Archive for 'speculation'

May201109

Rob

0

Istanbul

So F1 is off to Turkey to see if McLaren can still chase down the Red Bulls, will the Ferrari have found what was wrong with their car and improved – Was it just Alonso’s head adding drag to the car? Have Mercedes managed to get to the bottom of the tyre issues? Will Williams actually get going at all this year?
We’ve had a great start to the season, exciting races, close finishes – and some controversy on the track. All we need now is for the title race to close up and we’ll be on for a eye popping year in F1. It could however all go horribly wrong, Vettel could streak out into the lead, McLaren could falter and we could all be watching Mercedes and Sauber fight over 6th to 10th.
Turkey normally has an exciting race, turn 8 in particular takes no prisoners and punishes bad aero. [...]

Apr201127

Rob

0

Alonso vs. Sauber in fairness

In Australia Sauber’s cars crossed the line in seventh and eight places, they were then disqualified because of a technical infringement on the car. A (supposedly) non performance critical part was a few millimetres outside the allowed margin, Sauber sucked it up, said they were wrong, improved their process and got on with their lives. Ferrari weren’t punished at all for the malfunction on Alonso’s DRS in China.
So what is different about the two cases and why were Sauber punished and not Ferrari? If Sauber are to be believed then their infringement wasn’t a performance gain whereas Ferrari’s most certainly could have been so that argument is moot given that Alonso wasn’t punished. Could it have been the pure infringement of the rules that caused Sauber’s penalty? Well Ferrari’s DRS system was clearly active in an area of the track where it shouldn’t have been and so directly contravened the [...]

Mar201118

Rob

0

Testing over, Australia is approaching

So testing for the 2011 season is done, the teams have their data and we have the times. There isn’t many surprises within the testing times though I would have expected more from McLaren – not another year spent catching up? If Red Bull stop throwing away points McLaren don’t have a chance. Ferrari should push them hard and expect Alonso to want that title.
Australia is an odd place, it doesn’t seem to be that indicative of the season and doesn’t always show the true pace of the cars. We also know that you can win by being clever here as Jenson Button has shown. Don’t expect the Red Bull to be off the pace though, or for the brakes to explode, they will be hard to beat.
The tyres will be the great unknown in Melbourne as there isn’t really anywhere to use the new rear wing or Drag reduction device, [...]

Feb201108

Mark Martin

0

Red Bull set for Audi tie up?

2010 Constructors champions Red Bull Racing looks set to agree a deal with Audi to use their engines in Formula 1 in 2013. This follows months of speculation in which the German manufacturer was also linked to Williams F1.
Road car innovation
Audi’s parent company VW is believed to have been enticed to finally enter F1 following moves by the sports governing body, the FIA, to make the sport both more environmentally friendly and road car relevant. These two things are not mutually exclusive with road car companies becoming increasingly preoccupied with reducing the fuel consumption of their vehicles in light of ever increasing fuel prices. Many of the sports key players realised that the sports negligence to address these issues in the past couple of years had played a big part in the withdrawal of key players BMW, Honda and Toyota.
It was therefore announced that engines would be downsized from the [...]

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