Well, my takeaway from this race is that the mercs are utter shit when anywhere near a car in front, seemingly much worse than Ferrari in similar situations, red bull's trick suspension being banned has killed them for this season, and ain't nobody gonna pass ever without drs.
Race spoilers (since it was an early morning one here):
Well well, looks like we have a fight on our hands this season!
Great race from Vettel with a well deserved win. I'm not sure what happened with Hamilton though. He was at least as good as Vettel in the first stint and at times quicker. Even after his stop he was faster when in clear air. Getting stuck behind Verstappen killed his race but he didn't recover after Verstappen was out of the way. Perhaps though the tyres are an issue for Mercedes. Overall I still think the Merc has better outright pace than Ferrari but the Ferrari seems much easier on the tyres. If that's the case it could be very tricky for the Mercs to manage through the rest of the season.
I was disappointed by Kimi though. Given how Vettel was doing he should have been much closer. I was also a bit disappointed by Bottas. While he ended quite close to Hamilton, he was basically nowhere in the first stint. For me it really is a question of was Hamilton pushed into destroying his tyres and thus compromising his strategy while Bottas could preserve his (but was significantly slower than Hamilton/Vettel to do that).
In the midfield drivers did seem to make a big difference. Stroll/Magnussen/Palmer were all quite poor while their teammates were generally contenders for points. On Magnussen I'm not entirely happy about the new "lenient" penalty rules they've brought in. His incident with Ericsson was about as one sided as they come yet there was no penalty. Lenient is one thing, but surely there has to be recourse for ruining another drivers race when they aren't to blame?
Also pleasantly surprised by McLaren. They're still awful of course, but at least one of them managed to not blow up for 50 laps or so. Alonso was even in contention for points for a while. Somebody please give him a decent car again before he retires.
Kinda dissapointed, but not surprised, that Bottas didn't challange for 2nd. He was cutting like 1/2 a second a lap into Hamilton until he got to about 2.5 seconds and then just stopped completely. I understand the call from a team strategy point, as I don't think he was going to catch Vettel but still shitty to see another driver being Hamilton's fluffer rather than a competitor.
Well, my takeaway from this race is that the mercs are utter shit when anywhere near a car in front, seemingly much worse than Ferrari in similar situations
I don't think this is necessarily true. I think this is more a result of vettel being put in a better situation than hamilton by his team. Before the pit stops Vettel could just sit back a second to second and a half back from Hamilton and have full down force so he didn't overwork the tires. When Hamilton got out, he had to make that pass to keep from falling too far back from Vettel, which meant overworking the tires from a lack of down force because of the dirty air. Hamilton failed (I blame the shit aero rules, and not hamilton, for this), then Vettel gets out in front and never needs to over work his tires so he just walks away with the win.
Ferrari pulled Vettel in the moment the gap between Vettel and Hamilton was large enough to put Vettel in frent after pitting. That whole series of events was a thing of beauty, but only possible because the cars are shit and can't pass.
Edit: Vettel did approach Hamilton a couple times early, but he realized trying to pass was a fools errand, so he sat back and Mercedes gifted the race to him by pitting early.
If anything, it's quite refreshing to see Ferrari manage to win a race on a basically perfect strategic call rather than throw one away.
And Vettel realising that he had a pace advantage and a tyre wear advantage so he could just bide his time was a good solid bit of racecraft.
It was pointed out on the BBC coverage (and, I assume, elsewhere) that this is the first time in the turbo hybrid era that a team other than Mercedes have led the championship! Well, championships.
Ocon, Hulkenberg and Alonso going three abreast was a hell of a moment too. Shades of Hakkinen's most famous manoeuvre there, even if Hulkenberg didn't quite manage to pull it off.
Not a bad season opener. Not a classic by any means, but it certainly gives us hope that the Mercs aren't just going to run off with it again.
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
I am neither a fan of Hamilton nor Ferrari, but I'm glad to see actual competition at the front again. Here's hoping Red Bull can push in there.
