FORUMula1.com - F1 Forum

[Roth]

If you keep mocking the figure you're basically calling Lopez a liar. Who knows best what it costs? Cookie, who has Joe 'getting figures from his mates' Saward as his guiding light, or Lopez, the team owner who is aware of all cost that go into running a team?

[CookinFlat6]

Lopez isnt a liar, lets try and restrict that title to those who tell lies

Lopez was saying something, its not his fault that he didnt word it as clearly as possible to cater for all levels of F1 knowledge

lopez said he spent 60 mill on the engines AND on development of the car to comply with the 2014 regulations. Lotus are not the maker of the engine and so Lopez could not have spent money developing the engine - he is a customer

teams spend money on developing their cars not their engines roth, I dont see the mileage in sticking to this untruth

[What's Burning?]

Looks like it didn't take long for the Manufacturers to claw back and then some, only in the second year of the regulations. We saw speed records fall in 2014, we'll likely see lap records fall in 2015, imagine where things will be in the 2018 time frame or thereabouts.

Crash.net Pirelli is expecting to see “pretty dramatic” improvements in pace in 2015 but still hopes to encourage more diverse strategies next season.

Since joining F1 as tyre supplier for the 2011 season, Pirelli has been tasked with delivering races with two or three pit stops to open up different strategy options. While motorsport director Paul Hembery admits there was less diversity in strategies in 2014, he says a slightly conservative approach was required due to the new power units and he expects significant car improvements will see the tyres used in a different way next season.

“2012 was probably the most exciting with all the different winners – seven or eight winners – that was fascinating,” Hembery said. “This year, we did come in to a year of a little bit of unknown technology. We had a reasonable idea of what to expect but there's no substitute really for actually seeing what it translates to in track performance.

“If anything, probably next year if we took the same choices everywhere what was maybe conservative this year we feel might start becoming aggressive because the pace evolution for next year is going to be pretty dramatic. We've seen big improvements already towards the end of this season and that's without them really being able to get anywhere near the powertrain in the way they'd like to.

“So we expect quite a big jump again in performance next season. If you're talking a second or even up to two seconds a lap speed improvement that dramatically changes the way the tyres are used. So we have to be wary of that and follow that, but overall this year we feel we got the balance about right considering such a big change and the forefront technology this year was quite rightly the new hybrid powertrains which is a fascinating technology.”