Korean Grand Prix 2011, Yeongam Circuit - Race 16/19

arknor said:
once the spending agreement is abolished because everyones fed up off RB blatantly breaking it ferrari , mclaren and mercedes can be top dogs again
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They were top dogs because they had money for almost unlimited testing. Besides even without a spending agreement it won't matter to mercedes because they are reportedly not all that interested in spending much more than they get back in installments from mclaren. Plenty of reports suggesting Mercedes are not all that interested in listening to Brawn and suits not all that happy with what they are already spending at the team.

Mercedes will never be a top dog, apart from in the engine supply department.
 
dannyjo22 said:
They were top dogs because they had money for almost unlimited testing. Besides even without a spending agreement it won't matter to mercedes because they are reportedly not all that interested in spending much more than they get back in installments from mclaren. Plenty of reports suggesting Mercedes are not all that interested in listening to Brawn and suits not all that happy with what they are already spending at the team.

Mercedes will never be a top dog, apart from in the engine supply department.
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Agreed, I have heard/read many sources indicating the same - Mercedes want maximum exposure for as little cost as possible.

RB seem to be doing the best with the resources they have. Like you say, Ferrari has been hit hard by the lack of testing and spending limits.
 
Ross Brawn must be in a "no-win" situation (as he was in 2008/9 when very few listened)

He has to point out the (broad) holes in the up-dated rules, but he is also paid by a particular team and potentially give away a huge performance advantage (just out of interest did Merc actually by him out completely - or is he stil part owner?)
 
I believe that Ross Brawn made a HUGE amount of money when Mercedes bought him out.
I'm not if he was completely bought out, but they paid him a heck of a lot of money. It was a risk which paid off.
 
The Brawn GP team was sold for £110mil. So assuming Ross was a 50% shareholder, with Nick Fry having the other half... he is up about £40 to 50mil, after tax?

Back in 2008 nobody seemed to listen to Ross. They considered him a "has been" working for a disfunctional Honda team. So when he started making noise about serious loopholes, nobody paid attention. Except Toyota and Williams who were the only other teams to bring DDD into 2009 but they were nowhere near as good. Toyota came close but they weren't yet a winning team, had difficulty setting the car up consistently and kept making mistakes.
 
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It's just a shame Honda didn't hang about for one more season. They'd have been the first Japanese formula one champions and would probably still be there.
 
MissChief said:
It's just a shame Honda didn't hang about for one more season. They'd have been the first Japanese formula one champions and would probably still be there.
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Agreed, considering how quickly they had to redeisgn the chassis without the Honda engine, one can only imagine how much further ahead they would have been. Of course, a lot seemed to be designed around the diffuser.

Brawn did well out of it anyway!
 
CaptainRAVE said:
...considering how quickly they had to redeisgn the chassis without the Honda engine, one can only imagine how much further ahead they would have been. ...
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I was going to say exactly the same thing.

It is not beyond the realms of possiblity that they could've been around 2s/lap faster than everybody in Race1.

From what I remember, the McGuyvered the Mercedes engine into the Brawn car, within 6 weeks. This must've lost them a fair chunk of performance.
 
NathanE said:
Back in 2008 nobody seemed to listen to Ross. They considered him a "has been" working for a disfunctional Honda team. So when he started making noise about serious loopholes, nobody paid attention. .
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The thing is now he's making noises about loopholes because he's worried other people with more money have found them not because he has. He found them last time because he built one of the most expensive cars in history and spent a long time on it while the other main contenders where fighting each other.

MissChief said:
It's just a shame Honda didn't hang about for one more season. They'd have been the first Japanese formula one champions and would probably still be there.
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Not a chance with the Honda lump rumoured to be 50-70bhp down on the Merc at the time. No matter what Brawn built that underpowered and not that reliable turd wouldn't have been enough to win the title.

Brawn should just go back to ferrari and ditch the Germans before they ditch him.
 
dannyjo22 said:
Not a chance with the Honda lump rumoured to be 50-70bhp down on the Merc at the time. No matter what Brawn built that underpowered and not that reliable turd wouldn't have been enough to win the title.
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It's an interesting point. The Honda engine was always a bit suspect on the reliability front, but was that because they were having to run it harder to make up for utterly bobbins aerodynamics? Whatever the case may be, would the car that became the BGP 001 have done better with a chassis that hadn't had six inches hacked out of the back of it, plus a gearbox and engine combo mounted at the as-designed height rather than higher (raising the CoG of course)?