Unfortunately, my choice teams are Williams, McLaren and Force India, so I don't really have anyone to cheer for in the front, but the mid-pack stuff should be exciting.
Well, my takeaway from this race is that the mercs are utter shit when anywhere near a car in front, seemingly much worse than Ferrari in similar situations
I don't think this is necessarily true. I think this is more a result of vettel being put in a better situation than hamilton by his team. Before the pit stops Vettel could just sit back a second to second and a half back from Hamilton and have full down force so he didn't overwork the tires. When Hamilton got out, he had to make that pass to keep from falling too far back from Vettel, which meant overworking the tires from a lack of down force because of the dirty air. Hamilton failed (I blame the shit aero rules, and not hamilton, for this), then Vettel gets out in front and never needs to over work his tires so he just walks away with the win.
Ferrari pulled Vettel in the moment the gap between Vettel and Hamilton was large enough to put Vettel in frent after pitting. That whole series of events was a thing of beauty, but only possible because the cars are shit and can't pass.
Edit: Vettel did approach Hamilton a couple times early, but he realized trying to pass was a fools errand, so he sat back and Mercedes gifted the race to him by pitting early.
Hamilton was under steering like mad whenever he got within a country mile of another car. Much worse than the ferraris.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Kinda dissapointed, but not surprised, that Bottas didn't challange for 2nd. He was cutting like 1/2 a second a lap into Hamilton until he got to about 2.5 seconds and then just stopped completely. I understand the call from a team strategy point, as I don't think he was going to catch Vettel but still shitty to see another driver being Hamilton's fluffer rather than a competitor.
He wouldn't have gotten past even if he had gotten there. Have you seen the front end of these new cars wash away when near another car? It's not just Mercs, all the cars are doing it. Even Vettel had the front wash away a couple of times when he got close to Hamilton in the opening stint. It wasn't Bottas being Hamitlon's fluffer, it was the team realizing he'd just burn up both their tires even trying.
Everyone is super excited someone other than a Merc won, but if this race was any indication of the racing this year, it's going to suck. Single file around the track, hoping to pass in the pits. Yay fun.
Kinda dissapointed, but not surprised, that Bottas didn't challange for 2nd. He was cutting like 1/2 a second a lap into Hamilton until he got to about 2.5 seconds and then just stopped completely. I understand the call from a team strategy point, as I don't think he was going to catch Vettel but still shitty to see another driver being Hamilton's fluffer rather than a competitor.
He wouldn't have gotten past even if he had gotten there. Have you seen the front end of these new cars wash away when near another car? It's not just Mercs, all the cars are doing it. Even Vettel had the front wash away a couple of times when he got close to Hamilton in the opening stint. It wasn't Bottas being Hamitlon's fluffer, it was the team realizing he'd just burn up both their tires even trying.
Everyone is super excited someone other than a Merc won, but if this race was any indication of the racing this year, it's going to suck. Single file around the track, hoping to pass in the pits. Yay fun.
F1 was so interested in making the cars fast despite the fuel regulations they forgot why we were here. 2016 was pretty good racing outside of Mercedes just being too fast.
Honestly I'd have loved even less aero than 2016 and more mechanical grip with the big tires. F1 cars that could fight even 20% as well as GT cars would be incredibly fun.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Last year had some real snoozers of races, though.
Time will tell if this year will be more of the same.
Before the race, the US broadcast was saying the current head of car regulations is just as frustrated as you are, but the current specs are locked until 2020. Once 2020 comes around, expect a drop in reliance on downforce and an increase in mechanical grip and other changes to significantly increase the cars ability to pass.
I also believe several large contracts surrounding the sport are also up then, too, so 2021 and beyond could be dramatically different than today.
I can't remember, but that might have been it. Although that may also just be because he sounds familiar in a general connected to f1 kind of way, too.
Not sure about that exact statement but he has been criticizing the aero as too sensitive.
But yeah, these races are going to be garbage if the "racing" is "pit lane delta wooooooo."
