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

[VladD]

leglessAlex said:

Is that 'coming into effect from the Japanese GP onwards' last year, this year or every year?

I can only assume it's every year/this year, as it was pretty obvious and I can't imagine the teams risking a penalty for it.

The article is from Sep 2014 and the Japanese GP was Oct 2014, so I'd assume that those rules were in place at the end of last season and are still in force now.

[Vaud]

A guide from 2015 here:

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2015/02/f1-driver-co...

So it seems the technical directive from last year is still in force?

[Speed Badger]

interesting thing;

Vandoorne's GP2 qualifying time was:
1:39.237

Merhi's F1 qualifying time was:
1:39.722

[Dr Z]

Speed Badger said:

interesting thing;

Vandoorne's GP2 qualifying time was:
1:39.237

Merhi's F1 qualifying time was:
1:39.722

F1 backmarker beaten by GP2 front runner shocker. More interesting for me:

2004 F1 Pole: 1'30.139
Fastest lap (Lap 7): 1'30.252

2014 F1 Pole: 1'33.185
Fastest lap (Lap 49): 1'37.020

2015 F1 Pole: 1'32.571
Fastest lap (Lap 42): 1'36.311

Tells you how different F1 was in 2004, and a performance jump of 0.7s in the V6T formula only in the second year is not to be sniffed at with more power promised come 2017. More to the point:

Fastest laps in the race:
Will Stevens - 1’41.759 (Lap 36)
Roberto Merhi - 1’42.033 (Lap 36)

Fastest ever lap in the GP2 Sprints:

Race 1 winner: Vandoorne - 1'44.617 (Lap 24)

Vandoorne didn't see which way even the slower of the MR03 went!

[McSam]

VladD said:

The article is from Sep 2014 and the Japanese GP was Oct 2014, so I'd assume that those rules were in place at the end of last season and are still in force now.

Exactly. That note about enforcement date was to give teams some time to adapt to the new rules, perhaps giving the drivers more information on their dashboard and so on. It's all still in effect in 2015.

I'm not sure how harsh the penalties are for such things. Perhaps you'd chance it if you knew the first few violations only got you a warning, but that the driver was at real risk of putting himself out of the race. I'm going to keep an eye on this, though, because Mercedes clearly flouted that rule.

[ajprice]

Is Merhi bringing money to the Manor team for that seat? He isn't doing much else, a second behind Stevens in practice sessions and qualifying, finishing the race a lap behind him, (Stevens was lapped twice, Merhi 3 times). For the pace the Manor have got, still using last years car, Stevens is doing ok.

[rallycross]

what a shocker for Mclaren only managing to get one car on the grid and the other car barely managed any practice laps!

[DanielSan]

Got round to watching the race last night after being at Donington yesterday. It was actually a pretty good race, far from a classic but plenty of interest down the field and certainly interesting to see how the Ferrari's were going to handle the Merc's and vice versa.
Shame they didn't bring Kimi in that bit earlier. He may well have snatched the win.

[rubystone]

Rude-boy said:

When the World went into economic collapse and they were faced with laying off many people from the factories back home. Nope, the face saving in withdrawing and using money that would have been spent on F1 to keep workers jobs was more of an importance there. Don't forget the they still effectively bankrolled Brawn, something people on this site might be expected to know but something that 5bn of the rest of the WOrld have no idea about. That was all about face saving.Just as Peugot's withdrawal from LMP1 was about face saving. The car was there, it could have been run on a lower budget and still troubled the Audis for a season but they didn't want to make up the numbers and it was simbolicly far more important to cut the race team when you are also sending out P45's.

Fundamentally I think you're right on Honda. But as Allan McNish says in Mo Hamilton's interview in F1 Racing (Mo always gets the best from his interviewees and is a lovely chap too...) there were ways to cut cloth in those times yet still keep one's eye in...But I'm not sure the Japanese truly understand Western culture well enough to follow that lead...

But I think Peugeot knew they'd blown their load in WEC...

[AreOut]

it's competitive racing, sometimes you must take the risk

IMO Soichiro and/or his people would never leave F1 just because of that