Tag Archives: rules

Apr201127

Rob

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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 [...]

May201019

Rob

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Schumacher, Alonso and the punishment

With Schumacher taking a penalty for overtaking under the safety car and Mercedes not appealing that means that Schumacher will go down in the record books as being beaten by Rosberg again – not something that he’s going to enjoy making a habit of. It seems that everyone other than Ferrari thought you could race to the line, even the commentators but then everyone knows which team has the ear of the stewards.
The punishment at first seems fair, a 20sec penalty, but when it’s taken in the context of a safety car finish it’s clear that it’s about as damaging as disqualification as all the cars will be finished. Some have talked about swapping the cars back as punishment but a) that’s not in the rule book, and b) that doesn’t really punish anyone. It seems that the 20s penalty was the lightest reprimand that they could hand out – [...]

Feb201014

Rob

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What’s with all these long runs in the F1 tests? It’s all down to the tyres.

The first two Formula 1 pre-season tests seem have included more long runs than in previous years, but why? I’d say that it’s down to the refueling rule changes for the 2010 season as well as some of the technical regulations around the size of the tyres.
Last year with the re-introduction of slick tyres the teams kept the same size tyres that they had in the grooved days this meant that proportionally the front tyres gained more grip. This was because both front and rear had four grooves that were now part of the contact patch, with the rear tyre being wider it meant that the four grooves worth of grip supplied was less in percentage terms than returning the four grooves to the front. This change upset the balance of the car with the front now being more grippy than the rear. The 2010 regulations revert this balance by [...]

Feb201009

Rob

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No more wheel spinners, another new 2010 F1 rule

Another of the new rules for 2010 is that the teams can’t use the spinners that became popular in the last couple of years. These used to smooth the airflow over the wheels and ensure they caused minimal turbulence and drag. It also used to improve rear downforce and cooling.
These little gadgets had many benefits to the teams so it’s hard to see that they would have abandoned them without a fight but then the whole Alonso debacle where the spinner wasn’t fitted correctly and eventually tore the wheel free may have softened them up on that one. With the teams fighting for every inch I’ll be interested to see what the teams can do to claw back the positive sides to these devices.
It does mean that pit stops will really all be about getting the tyres on and off this year, there’s no room for any mistakes. I seem to [...]

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