massivekettle
Member
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The Formula 1 2015 Season |OT| Formula E Feeder Series
- Thread starter Ark
- Start date
How do you know that?
Oh boy
damn
Drake curse is real, y'all.
Senna is possibly the best ever, but leagues above Vettel, Alanson and Hamilton? No way.
Anyway, what's wrong with the Mercedes? I get they theyre struggling and while Singapore may not be the best track for them, there's no way they should be that far be behind Ferrari.
Robbery by Pirelli. How much is 2 seconds worth of lap time in development cost for Mercedes?
I really hope the approach in 2017 includes proper performance tyres. This funny business with the Pirelli tyres keeps popping up. Everyone is there to be excellent, yet someone thought it would be a great idea to undermine all that by throwing monkey wrenches into the cars in hope of seeing more cars go past other cars.
I really hope the approach in 2017 includes proper performance tyres. This funny business with the Pirelli tyres keeps popping up. Everyone is there to be excellent, yet someone thought it would be a great idea to undermine all that by throwing monkey wrenches into the cars in hope of seeing more cars go past other cars.
It's the anomaly of being a track that gets cooler as the sun sets and been low power. Mercs can't get into the window.
Red Bull and Ferrari have been targeting this since before the dawn of time. It's their best chance for an out and out victory, so why not?
Suzaka will see normal service resumed, with that big Merc upgrade disappearing into the Japanese mist.
Enjoy the unpredictability while it lasts.
Might as well, like there is any doubt really that both this and Renault buying Lotus has already been signed and done with, or at the very least is past 90% certain by now.
I didn't catch the qualis, but there seems to be no love for Danny Ricky making front row? And did he run off the same bit of track as Vettel (allegedly) did?
I'd laugh if RBR got a victory in Singapore after cutting ties with Renault. If they could push that POS to a victory anywhere, imagine what they could do with a decent engine.
PS. Totally fucking called Audi getting back into F1.
I'd laugh if RBR got a victory in Singapore after cutting ties with Renault. If they could push that POS to a victory anywhere, imagine what they could do with a decent engine.
PS. Totally fucking called Audi getting back into F1.
Psychotext
Member
He's not bad for a number two driver.
brotkasten
Member
I think you're the only person in this thread who doesn't just like him but actually cacares about him.
yeah, nobody likes that Australian with the big grin....
Btw, fucking awefull that Grosjean is on the chopping block with Renault. (if the rumors are true) He gets booted out by his own countrymen.
I mean, he dont deserve that drive, I wouldnt say that! He has not the sparks of awesome driving and driving beyond the capabilities of the car like Hülkenberg has sometimes. But still, retaining maldonado and booting Grosjean...
While we are at french personal: Would Éric Boullier come back for Renault? He could cut his losses with McLaren and be the boss at Lotus again.
Btw, fucking awefull that Grosjean is on the chopping block with Renault. (if the rumors are true) He gets booted out by his own countrymen.
I mean, he dont deserve that drive, I wouldnt say that! He has not the sparks of awesome driving and driving beyond the capabilities of the car like Hülkenberg has sometimes. But still, retaining maldonado and booting Grosjean...
While we are at french personal: Would Éric Boullier come back for Renault? He could cut his losses with McLaren and be the boss at Lotus again.
Aussie drivers are a rarity. No-BS drivers are also a rarity. I care about them all!
Hey Shaneus, I've met someone today, he said hi.
theignoramus
Member
Youre opinions are consistently hyperbolic and borderline hysterical.
Senna in the early 90s was better then the current crop, but its not some gaping chasm in skill, god.
Hamilton for sure would get his attention, Lewis is pretty much Hakkinen tier at this point in his career (if not better) and Mika was good enough for Ayrton to consider him a serious threat.
Alonso's racecraft is the greatest of any driver since Schumacher and Vettel is our generation's Alain Prost, with his hyper efficiency (I consider Vettel's 2014 a bizarre anomaly, like Hamilton in 2011 or Hakkinen in 2001)
Senna was fucking legit though. He was getting pole positions in the mid 80s with the Lotus Renault which was maybe the the third or fourth best car on the grid. In the 85 he achieved pole 7 out of 16 race weekends, and in 86, he got 8 poles out of a possible 16. Both years the Lotus Renault was 3 or 4th in the constructors standings. (The things he did with inferior equipment was just transcendent. No question the best qualifying specialist ever.)
In 93, against the superior Williams, he put up a pretty courageous fight with inferior equipment, getting 5 race wins against that Newey rocket ship (and being the only non Williams driver, apart from Michael Schumacher to achieve a race win that year) After Fangio, hes probably the most gifted, fastest driver ever, though I would give Schumacher a little bit of the edge in overall racecraft, car development/set up and leadership skill, maybe Alain Prost too. Alain's car sympathy and racecraft was better then Senna's, even though Ayrton's race pace was quicker.
The tyre war years werent perfect, but I truly feel in the last 4 years, the tyre fuckery is too much. For fuck sakes, in 2005 tyres would last an entire race stint, quit manufacturing drama with tyres designed to degrade fast.
massivekettle
Member
I think you are giving Vettel a bit too much credit, but I generally agree with your post.
