The F1 2014 season

Irish_Tom said:
We've also seen them be consistently stronger in the second half of the season, so despite these initial difficulties, it's a brave man that writes them off.
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We've seen them do it in the last two seasons. They were fairly consistently good in 2010 and 2011 and while they improved in the second half of 2009 that had more to do with Brawn falling back against an improving field than Red Bull showing startling powers of improvement. I'm not sure that constitutes a consistent pattern and in neither seasons did they go from having a disaster area to leading the field.

I think there's little doubt Red Bull will improve but unless they can get things together really pretty fast they will struggle as the other teams also improve. Red Bull do, of course, have one of the biggest budgets and a pool of top talent but that doesn't make them capable of miracles.
 
Mr Jack said:
I think there's little doubt Red Bull will improve but unless they can get things together really pretty fast they will struggle as the other teams also improve.
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I think it's a sliding-scale. Red Bull have more to improve, and if they can bring performance-enhancing parts as well as increasing their reliability, I think they'll catch up at some point.

Something Newey said after Jerez stuck in my head:

Newey said:
"Everybody of the three engine manufacturers will have a different target for how hot their charge air is going back into the plenum and Renault have given us a fairly challenging target...
"It has all sorts of advantages if we can get there, but it is not easy to achieve."
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... It suggests to me they still felt the risk is worth it in the long-run... perhaps they didn't have this season specifically in mind, but for this phase of the regulations?

Anyway the question, as it has been since Jerez, is how long it will take for them to catch up. I have zero doubt they will catch up at some point, but the titles for this season may well be over by that point.
 
Mr Jack said:
I think there's little doubt Red Bull will improve but unless they can get things together really pretty fast they will struggle as the other teams also improve. Red Bull do, of course, have one of the biggest budgets and a pool of top talent but that doesn't make them capable of miracles.
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Yup, testing suggest RBR are going to have a bad start and that Merc and/or McLaren and/or Ferrari are going to have a good start. I can see RBR being equal come the end of the season but I struggle to see them out developing Merc/McLaren/Ferrari to close the points deficit from the bad start.
 
^ What he said.

Anyone see the BBC trailer after top gear last night? I thought it was quite interesting to see the animations of all the aero changes. Safe to say that I can't wait to see what happens on Sunday.
 
Mr Jack said:
We've seen them do it in the last two seasons. They were fairly consistently good in 2010 and 2011 and while they improved in the second half of 2009 that had more to do with Brawn falling back against an improving field than Red Bull showing startling powers of improvement. I'm not sure that constitutes a consistent pattern and in neither seasons did they go from having a disaster area to leading the field.

I think there's little doubt Red Bull will improve but unless they can get things together really pretty fast they will struggle as the other teams also improve. Red Bull do, of course, have one of the biggest budgets and a pool of top talent but that doesn't make them capable of miracles.
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Agreed.

What worries me is not necessarily for the 2014 season but maybe 2015 or 2016.

In 2009 they improved steadily, even if part of that was down to Brawn not developing any further.

In 2010 they were quick but the car was unreliable which cost them a lot of points – yet they still won both championships.

2011 they were consistent and dominant.

2012 they weren't the quickest but they were the most consistent.

2013 (after the tyre rule change) they were unstoppable.


A couple of drivers have said how good the RBR looks when it has actually worked.

The only question is how quickly can Newey sort out the aero/heat issues. I fear that once they've overcome the unreliability they will be back to their winning ways.

I suppose the only caveat to that is if the Renault engine really is as underpowered compared to the Merc as has been suggested and they don't improve it for 'reliability' reasons.
 
Irish_Tom said:
The only question is how quickly can Newey sort out the aero/heat issues. I fear that once they've overcome the unreliability they will be back to their winning ways.
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I think its going to take them half the season.

The rival teams have got to put at least 100 - 150pts distance between themselves and Vettel. Anything less is leaving the door open for Vettel to hammer them in the 2nd half of the season.

The problem is that even when RBR dont have the best car, Vettel is still able to score decent points and stay within touching distance of his rivals.

This is all conjecture though. On Race1, Vettel may complete the full race distance and finish in the top 3.
 
lol, two posts that stick with the "RBR are unbeatable in the second half of the season, because they were terrible in the first half of the season" complete rubbish.

