FORUMula1.com - F1 Forum

[CookinFlat6]

Oh we are lucky to have the tifosi we have here, such good sports, to keep poking fun at things playfully when Ferrari offers lots of similar opportunities for light hearted banter, its like the gift that keeps handing itself out.

I particularily enjoy the stuff about Merc demanding vetos or cheating or turning spectators off with their dominance, and the digs at Lewis, the mental issues, the countless mistakes he makes, its such a priviledge to finally really have a chance to compare notes with Ferrari supporters

its like an armed robber walking past a department store left wide open and even lorries parked against the rear doors ready to be driven off

such fun...

[sagi58]

I hope the Tifosi know we're just having a little fun at their expense. Nothing malicious intended. I can dish it as well as I can take it.

[Hammer278]

Wow....that's incredible comments from Mattiaci. Safe to say the smartest guy in Ferrari today is the guy who's just confirmed he's getting the f out of there.

[What's Burning?]

Figured I'd throw this link here as well.

Renault could make radical changes for 2015 Remi Taffin says Renault has the capacity to completely revamp its engine for 2015 despite rules regarding what manufacturers can and cannot change for next year.

Engine development from season-to-season will be scaled down from 2015 onwards, with manufacturers allocated 32 tokens to decide what parts of the engine they wish to adjust and change for next year, a tally which will decrease until 2018. If all the tokens were spent it would allow manufacturers to change 48% of 45 different engine components for the new campaign.

When it was put to him that Renault could have an engine different "in every respect" in 2015, the manufacturer's head of track operations Taffin replied: "Yes, it could be. I'm not saying it's going to be, but it could be. The thing is you can go up to 50% of the tokens you are allotted, your amount of tokens is 60 [per season] so you can go up to 30. With 30 you can nearly change an [entire] engine if you look at all the components."

Taffin says Renault's philosophy with regards to the use of the tokens next year will be to hold nothing back.

"You always have people who say maybe we should wait for this, or this, or this. It's like when you go to a race and you start thinking about 'shall we go full power of full beans for this race'. Now is a good example, because the next race is Spa so maybe I should save [in Hungary]. Statistics show you have to take it full beans when you are on track, it's the same for developing - you take everything you can take because it will pay."

Despite the desire not to start 2015 on the back foot as it did this season, Taffin says plenty can be gained by working across multiple seasons instead of focusing solely on one.

"We are still focused on this year but 2015 has been going on for a while now. In complete fairness it's not like you work just on this or on this. Both are linked, anything you find on '15 you can bring in for '14 and visa versa. It's more a question of having deadlines for next year and decisions to make but we still keep running both programs at the same time."

"When you have something on your car you try to keep on progressing and developing it, while there are people still working in parallel who try to see if there is a solution being worked on somewhere else, or a completely different solution. If it's proved to be better at one point you stick on it. That is the situation we are in and what we will be in for three, four or five years until everything is frozen. That's why '14 and '15 are linked but also '16, because work on '16 has already started as well."

[CookinFlat6]

Ferrari are walking a tightrope which could explain the desperation to remove the freeze and the bizzare claim that it wont cost them anymore to develop in season

it makes perverted sense in a way - they are fkd if it doesnt happen and will lose much more, so by spending more they hope to lose less overall - silly sausages

This is how I see it (IMMHO based on the factual evidence available in the mainstream) Ferrari know renault are going to throw everything at it with financial and technical/organisational help from RBR. They will also know that Honda are likely to arrive with something similar in spec to Merc but with less performance and more sorting out - so a matter of time and resources. Therefore ferrari are likely to end up without a single customer, apart from Haas - who might be willing to rock the boat and jump to Honda which is almost certain to be much cheaper (like Merc they own the entire production chain, everything they need is at one of their facilities somewhere in japan or even overseas) - obviously a major part of how cheap they can supply it for. Now we heard Renault say that 3 is the number of customers needed to avoid losses on the whole project and 4 is the most they would like. So if Ferraris limping customers go under as it looks likely or even if they dont, they are likely to be presented with a better cheaper engine in 2016. So Ferrari could be down to 1 which is a huge loss - therefore spending a lot more now to improve the engine and not even passing on the costs will be a big saving on supplying one or no teams

Maybe its Toto that needs the calculator to work out if he can make even more money by undercutting Hondas price.

I think this is the beginning of ferraris ignomious exit from F1

[The Second Coming]

Oh, Mr. Horner, you didn't!

Christian came out with this latest bit:
"It's too out of kilter when you have five Mercedes cars in the top five," he said. "The immaturity of this technology is still quite raw and Mercedes shouldn't be afraid of competition. They're doing a super job, but I think it's healthy for Formula One that Ferrari, Honda and Renault have the ability to close that gap. Otherwise we are going to end up in a very stagnant position.

"It's a bigger issue than just what is right for the teams, it's about what's right for the sport and the fans. It's easy to take a self-interest position, but when you look at what the right thing is for Formula One, it's to have competition. The rules are the rules as they are at the moment, but I think we need to be big enough to say let's open it a little bit, be responsible on costs so that there is no impact for the customer teams, but have that competition."

Horner admits Mercedes has a much better package than Red Bull under the new regulations, but takes some encouragement from the way his team has bounced back after such a disastrous start.

"Mercedes has done the best job this year. All it does is motivate you, because you know how much hard work goes into winning a championship and to win it four times in a row [as Red Bull did from 2010-2013] is an enormous achievement.