Vettel only become prost-like in 2011 and towards the back end of 2013 which, strangely (or not), coincides with him having unquestionably the fastest car. Remeber, he was level with Webber through 2010 and in the first half of 2012 when RBR was having difficulty with their Coanda-like exhaust therefore causing rear-end stability issues which his driving couldn't cope with.
My point is, if you give him the car, he is devastatingly efficient. However, if you car is imbalanced or flawed, I'd much rather have an all-arounder like Alonso or Lewis.
theignoramus
Member
Prost was tough as nails and could definitely achieve in flawed cars, which I admit Seb hasnt exactly proven hes capable of doing. (In the 1990 season, Prost won a number of races in a Ferrari that was probably a half second a lap slower than the Mclarens.)
But Vettel possesses Prosts' most notable qualities in terms of race management,car sympathy, car set up.... His feedback and communication with the engineers in the garage is excellent too. (probably why he beat Webber the majority of the time in qualifying/lap 1 starts, and broke the man psychologically)
theignoramus
Member
But its fun and makes for good conversation and interesting thought experiments.
And we can definitely compare statistics.
Statistics help us get a vivid, exacting picture of who was actually accomplishing what and the difficulty behind their achievement.
I love diving into Senna's stats, because they categorically prove he was a monster in qualifying, even without the fastest car.
Race/win/podium ratios, qualifying time sheets help too, to see what kind of pace the leading teams had and how close everyone else was. And the constructors standings at the end of every season tell us what a driver could have reasonably done with his car and whether he exceeded expectations.
So we can get a pretty good analysis of how a driver measures up with just raw numbers and the "eye test" when comparing drivers from different eras.
Speaking of Senna, this is mildly interesting. The day he tested some rally cars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHYt270aYE8
I've read that he was pretty good at it, actually, doing similar times to some local rally drivers in just a few runs that day. Not WRC good in a day, of course, but he did some decent runs.
I've read that he was pretty good at it, actually, doing similar times to some local rally drivers in just a few runs that day. Not WRC good in a day, of course, but he did some decent runs.
Woo! Hope that gives him a good chance at it tonight. Reliability notwithstanding.
Funny that coincidentally I just watched a documentary about Senna right now and they were talking exactly about this. I think it was John Watson that said that Senna was doing things with the car (specially about the way he handled the turbo lag) that no Prost, no Lauda, no one could do, and that's why he was getting so much poles with an inferior car. It was all him. It was something so absurd that Berger said that when Senna was doing a lap, everybody would run to the wall to watch him, and it was notable how different was the noise of his car, because he was mounted all the time on the throttle, and by the time no one could do that. The guy was a f*cking monster.
I agree. And the tires don't even contribute much to the show anyway. When they were introduced, nobody knew how to deal with them, and the resulting chaos made races entertaining. But now that every team basically knows the tires well enough, they just prevent drivers from racing their cars harder. I am so sick of all this tire management game. Nobody watches F1 to see which driver is the best in preventing black rubber from falling apart.
marvelharvey
Member
As boring as the 'no overtaking' was, at least the cars were racing nose-to-tail, vying for position (albeit unsuccessfully). These days, running nose-to-tail ruins tyres and so the field spread out, leaving a 3s gap to the car ahead until 'Hammer-time' (or whatever their respective version of Hammer-time is).
PdotMichael
Banned
Comparing drivers from differently eras is so pointless. It's not that any claims about who would beat whom are based on deep analysis of telemetry data and stuff.
So Vettel's time at Torro Rosso doesn't count because reasons? Or was that car too good already?
And even if your baseline is winning against >0,5s faster cars, well that exactly happened this year. Hamilton was on the same lap 1s faster than Ferrari in Hungary.
So Vettel's time at Torro Rosso doesn't count because reasons? Or was that car too good already?
And even if your baseline is winning against >0,5s faster cars, well that exactly happened this year. Hamilton was on the same lap 1s faster than Ferrari in Hungary.
Well, supersofts have very narrow working window. Mercedes is known to perform much better on harder compounds, so no wonder they struggled. And Singapore is the track least suited to Mercedes.
theignoramus
Member
The torro rosso car in 2008 was a really good car. They beat RBR that year in constructors points and finished 6th overall.
But sure Seb was great that season.
PdotMichael
Banned
Well, Vettel beat RBR - Bourdais was nowhere to see.
But one can't really compare performance in mid/low tier cars with 20 years ago. The reliability improved so much that drivers are general stuck at the natural performance of the car, back in the days it was possible to get big points or even victories just with finishing the race.
And I wouldn't be surprised that modern top tier drivers would drive circles around even the better drivers of the past - they are all so well trained from the very first days of their career and have way more technical know-how.
It's amazing how quickly people have forgotten the 4 years of misery that we had to endure thanks to a dominant RB.
Terbinator
Member
Verstappen scares me.
Plus add some conspiracy theories in the mix
its amazing how quickly people forget, that it only was 2 years, 2011 and 2013.