The Official 2015 Bahrain Grand Prix Thread **Spoilers**

[Doink]

Crafty_ said:

Signed a 2+options deal last year http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/24207/9383525/ni...

That would see him staying there until the 2017 season.

If he wanted to go early what would Merc do? I can't imagine they'd try too hard to keep him.

Possibly steal Alonso, who'd be out of McLaren in a shot. Potential fireworks with Lewis though ?
RIC,VET,RAI all tied up in contracts. Bottas maybe ?
Potentially pull their rookie Pascal Wehrlein forwards, but he hasn't even done a free practice session, to my knowledge he's never sat in an F1 car.

Far as Rosberg goes, I can imagine that Red Bull would pay him handsomely to tell them all Merc's secrets. Kvyat wouldn't even touch the ground. This gives Sainz & Verstappen another year at STR to mature/learn.

As always its ifs and maybes.

Edited by Crafty_ on Sunday 19th April 07:58

Didn't pascal get some time in a force India during testing? It was when the force India tub wasn't ready or more like wasn't going to be released by the manufacturer until a payment was made, the story goes that Mercedes paid the bill for them in return for some seat time for Pascal, he didn't get long though because Mercedes recalled him when Lewis wasn't feeling too well

[oobster]

For those that fancy an afternoon & early evening on the couch watching motorsport, bear in mind that the Touring Cars + support races are live on ITV4 right now.

[woof]

Chrisgr31 said:

hairyben said:

beaten at chairs too

http://wtf1.co.uk/hamilton-rosberg-chair-banter/

That looked like an excellent event though. A surprise to find Steve Rider there.

Ditto - F1 needs more of this. Guess Steve flew straight back for BTCC at Donington

[NRS]

007 VXR said:

Scuffers said:

I'm not interested in who can drive to protect the tyres during a race, I want to see wheel to wheel racing where the drivers can race each other without having to think that every hard corner is going to screw their tyres.

Qualifying is about the only point in the weekend we see then actually pushing the limits

take China, qualifying time - 1:35.782
Fastest lap - 1m 42.208

Then we would have about 20 pit stops every race.

Edited by 007 VXR on Sunday 19th April 09:44

Not to mention effectively removing some teams from having any chance of winning because their tyres are 2 seconds a lap slower.

[suffolk009]

^^^^ I'm pretty sure that McLaren used Mobil last year.

[Derek Smith]

Scuffers said:

maybe I did not explain that as well as I should?

I'm not interested in who can drive to protect the tyres during a race, I want to see wheel to wheel racing where the drivers can race each other without having to think that every hard corner is going to screw their tyres.

Qualifying is about the only point in the weekend we see then actually pushing the limits

take China, qualifying time - 1:35.782
Fastest lap - 1m 42.208

I don't think you can form conclusions based on such times.

For the majority of the race, the cars were running with more fuel than they had in qually.

Further, in the race, the drivers will only drive flat out for a specific reason, otherwise, they just drive as fast as they need to.

So we need new tyres, and on the fastest type, within a few laps, perhaps half a dozen or so, before the end of the race, to get fuel levels down.

The teams capable of the fastest speeds, might use hards on the final stint. If they are using softs, then they might well have pitted some 15 laps from the end of the race, so fuel levels high. By they time they get to five laps from the end, when fuel levels were low enough, the tyres would hae lost their early bloom, even if they were good enough to last for the whole race.

[Scuffers]

Derek Smith said:

Scuffers said:

maybe I did not explain that as well as I should?

I'm not interested in who can drive to protect the tyres during a race, I want to see wheel to wheel racing where the drivers can race each other without having to think that every hard corner is going to screw their tyres.

Qualifying is about the only point in the weekend we see then actually pushing the limits

take China, qualifying time - 1:35.782
Fastest lap - 1m 42.208

I don't think you can form conclusions based on such times.

For the majority of the race, the cars were running with more fuel than they had in qually.

Further, in the race, the drivers will only drive flat out for a specific reason, otherwise, they just drive as fast as they need to.

So we need new tyres, and on the fastest type, within a few laps, perhaps half a dozen or so, before the end of the race, to get fuel levels down.

The teams capable of the fastest speeds, might use hards on the final stint. If they are using softs, then they might well have pitted some 15 laps from the end of the race, so fuel levels high. By they time they get to five laps from the end, when fuel levels were low enough, the tyres would hae lost their early bloom, even if they were good enough to last for the whole race.

eh?

so we have some saying 20 pit stops and you saying none?

Yes, of course they are never going to set the fastest lap early in the race with fuel on-board, not that's very much the case now, lastest lap is usually in the 2-3 laps after their last pit stop, what's the difference?

Back to the point, we go on about the weight of race fuel, and commentators tell us 10Kg's of fuel is worth X seconds a lap.

Really not sure that's true any more, in China, Hamiltons fastest lap in the first stint was Lap13 - a 1:43.69 (although from lap 2 he was putting in low 1:44's).

His fastest lap was lap 31 with a 1:42.208, and again on lap 53 with a 1:42.67 (the last effective race lap).