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited March 2017
Brawn has been critical of both the engines and the aero for a while. I disagree with him about the engines. The engines need to represent whats happening in cars today, or there is no point, because the manufacturers can't back port anything to their road cars (they don't do F1 for just the publicity, it's an amazing test bed for tech, and things like dynamic traction control came from race cars first).
The aero I agree with him on though. The current aero packages service no one. They don't help the manfuracturers with road cars, because the aero is so specific to F1 cars. They don't help passing. They don't help cost. The aero regs need to be greatly simplified, with very strict limits on what elements can be used and cost limitations. Move the development back to the parts of the car that help passing and help road cars: Suspension, mechanical grip, tire compounds. Let the teams tinker with traction control again (within limits).
Some of the best racing today is in GT cars, which have restricted aero packages (even taking in to account the new diffusers), but in many series are allowed to use ABS and TC. Watch the end of the Daytona 24 Hour from this year in the GTLM class. It was four cars, from four separate manufacturers, separated by less than four seconds after 24 hours. That's great racing. F1 could learn a thing or two from what's going on in tin tops.
McLaren are on the record saying they expect to be even more rubbish in China. Given that colossal back straight and their main problem being that engine, it's easy to see why.
I appreciate that McLaren and Honda in particular have great history. In 1988, McLaren-Honda won 15 of the 16 races that year.
But think back a scant few years to when Williams got back together with Renault. Very quickly it became apparent that they weren't going to be the partnership they once were, and went their separate ways.
It's trickier at McLaren as they want to be, in effect, a works team. They were the de facto Mercedes works team for years until Merc decided to buy out Brawn (which, 12 months earlier, had been Honda in a rather staggering bit of irony) and form their own works team (with blackjack and hookers!). Honda have been their only hope at getting that works status back again, and from 2015 to 2016 they did make some positive strides... which they now appear to have inexplicably thrown away.
It just makes no sense how Honda are being so bad at this. How have they managed to actually go backwards that far from last year to this?
Honda is the primary financial backer of McLaren and probably pay the majority of Alonso's salary. Theoretically McLaren could drop Honda and switch to another manufacturer but it'll have to come up with a few hundred million dollars to run the team. Even if they could switch engines this year they car is designed around the Honda engine, and trying to retrofit a completely different engine would put them even farther behind.
Honda have been nothing short of shambolic really. In 2015 I cut them some slack since they were rushed into it a year earlier than they wanted but even when it wasn't blowing up the pace wasn't there. 2016 was a bit better, but that was helped in part by teams like Renault falling apart and Torro Rosso being stuck with an old Ferrari engine and no upgrades. Reliability was better but the pace simply wasn't there. Honda had tried placing the turbo within the bank of the engine to reduce size, but that also heavily limited the size of the turbine and made it hard to upgrade. At some point Honda accepted their concept wasn't going to work and abandoned it.
This year has just been close to amateur. There are reports that Honda were testing it mono-cylinder on the dyno until Christmas and it looked fine. Only at that point did they run the full V6 engine and find that it had serious vibration issues. To stop it tearing itself apart they've had to run it de-tuned and thus with much less power. And it still breaks. Worse still Alonso reported that it has fuel consumption issues as well, with both drivers having to lift and coast from fairly early on in the Australian GP.
Ultimately the problem is that Honda just don't seem to be getting any better at this despite it being their third year now. In the long term McLaren have to ask if Honda are ever going to get better.
I just don't know why Honda would keep at it much longer. The PR from being in F1 doesn't do you much good if all the PR you get is You're Fucking Shit.
Althouhg it looks like they'll try at least 1 more year
I have an actual (nice) rejection letter ("We liked your resume but have decided to pursue other candidates") from Williams F1. That uplifted me a shitload during a bit of a depressing time because, according to them, they only answer to people they want to interview.
FP1 was suspended and ultimately scrapped, and FP2 didn't even start at all in China due to bad weather causing a safety concern - the low cloud meant the medical helicopter was unable to get to the hospital in Shanghai in the required 20 minutes, and it's too far for a ground ambulance.
