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The 2013 Formula 1 Pre-Season Thread |OT| Plenty of Time Left in the Silly Season
- Thread starter Leunam
- Start date
brotkasten
Member
Fixed.
That must be a blow for Ferrari, but it makes sense for STR to have the same engine as their mother team. I'm sure both want as much data as possible from the new engines.
Now that STR is out, it wouldn't surprise me if Bianchi brought some shiny new Ferrari V6 engines to Force India. He doesn't really have any big sponsors, so that would be a good way for him to get a seat.
Makes sense for both teams. Can use same gearbox and ancillaries.
I imagine Ferrari also won't be keen to give their engine to a team owned by their biggest rival.
brotkasten
Member
Wasn't it the other way around? Red Bull was financing their biggest rival by buying their engines for its B Team.
The move to Renault engines makes it easier for both of them to cooperate and share data. So not having Ferrari engines clearly helps them.
Nicktendo86
Member
WTF is going on with McLaren? I know testing is the time for your car to break and get things fixed blah blah but that didn't help last year did it? A whole morning's running wasted, I mean come on.
Yeah its only the first day of testing, a few years ago red bull skipped the first test!
Start worrying if its still happening in a few days
Nicktendo86
Member
The thing that makes me worried is the car had reliability problems last year, especially with fuel pickup, they make a big effort over the winter to sort out reliability and on the first day we have a fuel pickup problem that wastes a whole morning of running. Doesn't fill me with confidence, but I really hope they sort it out.
Edit: Jenson back out now. Le's hope he gets some decent running in.
Edit 2: Back in the pits, 5 laps and no timed lap.
ScarbsF1 for the technical stuff and Fernando and Jenson for awesomeness. Not sure of their tags but they come up via name search.
Nah I'm already following a bunch of F1 folks, I was wondering if anyone on here had added a bunch of them to a Twitter list so I could follow that
brotkasten
Member
Takes some time to get used to it.
First day of testing. I think that Mclaren always had problems on first test.
Mercedes out for today.
RBR and Lotus are looking very good.
Psychotext
Member
Nice job Merc. I wonder what Hamilton thinks (though I guess McLaren having grief eases his pain).
brotkasten
Member
I'd say that's expected. It's his first time in the car, iirc.
brotkasten
Member
Wow, you guys ... I know he's the douchiest looking driver on the grid right now, but it's his very first day in the new car and like I said, it's expected.
Also
Psychotext
Member
Fastest lap last year (across all days) was a 1:17.613, just for comparison.
Fastest lap on the first day was 1:19.670.
Fastest lap on the first day was 1:19.670.
Thanks. I was wondering how the times compare...even though they don't really mean anything come Melbourne.
e* just saw the new Williams livery, I like.
brotkasten
Member
Ferrari seems to have a better base to build on than last year, according to Massa.
From Ted Kravitz' Twitter: "... Felipe says the car is a 'good balanced base' - a 'huge difference to last year'"
From Ted Kravitz' Twitter: "... Felipe says the car is a 'good balanced base' - a 'huge difference to last year'"
Very nice to hear that. Hopefully they'll be able to give a real challenge to Red Bull.
Grosjean is very happy with the car, he was on pace after 3 laps, no issues with over/understeer
Jenson is satisfied that car relates very well to their simulator
Webber complained about understeer, but it is probably set-up related. Also he sees Jerez as very hard track for tires.
The next big love of Lewis
Jenson is satisfied that car relates very well to their simulator
Webber complained about understeer, but it is probably set-up related. Also he sees Jerez as very hard track for tires.
The next big love of Lewis
They said the exact same thing last year. Then Australia happened...
I will wait for the same spanish sources like last year. While Alonso, Massa, Fry and Domenicali was saying everything was ok, the sources (aka Alonso's press buddies) were saying that the car was a mess and Ferrari was already in panic.
Dutch Gronk
Banned
I fully expect the car to be shitty once again. Let's hope they drop out of the championship race soon so they can focus on the 2014 car with all the new rules.
