate and that is it, and very Japanese in not talking about problems, pretending everything is fine. From Ron's irksome marketing gibberish to these self congratulatory tweets telling everyone how beautiful there car is with ridiculous sizezero crap as if they came up with the idea for a tight coke bottle design.
Other teams are posting jokey/friendly tweets with genuine status updates. I linked the funny exchange about the leak, Williams blaming Merc for the water(it was raining) the funny response. They tweet about what lap they are on, taking a lunch break, they don't tweet showing a picture of their car saying "impressive" in an arrogant ***** way.
Not that I don't think RBR bringing a single nose isn't ridiculous and very embarrassing. Just wanted to point out that if Mclaren were just honest and open about the situation and stopped acting horrendously arrogant and superior everyone would completely understand the difficulty they are having.
Caporegime
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You do realise that RBR had some pretty poor reliability in general and in fact the Renault was pretty much the least reliable across the teams, cooking itself inside the Lotus. There was a direct correlation with who had the most trouble with their engine throughout testing and which engine was the most problematic throughout the season.
Private testing is irrelevant, all it means is we don't know where anyone is at a given stage. Being public we can compare where a given team/engine is at any given stage. We can also extrapolate certain information from that, not set in concrete information but strong implications. Least reliable in testing pretty often means least reliable in season. Lotus most unreliable in testing, lotus most unreliable in season, Renault most unreliable engine in testing... and then in the season.
Good testing leads to good development, again we've seen and heard this from teams. We hear teams talking about how their off the track work isn't correlating to what they achieve on the track with new parts. Testing is important because when they find out the parts they think will improve in development aren't improving, you have to find out why, wind tunnel is crap, someone on the team just isn't good enough, manufacturing not good enough.
Good testing leads to better development and better improvements. Having a bad test DOES set you back. They have teams of people at Honda and Mclaren working on the next upgrades, but they don't have feedback on how the current car works, new parts come and they can't compare them. Thinking testing doesn't matter is simply incorrect. Taking things for granted from lack of testing is also daft, which is why I haven't. I haven't made a claim anywhere that the Honda will suck, I've said I THINK it will have trouble in testing and hurt development and as a result very very likely not be competitive this year.
Soldato
Extrapolate what you like, I'm not going to argue the toss with you. It's development/testing. There's no points available, just "free" media and a set number of days.
Taking the favourite topic of the Honda engine - it's not even run cleanly yet due to systems issues. Shouting prophecies from the rooftops about long term reliability is premature.
I'd hate it if the early development testing on the latest project I was doing at work was being covered by a Sky News squad thus sending the armchair commentators foaming at the mouth telling me I'm doing it wrong. Luckily they're not, so that's fine.
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Soldato