Poor weather is also expected on Sunday for the race, although the cloud cover is expected to be higher. There was discussion as to whether to shift the race to Saturday instead but that isn't now happening.
There might have been an effort to bump it to Monday but the back-to-back schedule with Bahrain means the freight needs to be on its way on Monday so that was a non-starter.
Liberty Media are looking now at ways to make sure similar situations in the future don't just end up with disappointed fans looking at an empty track as they did today. Good on them.
Also, this year's Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang will be the last. The track is dropping off the calendar as France (Paul Ricard) and Germany (Hockenheim) are returning next year. Sepang's last race was originally going to be next year but it's been brought forward. Kind of a shame, it's one of the better modern tracks. The Malaysian government noted the lowering returns from the race compared to the cost of staging the event.
To be fair, quick transport to hospital is absolutely essential and should not be compromised even if it means cancelling sessions.Transfer from the track to hospital was an issue in the Bianchi crash - the helicopter couldn't fly in those conditions either and in the end it took 32 minutes by road. While ultimately the transfer time might not have made a difference, I'd rather not be left with that question.
There isn't really a lot you can do about it though. The only thing Liberty could do is organize events away from poor weather seasons (which even then isn't guaranteed) or have back up plans in place in case cancellation is necessary. Anything else would compromise safety.
To be fair, quick transport to hospital is absolutely essential and should not be compromised even if it means cancelling sessions.Transfer from the track to hospital was an issue in the Bianchi crash - the helicopter couldn't fly in those conditions either and in the end it took 32 minutes by road. While ultimately the transfer time might not have made a difference, I'd rather not be left with that question.
There isn't really a lot you can do about it though. The only thing Liberty could do is organize events away from poor weather seasons (which even then isn't guaranteed) or have back up plans in place in case cancellation is necessary. Anything else would compromise safety.
Oh, absolutely. They seem to be thinking in terms of back-up plans. Opening the paddock up more for fans was one mooted idea that I can definitely see happening. But compromising safety like that isn't on the agenda and nor should it be. Sorry if I inadvertently implied otherwise.
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Qualifying is over...
Same front row as last race. Hamilton pole by .184 over Vettel, who pipped Botas for second by 1/1000th of a second. Hamilton also set the fastest lap ever around Shanghai, knocking off Kimi who held it for a bout 20 minutes from Q2.
Hamilton really is just a beast when it comes to high pressure quali. I especially liked how he near instantly corrected oversteer and slid his car around. Also nice to see the yellow helmet make a return.
Hats off to Alonso as well. He absolutely wrung the neck out of that car to get where he did. The speed trap showed that McLaren were over 10 km/h or more down on the next slowest (314.4 to 326.6 I think?) and yet he still ended up P13. The only car that was as slow in a straight line was Verstappen, who even with a broken engine managed to match McLaren. It would also suggest that the chassis itself is decent if it can make up that much time off the straight.[/quote]
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
As someone who does quite a bit of sim racing I had serious appreciation for that oversteer correction he did. That was at speed, without lifting. The car control (and guts) that takes is immense.
The UK Department for Transport has decided to give the go-ahead for motorsport events on British roads.
There's a certain irony there as the Formula E race at Battersea Park in London has been canned following residents' complaints after the last couple of years.
We also shouldn't expect a GP on the streets of London just yet; there's concerns over pollution from the cars, at a time when air pollution in built-up areas in the UK and London in particular is a prominent and ongoing news story.
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Great race from Vettel with a well deserved win. I'm not sure what happened with Hamilton though. He was at least as good as Vettel in the first stint and at times quicker. Even after his stop he was faster when in clear air. Getting stuck behind Verstappen killed his race but he didn't recover after Verstappen was out of the way. Perhaps though the tyres are an issue for Mercedes. Overall I still think the Merc has better outright pace than Ferrari but the Ferrari seems much easier on the tyres. If that's the case it could be very tricky for the Mercs to manage through the rest of the season.