So, we are taking a spread of 1.5 sec's start to end (or if you use the Lap 31 time, ~25 laps different, ie, approx half the race fuel used, some 50Kg's

if 50Kg's is only worth 1.5 sec's (0.3/10Kg's) what does that tell you?

the tyres are a much bigger limitation.

this is not racing, it's tyre management, and no, F1 is supposed to be about racing, tyre management is endurance racing (Le-Mans/LMS/etc) not a <2 Hour F1 race.

[Matt_N]

Good points scuffers.

Where do we go with regards to new tyres though? It's hard to say isn't it.

One compound for race and one for qualy? With teams deciding how many pitstops to make based on tyre usage.

A choice of a softer option or normal that you can use as you please with no enforced usage of each compound?

I think the biggest bugbear with these Pirellis is the way they seem to degrade through thermal load rather than physically wearing out, a more robust tyre that degrades with wear would be better.

[007 VXR]

Matt_N said:

I think the biggest bugbear with these Pirellis is the way they seem to degrade through thermal load rather than physically wearing out, a more robust tyre that degrades with wear would be better.

Is this not what we had before that made the racing boring ?

[JonRB]

007 VXR said:

Matt_N said:

I think the biggest bugbear with these Pirellis is the way they seem to degrade through thermal load rather than physically wearing out, a more robust tyre that degrades with wear would be better.

Is this not what we had before that made the racing boring ?

Indeed. If you follow F1 long enough then pretty much any suggestion someone makes for making things better can be met with "we tried that and people moaned it was boring"

[London424]

007 VXR said:

Is this not what we had before that made the racing boring ?

Just what I was going to say. We had that before and with no performance drop we just had follow the leader 'racing'.

[StevieBee]

Scuffers said:

I'm not interested in who can drive to protect the tyres during a race, I want to see wheel to wheel racing where the drivers can race each other without having to think that every hard corner is going to screw their tyres.

I think it was Button, in an interview recently, who said that the list time he took part in a race where he didn't have to think about tyres and fuel was in junior karting on a 10 lap sprint race.

[Derek Smith]

Scuffers said:

eh?

so we have some saying 20 pit stops and you saying none?

. . .

this is not racing, it's tyre management, and no, F1 is supposed to be about racing, tyre management is endurance racing (Le-Mans/LMS/etc) not a <2 Hour F1 race.

Eh? Indeed. I’m not sure where I suggested anything, other than, of course, that using lap times in the race and comparing them to qualifying times is, at best, a waste of time as there are too many variables. Your contention may or may not be right, but you cannot prove it with such a crude comparison.

It is, obviously, racing.

If we had, for instance, tyres that lasted the whole race, as we used to have, then the tyres would still have to be managed. They are managed in all forms of motor racing where they are not changed or a pit stop would cost so much time that any gain would be negated.

I’m not sure why you should think that tyre management is only relevant for endurance racing. I would suggest that fuel consumption was the major concern when it came to race strategy.

But then, fuel consumption is relevant in F1 as well, as we see in race after race.

But just to repeat: all I’m saying is that the comparison between qualifying times and FTD on race day proves little.

[hairyben]

Crafty_ said:

Far as Rosberg goes, I can imagine that Red Bull would pay him handsomely to tell them all Merc's secrets.

You mean nico "tell me how to drive, whats lewis doing" rosberg? Yeah good luck with that.

[Vaud]

F1 has always been about tyre and/or fuel conservation.

It has never been 100% flat out in the time I have been watching (25 years) and from legacy material, it wasn't before. It's a myth; there has always been a level of fuel, tyre and at many points, engine conservation. The last 20 years have seen massive gains in engine reliability, allowing that to be less of a constraining factor.

[petergb]

Jin Clark once did four grands prix races including practice and all the testing in between on one set of tyres with no worries about hanging the back out and destroying his tyres.

[Dr Z]

Settling in to watch the race.

Vaud said:

F1 has always been about tyre and/or fuel conservation.

It has never been 100% flat out in the time I have been watching (25 years) and from legacy material, it wasn't before. It's a myth; there has always been a level of fuel, tyre and at many points, engine conservation. The last 20 years have seen massive gains in engine reliability, allowing that to be less of a constraining factor.

Agreed. I'm sure we've got a few here who've been watching F1 long enough to be historians themselves, but if we control everything to ensure flat out racing, we have something else or an approximation of a sprint, we don't have Grand Prix racing.

[Scuffers]

Vaud said:

F1 has always been about tyre and/or fuel conservation.

It has never been 100% flat out in the time I have been watching (25 years) and from legacy material, it wasn't before. It's a myth; there has always been a level of fuel, tyre and at many points, engine conservation. The last 20 years have seen massive gains in engine reliability, allowing that to be less of a constraining factor.

that's simply not true.

in the old days, the only reason they were not 100% flat out all race was mechanical reliability, fuel was unlimited as were tyres.

[London424]

Back to today's race...assuming the positions are maintained off the start I think the more interesting story is what Merc are going to do with Nico rather than Seb against Lewis.

Ferrari are going to want to try and undercut Lewis...but will Merc use the second car to mess with Seb?

Going to be an interesting one.

[TeeRev]

More importantly, Susi's certainly feeling the effects of the cool wind in Bahrein, brrrrrhhhhhhhh!!!