Read more at http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/stor ... c504rJF.99

So, if I'm to read into his diatribe a bit, the four straight years of Red Bull dominance did not fall under the "bigger interest" that is F1—"what's right for the sport and the fans." When they were saying, we, Red Bull, got the diffuser regs right and it's up to the other teams to smarten up to catch up for 4 years running, somehow that is acceptable. Mercedes are dominant for three quarters of a season and the world is not only not right but it's coming to a disastrous end. Frankly I could understand a gripe if this Mercedes AMG thing had been going on for years but less than a full season? Somehow he hasn't stirred up my sympathy well with his cries.

Horner mentioned having 5 Mercedes cars up front. Maybe he might want to re-direct his full attention to his engine partner. They played a big part in the Red Bull dynasty yet they too got it very wrong in 2014. And for this, all the Renault teams share in the suffrage. You can't hold any of this year's failures on Mercedes. Em, lest we forget, Mercedes too has suffered in performance. They too have lost points, race wins, etc. due to this new-tech formula. It's not all roses and frilly knickers there either.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't speak to Horner's complete ignorance of what has made Mercedes so good this year. I think he may not be willing to accept that Mercedes also has the best chassis and mechanical grip. (The pilots are a bit handy too.) A clear comparison is the remaining 3 Mercedes-shad teams, all of whom Red Bull is currently beating in the WCC handily. They have their strengths and weaknesses...maybe aero, mechanical grip, fuel usage, drivers, engineering, etc. Horner's very first line would have us all convinced that all the Mercedes teams are flogging his outfit. The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks. The only odd man out in this conversation is Ferrari...and we need not get into their trials cuz their engine is actually a smaller part of their massive discontent.

I'm just saying...err, wait. Sorry. Such fun!

[What's Burning?]

Talk about anal cherry being popped. I think maybe Geri likes winners?

[LRW]

Horner is a Tool. There I said it, slap a warning on me.

[What's Burning?]

Horner is a Tool. There I said it, slap a warning on me.

[youtube]M5-vsTxKUkM[/youtube]

[CookinFlat6]

Horner is a Tool. There I said it, slap a warning on me.

[youtube]M5-vsTxKUkM[/youtube]

reminds me of Hammer messing with spanks

[spankyham]

Horner is a Tool. There I said it, slap a warning on me.

[youtube]M5-vsTxKUkM[/youtube]

reminds me of Hammer messing with spanks

Awesome post cookin, I cracked up, but don't you think Hammer would run a little faster after my spanking him

[What's Burning?]

Pretty impressive what's on the horizon for mainstream engines.

Full Article on Wired Volvo’s long had a reputation for building safe, if boring, cars. But its Chinese owners have been pumping money into the place, leading to new cars, new engines, and new safety technologies that make Sweden sound like a new Silicon Valley.

The automaker burnished its rep with some cool safety and infotainment innovations in the flagship XC90, but it’s totally stunned us with the High Performance Drive E Powertrain Concept engine. That’s a really fancy way of saying absurdly powerful four-banger. Although Volvo’s concept displaces just 2.0 liters, it produces 450 horsepower. That’s 15 more than the 5.0-liter V8 in the new Ford Mustang GT. How’d the Swedes do it? They bolted three turbochargers—three!—on the thing.

For those of you who aren’t gearheads, turbochargers are a well-established way to boost power with an eye toward conserving fuel. Simply put, a turbo forces more air into the engine—resulting in more powerful combustion—using a fan turned by the car’s exhaust. The downside is they don’t work particularly well at low engine speeds, and it can take awhile (relatively speaking) for that fan to spool up, so you get what’s called turbo lag—that momentary pause between getting on the gas and feeling that additional thrust.

We’ve seen plenty of twin-turbos before. Volvo’s innovation is adding a third—third!—turbo. But this one doesn’t charge the engine. It charges the other turbos. It’s electric, hence the name “e-booster,” and sends air into the two conventional turbos to improve their performance below 3,300 RPM, filling out the torque curve and eliminating that pesky lag problem.

It’s very clever, but it’s just the start. Volvo’s also created a 48-volt electrical system, instead of the conventional 12-volt, to drive that e-turbo. The beefier electric system also will allow the automaker to improve electric power steering systems and stop/start technology, but that big step forward will take five to 10 years to fully introduce. That’s why the three—three!—turbo engine is still a concept.
Bright Future, Shiny Present

So although we have to wait for that firecracker of an engine, the engines Volvo’s building now are impressive in its own right. The program started in 2010, when Ford sold Volvo Cars (it bought the division in 1999) to Chinese auto conglomerate Geely. Ford promised to continue supplying engines, but said Volvo would need its own by 2015. Volvo engineers used that five-year reprieve to ponder the future of automotive drivetrains, and what they might do with piles of Chinese money and a clean sheet of paper.

First, Volvo studied how its customers truly drive. The outgoing XC90 SUV had a powerful V8. Volvo found its drivers rarely pushed the engine past 4,000 RPM, and even then it was largely for heavy acceleration like getting onto the highway or trying to get home by curfew. Because V8s do their best work near the top of the rev range, Volvo customers rarely experienced the engine’s peak torque or horsepower. They did, however, experience peak gas consumption. “When the customer drives with a very heavy powertrain,” says Michael Fleiss, Volvo’s vice president of powertrain, “they’re never using the sweet spot of the engine. Instead, it’s idling all the time, running in a very inefficient area of the engine maps.”

[racechick]

That was a cool article WB! Sounds amazing what Volvo are doing. I had a big old Volvo for 16 years. It was a powerful workhorse but was thirsty. These new ones sound brilliant.

Ps. Horner takes the biscuit with those quotes

[Jabberwocky]

48v. .. I bet that will catch out a few Modders. Let's bang in this head unit... pop

Bigger voltage cars does make sense. However there will be no popping down the local car care center for a replacement bulb lol.

The 3rd turbo sounds interesting.

[akeizm]

I would be surprised if they ran the whole car on 48v. They would step it down to 12v for the majority of the accessories.