I was disappointed by Kimi though. Given how Vettel was doing he should have been much closer. I was also a bit disappointed by Bottas. While he ended quite close to Hamilton, he was basically nowhere in the first stint. For me it really is a question of was Hamilton pushed into destroying his tyres and thus compromising his strategy while Bottas could preserve his (but was significantly slower than Hamilton/Vettel to do that).
In the midfield drivers did seem to make a big difference. Stroll/Magnussen/Palmer were all quite poor while their teammates were generally contenders for points. On Magnussen I'm not entirely happy about the new "lenient" penalty rules they've brought in. His incident with Ericsson was about as one sided as they come yet there was no penalty. Lenient is one thing, but surely there has to be recourse for ruining another drivers race when they aren't to blame?
Also pleasantly surprised by McLaren. They're still awful of course, but at least one of them managed to not blow up for 50 laps or so. Alonso was even in contention for points for a while. Somebody please give him a decent car again before he retires.
I don't think this is necessarily true. I think this is more a result of vettel being put in a better situation than hamilton by his team. Before the pit stops Vettel could just sit back a second to second and a half back from Hamilton and have full down force so he didn't overwork the tires. When Hamilton got out, he had to make that pass to keep from falling too far back from Vettel, which meant overworking the tires from a lack of down force because of the dirty air. Hamilton failed (I blame the shit aero rules, and not hamilton, for this), then Vettel gets out in front and never needs to over work his tires so he just walks away with the win.
Ferrari pulled Vettel in the moment the gap between Vettel and Hamilton was large enough to put Vettel in frent after pitting. That whole series of events was a thing of beauty, but only possible because the cars are shit and can't pass.
Edit: Vettel did approach Hamilton a couple times early, but he realized trying to pass was a fools errand, so he sat back and Mercedes gifted the race to him by pitting early.
And Vettel realising that he had a pace advantage and a tyre wear advantage so he could just bide his time was a good solid bit of racecraft.
It was pointed out on the BBC coverage (and, I assume, elsewhere) that this is the first time in the turbo hybrid era that a team other than Mercedes have led the championship! Well, championships.
Ocon, Hulkenberg and Alonso going three abreast was a hell of a moment too. Shades of Hakkinen's most famous manoeuvre there, even if Hulkenberg didn't quite manage to pull it off.
Not a bad season opener. Not a classic by any means, but it certainly gives us hope that the Mercs aren't just going to run off with it again.
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Unfortunately, my choice teams are Williams, McLaren and Force India, so I don't really have anyone to cheer for in the front, but the mid-pack stuff should be exciting.
Hamilton was under steering like mad whenever he got within a country mile of another car. Much worse than the ferraris.
He wouldn't have gotten past even if he had gotten there. Have you seen the front end of these new cars wash away when near another car? It's not just Mercs, all the cars are doing it. Even Vettel had the front wash away a couple of times when he got close to Hamilton in the opening stint. It wasn't Bottas being Hamitlon's fluffer, it was the team realizing he'd just burn up both their tires even trying.
Everyone is super excited someone other than a Merc won, but if this race was any indication of the racing this year, it's going to suck. Single file around the track, hoping to pass in the pits. Yay fun.
F1 was so interested in making the cars fast despite the fuel regulations they forgot why we were here. 2016 was pretty good racing outside of Mercedes just being too fast.
Honestly I'd have loved even less aero than 2016 and more mechanical grip with the big tires. F1 cars that could fight even 20% as well as GT cars would be incredibly fun.
Time will tell if this year will be more of the same.
Sure, but the solution there wasn't make the cars even more impossible in the wake of other cars.
Since the front wing largely dictates the entire aero design of the rest of the car.
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I also believe several large contracts surrounding the sport are also up then, too, so 2021 and beyond could be dramatically different than today.
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I can't remember, but that might have been it. Although that may also just be because he sounds familiar in a general connected to f1 kind of way, too.