Brawn GP were limited with what they could do to that car once they'd taken a Sawzall to the rear of it. Building all-new monocoques would have taken time, and at the time that decision needed to be made the car still had the legs on the rest of the field. Once it became clear that the field had caught them and the setup shortcomings were being thrown into sharp focus, it was too late to get a B-spec programme running.

If the Honda reliability issues were solely down to having to run engines right to the edge to stay with the tail-end of the midfield, then maybe trading some horsies for a car that didn't have to be cut to pieces might have been a recipe for even better things. As it turned out, the car still had enough performance in it for Jenson to keep grinding out points finishes. Can't help but wonder what might have been if they'd either a) still been Honda and not had to shoehorn another engine in or b) had the money and time to design a proper B-spec car and introduce it around the time that the original car fell out of the setup window that they had at the start of the year.

But like you say, they could have ended up with an amazing chassis and aero package let down by an engine that was only good for being used as a boat anchor....
 
Yeah I understand what you are saying but wasn't the Honda that came runner up to MS Ferrari pre engine freeze? The honda was doing reasonably well prior to that because they ran it to the limit and then the changed engine.

I read some where that when the reliability rules and freeze came in Honda went too conservative. I really do not think that they could have done enough in the Brawn car with an engine that lacked horsepower by as much as rumoured.

Of course that's speculation and we will never know.

MS recently said the Ford V8 in 94 was 100BHP down on the Williams Renault. He also said in the same interview Flavs job was to push the limits and past them. There isn't a way in the world a car that far behind in HP wins by just being more 'driveable'. :D



I would love to see honda come back as a supplier under the new rules.
 
dannyjo22 said:
MS recently said the Ford V8 in 94 was 100BHP down on the Williams Renault. He also said in the same interview Flavs job was to push the limits and past them. There isn't a way in the world a car that far behind in HP wins by just being more 'driveable'. :D
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Well, no. The B194 was almost certainly illegal in more ways than any of us could guess! :D

dannyjo22 said:
I would love to see honda come back as a supplier under the new rules.
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Me too. But historically, they've come and gone several times. Maybe if they came back in a tie-up with Mugen again, give themselves some deniability if the engines aren't world beaters?
 
JRS said:
Well, no. The B194 was almost certainly illegal in more ways than any of us could guess! :D



Me too. But historically, they've come and gone several times. Maybe if they came back in a tie-up with Mugen again, give themselves some deniability if the engines aren't world beaters?
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:D I won't get into the legality again!

I remember very well a Heath picture in the front of F1 racing in 99. A picture of Jacques retiring yet again with the Supertec and the quote that he only had to wait until next year because honda 'were coming'. The scruitineer ran a back page article saying how upset Mclaren were that Honda hadn't returned to them. I wonder if that was Hondas biggest mistake.

To add some weight to that Jordan got the closest with a Honda engine with Frentzen and Mugen and they got cut. You have to wonder what they would have achieved had they tied in with a top tier team like Mclaren rather than tredding water with a bunch of people more concerned with infighting and point scoring off each other.

All those years and Mugen Honda was better than anything they done as a full works outfit of major backer of BAR.
 
This discussion of infighting at the useless BAR-Honda reminds me - what happened to Craig Pollock lazarus like re-appearance with the PURE engine?

From Jacques Villeneuve's PE teacher to Team Boss to Engine Manfacturer. LOL :D
 
MagicBoy said:
This discussion of infighting at the useless BAR-Honda reminds me - what happened to Craig Pollock lazarus like re-appearance with the PURE engine?

From Jacques Villeneuve's PE teacher to Team Boss to Engine Manfacturer. LOL :D
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he was never jaques pe teacher.... he didnt skip straight to team boss either
 
dannyjo22 said:
:D I won't get into the legality again!

I remember very well a Heath picture in the front of F1 racing in 99. A picture of Jacques retiring yet again with the Supertec and the quote that he only had to wait until next year because honda 'were coming'. The scruitineer ran a back page article saying how upset Mclaren were that Honda hadn't returned to them. I wonder if that was Hondas biggest mistake.

To add some weight to that Jordan got the closest with a Honda engine with Frentzen and Mugen and they got cut. You have to wonder what they would have achieved had they tied in with a top tier team like Mclaren rather than tredding water with a bunch of people more concerned with infighting and point scoring off each other.

All those years and Mugen Honda was better than anything they done as a full works outfit of major backer of BAR.
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To be fair Hill won at Spa with Mugen too (albeit in that massively wet race with a lot of retirements)
 
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