FORUMula1.com - F1 Forum

[spankyham]

[racechick]

What's he so interested in at the back of that Ferrari? And why are Ferrari just letting him look?

[andrew]

The bloke in front of the cone looks like he's having a hands-free slash.

[LewEngBridewell]

The bloke in front of the cone looks like he's having a hands-free slash.

[andrew]

The bloke in front of the cone looks like he's having a hands-free slash.

It explains what Adrian Newey is intently staring at.

[vaptin]

What's he so interested in at the back of that Ferrari? And why are Ferrari just letting him look?

To be fair, he probably looks at all cars like that, same as every other designer,

why? I'm not so sure, why they are letting him get such a good look, I guess they figure he'll just get a high res picture on track anyway, of the back.

[1Lemon]

Not sure why but I love that picture, sums up f1 nicely.

[andrew]

Not sure why but I love that picture, sums up f1 nicely.

Is it the mechanic taking a whiz on the car or the engineer staring in puzzlement at said mechanic's whi z taking mechanisim?

[vaptin]

No criticisms for their strategy today, they figured out a plan, and stuck to it, and it worked. I wonder how Kimi would have done on a 4 stop?

Plus well, the seem to have the best driver-engineer relationships, and have a pretty damn good car from the looks of things.

[LewEngBridewell]

No criticisms for their strategy today, they figured out a plan, and stuck to it, and it worked. I wonder how Kimi would have done on a 4 stop?

Plus well, the seem to have the best driver-engineer relationships, and have a pretty damn good car from the looks of things.

Yup, Ferrari seem to be in a much better position to take a tilt at the title, than they have been for years.

[spankyham]

I find intelligentF1 a good blog to look at from time to time as he provides good data. Just have a look at Massa's time on the chart from the Friday practice in Spain. That was when he ran the car with the new exhaust layout and new side pods. They took them off for the Q and the race, but wow! That data is so encouraging the F138's performance when they actually run those upgrades. I suspect they may really come into their own from Canada onwards. The Tifosi could be in for some excellent results over the next few races

 wrote:">Spanish Grand Prix: Friday Practice

So the European season starts, everyone brings their big upgrades and hopes that they did better than anyone else. History tends to dictate that the improvements are generally fairly even and that the impact on competitiveness here does not really tell the whole story. Indeed, last year’s race was quite anomalous with Williams and Ferrari being the fastest cars, and Red Bull being fifth fastest.

There are a good number of long runs in Free Practice 2, with some cars running on both the medium and the hard tyre, at similar speeds – which gives us an idea of the relative race performance of the two tyres, which is very much not the same thing as the qualifying performance. In comparison with last year, the long runs look to be quicker, but with higher degradation – which is consistent with what we have seen in the first four races. Qualifying will almost certainly be faster than last year, indeed Pirelli have claimed that their medium this year is faster than the soft from last year – part of this is car performance, so it’s not a totally clean comparison, even though it is most likely true. However, the races have generally been a little slower than 2012 as far as the pace fits are concerned.

Last year’s first stint pace was just under 90s, which compares pretty closely with the runs from FP2, so the fuel loads again look to be reasonably representative. It is worth noting that the Red Bull (of Vettel, at least) and Toro Rosso have tended to be a little quicker in the races than they have looked on Friday, and Force India a little quicker, but generally the times are reasonably representative of race pace.

We have data from everyone, with Massa’s stint being a little anomalous. I have plotted the cars faster runs, which are almost exclusively on the medium tyres (as far as I can make out). The hards seem to be a little slower, and don’t seem to last as long – Rosberg’s runs are a good example of this, similarly for Grosjean. I’m not sure that we’re getting the stable non-degrading tyre that Red Bull were looking for. In fact, I can see the teams trying to run the mediums for as much of the race as possible, with a hard tyre stint at the end, which could favour those who can definitely do three stops. Given the degradation looks like last year, I’d expect that three stops is the way to go, especially as the pit stop loss time is small at Barcelona.

So to the data itself. The pace chart for medium tyres is below, with all cars on it. The easiest way to understand the chart is to imagine a pace car at the top of the chart going at constant laptime – when the lines are going up, you’re catching this pace car, when they’re going down, you’re dropping away. The steeper the line, the faster you’re catching. Hope that helps.



Once again on a Friday it’s red and yellow lines at the top. And if you look closely, you can see that the cars which look fast at the start tend to start to drop pace about lap 5 or 6. Except Raikkonen. As his stint is shorter that most of the others, it’s not easy to tell what would happen, but this has a bit of a Melbourne look about it. In order to get the best idea of pace, I’ve tried to fit the second half of the curves rather than the first (which is a big difference for Massa), and this leaves Raikkonen comfortably fastest as he doesn’t have a slower part of his curve. I don’t think that the size of the gap is real, but I do think that Kimi is looking very good here.

Ferrari look to be next up on race pace, and then Red Bull – with Vettel and Webber producing remarkably similar stints. If they qualify at the front, which they are likely to do, then they will be in the mix for the podium.

Then we have a few cars whose pace is not as fast in the early laps, but appear to keep the pace better – and they are Force India, Rosberg, and Bottas (surprisingly). Bottas has been quoted as saying that the upgrades have worked, but the 0.8s gap to Maldonado is a little suspicious – that suggests that some of the pace may well be a lighter fuel load. If not, then Bottas could be in the mix for points, which would be impressive.

Hamilton is surprisingly off the back of this group, and leads the next group, which has pretty much everyone else in it. I think that Rosberg’s pace is more representative, but it does suggest that Mercedes is again fourth (or maybe fifth) best here – they are likely to qualify better than that, but a podium finish looks to be unlikely from these runs. This pack is very closely matched, with the most striking feature being that Bianchi is right in the middle of it, with Chilton close. Marussia have tended to go badly in Bahrain, and much better in Barcelona – they could be mixing it with the midfield in the race, if not in qualifying. Caterham look to be returning to the back.

[NHcheese]

Ferrari have a fast car that is exellent on its tyres.

Lotus have a car that is fast and exellent on its tyres.

Red Bull have an ugly car which is fast and good on its tyres.

Mercedes have a really fast car which is bad on its tyres.

Mclaren have a slow car which is good on its tyres.

Force India have a averagely fast car which is good on its tyres.

Simple!

[What's Burning?]

Fantastic data.

[Jabberwocky]

The bloke in front of the cone looks like he's having a hands-free slash.

As part of the new RRA, Ferrari now have the whole of the team to pee on car parts at different speeds, they have found it an effective way of cutting down on wind tunnel time.

[racechick]

There was a programme on tele last night called 'Auction hero' I think. An antiques dealer selected a couple of small charities , bought antiques and sold them on at an auction. He clearly has the eye for a good deal!! The profits went to his chosen charities. Which brings me to my point.

One item was a model of a Ferrari boat. The only one they ever made. It was quite a big boat, not a teeny weeny model, and clearly quite old. And it was a darker red than the Ferrari colour now. I didn't know they'd made a boat. What a treasure for collect of things Ferrari! It made a tidy profit! Did anyone else know Ferrari had made a boat? Racing boat I believe from the shape of the model.

EDIT. That made me go and look up about Ferrari's boat and here I is. It smashed all records in the 50's
http://howtospendit.ft.com/boats/7201-m ... ris-a-boat
It's a cool story about that boat!!!! I recommend reading it. The real boat was auctioned at a prestigious auction house in Monaco during the Monaco GP weekend last year. I'm now off to try and find who owns it

Can't find who owns it but I've found some good pics of it. Unfortunately when I tried to embed it, surprise, surprise it went wrong

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=2S5A4M2w ... S5A4M2ws-0