Adam Scott Aukerman
Member
Been cut off from news all day, but love the look of the Marussia... purely from an aesthetic standpoint. It's quite reminiscent of late 90s cars with it's clean lines, but it does look worryingly under-developed aerodynamically.
Also I've just caught on Twitter that Bruno Senna will be driving for Aston Martin in WEC this year, so that's him out of the running for the remaining FI seats.
Also I've just caught on Twitter that Bruno Senna will be driving for Aston Martin in WEC this year, so that's him out of the running for the remaining FI seats.
Myoclonic Jerk
Member
No pics
brotkasten
Member
Completely different situation. The base of the F150° was already "okay" and Massa compared the F138 to the F2012.
While Massa and Alonso always had their PR lines ready, Fry was never really happy with the car.
February 9th:
March 4th 2012:
Then again, the important people who run this team are idiots.
I mean ... how could you ... I shouldn't think about it. Gives me too much of a headache.
Apart from a few rumors on forums, I cannot find anywhere that says he is actually going to sky.
Not to say it isn't true, just nothing confirmed yet & Sky have delayed their "massive" announcement.
Its not too difficult. They've had correlation issues for a while now. Every team experiences this, but Ferrari seem to have gone through particular struggles with it, forcing them to use a proven windtunnel to test their results. This probably only confused them further as no windtunnel is perfect, so they were getting two different sets of results with no way of knowing which was better. Design direction would of course suffer in the process.
For this year, *apparently* they've done the bulk of design and development in the Cologne windtunnel, but thats never a guarantee, either. The problem is that when exhaust flows are key, windtunnels aren't very useful. This is where CFD steps in, which is where I suspect the biggest deficiency at Ferrari is actually at, as Fry has admitted freely that they are behind in this area.
The combination of not being able to trust windtunnel data as much as they'd like and not being comfortable with their CFD experience leads to shaky starts and shaky development. They're a good enough team to come on top of a lot of issues, but becoming a competent championship contender(something they haven't done since 2008) involves more than that at the moment.
Just my 2 cents.
I think that Mclaren should be very satisfied with Button observations, that car is very like their simulator model. They and RBR are two teams that are using simulators during testing to compare simulator runs with real life situation to ease 'interactive' development race during season.
Its hard to make up that gap when the regulations are so stable. Most teams probably wont have the same scope for development they had in 2012. Ferrari, in particular, are likely starting with a much better base than they had in 2012, so there probably wont be any massive leaps during the season like they had in Barcelona and Canada last season. Those were cases of fixing fundamental errors, which they shouldn't have this year.
Looking at how Ferrari's development completely stalled for the last 3rd of the season, I'd say they hit a wall. I'm not sure continuing with an evolution of that car is a winning solution. Not when they were still regularly more than half a second off the pace in qualifying.
Its hard to look at history and say what evolutions were and weren't successful because the circumstances in the past were often very different. Either things were early days and there was lots of freedom for development, or there were other factors involved, like tires and engines that played a pivotal part. Never has one year been so similar to the previous one. For this reason, I think Ferrari might be doomed if they dont hit the ground running in Australia.
Its totally ridiculous of me to get overly anxious about the 1st day of testing, but I have to say, Massa's comments about Jenson's time are unnerving. I dont think Ferrari think they could have replicated that time if they wanted to. And I'm not sure anyone could. For one, thats very fast for a first day time. Obviously low-fuel, probably fresh/fresh-ish tires. But still. I've been reading that the new tires should make the cars faster, but we should also remember that DRS is limited now. Granted, its a test, and they may have run DRS in a manner similar to last year, but I dont think Mclaren are that unwise to waste their time like that.
I think Lewis might have made a huge, huge mistake.
Evolution_1ne
Banned
Caterham still with stepped nose, ugly:
what really sucks is that without the step it would be the best looking car on the grid, the livery is fucking ACE
Its past 11 already. Can you fill me in on what I missed?
Called it!!!
Good news though, will be interesting to watch in 3d. Also stream of testing? Sky did good
Of course it is! You didn't expect real news did you?
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