The tyres helped RedBull so much that Vettel led the title race from the end of the second race and had a comfortable gap long before the tyres were changed. Red Bull have only dominated in the second half of seasons because they have been by and large the best car in the first half of the season to begin with and further extended this lead.

People are also willfully ignoring that because Red Bull had a comfortable lead LONG before the half way point in the season, EVERY OTHER TEAM GAVE UP.

Even Red Bull I believe have mentioned that maybe they over developed the car while everyone else had switched over to the 2014 cars.

Every team develops over a season, the biggest lead came last season because everyone else simply moved on. If this season wasn't new engines/rules/cars, then no one else would have given up on the title and stopped developing last years cars, in which case Red Bull wouldn't have dominated quite so spectacularly in the second half of last season.

Red Bull will improve, but everyone will improve this year. Most teams likely penny pinched the last couple of years knowing that the new rules/big changes were their chance to do a Brawn, and/or establish themselves as THE team for this next set of rules, there is usually one team that gets a jump on everyone in the first year or two of new regs and dominates for years. Red Bull were peeing away money and development time on last years car LONG after they'd clearly won it and everyone else wasn't even pretending to try and improve.

Red Bull aren't simply more capable than any other team of developing the car. Outside of last year they've shown no ability for that dramatic a change before and there were reasons for this. Likewise Merc have been ramping up rebuilding the team for to culminate in being stronger for the 2014 car. The team they have working on this car simply isn't the same as the one working on the cars in the past few years.

Unless every team gives up development midway through the season Red Bull won't possibly improve as much as they did by comparison last year.
 
Lol, I

On another note, just cant understand why people dislike the new PU, its great to have cutting edge technology back in f1, it'll be overtaken soon enough in the 24hr series, but for now its great.
 
drunkenmaster said:
lol, two posts that stick with the "RBR are unbeatable in the second half of the season, because they were terrible in the first half of the season" complete rubbish.
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Do you even read bro?

At no point did I suggest RBR are terrible in the first half of any season.

Despite sunama saying they started last season 'on the back foot' in the testing thread, he made no allusion to them being 'terrible in the first half of the season' in this thread.

I was in fact agreeing with Mr Jack when he said the following:

Mr Jack said:
I think there's little doubt Red Bull will improve but unless they can get things together really pretty fast they will struggle as the other teams also improve. Red Bull do, of course, have one of the biggest budgets and a pool of top talent but that doesn't make them capable of miracles.
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My point was, other teams and drivers have said the RBR looks very good when it's working.

For all we know, and as unlikely as it might be, RBR could have ironed out the overheating issue in the last two weeks and be incredibly competitive this weekend.

It might take them half a season, it might take them the whole season but I fully expect them to be challenging at the front once they are able to make their tight aero package reliable.
 
Other teams cover their own ass, no one is going to go out and say "lol, did you see how bad they sucked... hahahahah", then be beaten 2 months later by that team.

The car barely ran fast so I doubt anyone was at all sincere when they said such things, it's a case of RBR being champions, you don't bad mouth the big boys no matter how badly they are doing.

Sunama has not specifically said they were terrible, but he keeps banging on about how everyone needs a 150point gap, which really would only be an issue if a team would be terrible in the first half of a season and turn it around completely. He keeps pushing the idea and implying that RBR weren't competitive at all until the half way mark in the season, which is pure rubbish. Likewise the tyres made little to no difference. The reason Red Bull improved comparatively was everyone else gave up on the 2013 cars when they hadn't.

There was nothing in running that suggested the car looked great, there was lots of "it looks beautiful, so it's probably fast" from people, but the laps they did were mostly very slow. Their fastest laps were miles off the pace, and they were often cruising around at 1:44's while others were doing 1:40's. The renault engine itself was spluttering around the track sounding like a dog on most of the cars. A car going slower is going to look smoother, but it simply couldn't have looked fast because it never ran fast at all.

I'm not saying they will or won't be good at some point this season, just that the apparent unbeatable in season development is down to very specific reasons like, them being the only team even trying last year. They were also the fastest team across 2012, Mclaren had a decent car but I think it was more a case of Mclaren not developing their car than Red Bull being epic in doing theirs. We know Mclaren had the biggest changes of anyone in 2013 and that meant starting work on it earlier, it backfired spectacularly both in ruining their 2012 season, being entirely the wrong choice for the 2013 season and probably pushing Hamilton out the door.

RBR were on par with Mclaren for the first half and moved significantly ahead in the second half, but Ferrari and Lotus improved relative to Mclaren as well.

I would say personally, at this stage nothing led me to believe it was uber fast if it was running well, it wasn't and isn't running well, once they likely open up the car a lot for cooling like every single other car on the grid has done will their aero remotely work or be completely broken anyway? On top of that Renault still seem to have issues, we have no idea how fast the engine is when it's running at it's peak(it could blow the other two away or be terrible in comparison) and the idea that Red bull can out develop everyone is fantasy as in both situations they've apparently done this there have been very good reasons. That's before you recognise that Merc have been building up for this season and weren't at full staff strength up till recently so you can't compare the "old" weakened team to what they can do and what they will commit to this season. Mclaren have had massive changes behind the scenes, maybe to late, maybe not. But this is the one season I can't see anyone not learning everything they can, we're at the start of a new reg's period meaning everyone will be developing hard throughout the next 2-3 seasons. No giving up half way through to focus on massive changes the coming year, etc.

It should also be remembered that with the opened up Ferrari, Williams and Merc cars, designed for hotter races, they also had over heating problems. The only Renault car that didn't was Caterham... which was pretty much designed to be the best cooled car on the grid. If Merc and basically every team with vastly more cooling than RBR are having overheating problems and RBR with much less cooling are having the worst overheating problems, I can't believe RBR can really do anything but open up the back, change the sidepods and improve cooling drastically. In doing so the car they've spent probably 18 months designing for the aero to work with a stupidly closed back end and tiny sidepods, will somewhat be wasted.

I think they'll turn up at Melbourne, or maybe even later, with a vastly opened up car and have to start aero almost from scratch.
 
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englishpremier said:
I see Horner has been trolling the press, stating Merc are so far ahead that Hamilton could win by 2 laps ahead of the other teams. Lol
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I've read a few reports that Mercedes are 1.3-1.5 seconds faster, so it's very possible that their true speed could be that much faster. If Ferrari are as flat as pre-season suggested and Red Bull's issues continue, then it's down to the other Mercedes teams to take the battle to them. If you look at the testing pace it would suggest that McLaren, Williams and Force India have all made huge gains over Mercedes in the winter, but I struggle to believe they all have. More likely Mercedes have been hiding their true pace.

Still, even if they are miles faster, once they're comfortable, they'll control their pace to preserve the engine and tyres and ensure the fuel will last, this being the first proper race and I'm sure even they still have plenty of unknowns. They won't lap the field.
 
At the end of the day, none of us truly know where each team is.
At this point we are all taking guesses. That is all we can do. Nothing more.
Nobody can factually state where each team currently lies (in terms of car performance).

I'm basing my predictions purely on the last 4.5 years (and not just the pre-season testing), where RBR/Vettel have generally been the team to beat. I refuse to believe that a team can go from this level, to a point where they are getting beaten easily and just giving up the title.

Even in an average car, Vettel will be a handful and I fully expect him to get the absolute maximum from his car. He is single minded, totally ruthless and will stop at nothing until he has beaten the entire field (and taken MSc records away from him). On top of which, he hardly ever makes errors. It is this skillset which saw him win 9 races in a row (a feat which I am still struggling to believe).

IF Merc genuinely have a car which is 1s+/lap faster than the next best, then I'd say Hamilton should walk the title.

Oh and lets not forget Rosberg - he is pretty handy, too.
 
englishpremier said:
That would make a very interesting GP. Many laps from the end can they fail and still be classified? Or would it be a case of the GP lasting two hours even though all the cars failed 40 mintues from the start?
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Classification is based on completing a percentage of the race distance (or a percentage of the winner's distance if it goes to two hours) I think. I think someone would need to still be running for it to go two hours so it's not like everyone can sit in the pits and do a Le Mans style limp round the last lap.
 
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