Not sure about that exact statement but he has been criticizing the aero as too sensitive.
But yeah, these races are going to be garbage if the "racing" is "pit lane delta wooooooo."
The aero I agree with him on though. The current aero packages service no one. They don't help the manfuracturers with road cars, because the aero is so specific to F1 cars. They don't help passing. They don't help cost. The aero regs need to be greatly simplified, with very strict limits on what elements can be used and cost limitations. Move the development back to the parts of the car that help passing and help road cars: Suspension, mechanical grip, tire compounds. Let the teams tinker with traction control again (within limits).
Some of the best racing today is in GT cars, which have restricted aero packages (even taking in to account the new diffusers), but in many series are allowed to use ABS and TC. Watch the end of the Daytona 24 Hour from this year in the GTLM class. It was four cars, from four separate manufacturers, separated by less than four seconds after 24 hours. That's great racing. F1 could learn a thing or two from what's going on in tin tops.
http://en.f1i.com/news/263462-audi-attend-next-f1-engine-meeting.html
Very grain of salty right now, but could be interesting if it plays out.
How the mighty have fallen.
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Audi being in the sport just makes sense. I think the real question is, would they go in under the Audi, Bugatti, Lambo, or Porsche badge?
But think back a scant few years to when Williams got back together with Renault. Very quickly it became apparent that they weren't going to be the partnership they once were, and went their separate ways.
It's trickier at McLaren as they want to be, in effect, a works team. They were the de facto Mercedes works team for years until Merc decided to buy out Brawn (which, 12 months earlier, had been Honda in a rather staggering bit of irony) and form their own works team (with blackjack and hookers!). Honda have been their only hope at getting that works status back again, and from 2015 to 2016 they did make some positive strides... which they now appear to have inexplicably thrown away.
It just makes no sense how Honda are being so bad at this. How have they managed to actually go backwards that far from last year to this?
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This article goes into further detail about the situation https://joesaward.wordpress.com/2017/03/17/lets-be-sensible-about-honda/
This year has just been close to amateur. There are reports that Honda were testing it mono-cylinder on the dyno until Christmas and it looked fine. Only at that point did they run the full V6 engine and find that it had serious vibration issues. To stop it tearing itself apart they've had to run it de-tuned and thus with much less power. And it still breaks. Worse still Alonso reported that it has fuel consumption issues as well, with both drivers having to lift and coast from fairly early on in the Australian GP.
Ultimately the problem is that Honda just don't seem to be getting any better at this despite it being their third year now. In the long term McLaren have to ask if Honda are ever going to get better.
Althouhg it looks like they'll try at least 1 more year
via reddit, an ad in autosport magazine.
I have an actual (nice) rejection letter ("We liked your resume but have decided to pursue other candidates") from Williams F1. That uplifted me a shitload during a bit of a depressing time because, according to them, they only answer to people they want to interview.
Poor weather is also expected on Sunday for the race, although the cloud cover is expected to be higher. There was discussion as to whether to shift the race to Saturday instead but that isn't now happening.
There might have been an effort to bump it to Monday but the back-to-back schedule with Bahrain means the freight needs to be on its way on Monday so that was a non-starter.
Liberty Media are looking now at ways to make sure similar situations in the future don't just end up with disappointed fans looking at an empty track as they did today. Good on them.
Also, this year's Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang will be the last. The track is dropping off the calendar as France (Paul Ricard) and Germany (Hockenheim) are returning next year. Sepang's last race was originally going to be next year but it's been brought forward. Kind of a shame, it's one of the better modern tracks. The Malaysian government noted the lowering returns from the race compared to the cost of staging the event.
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Paul Ricard hasn't hosted a GP since 1990, after which Magny-Cours took over. It'll be rather interesting to see how it pans out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_Paul_Ricard
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There isn't really a lot you can do about it though. The only thing Liberty could do is organize events away from poor weather seasons (which even then isn't guaranteed) or have back up plans in place in case cancellation is necessary. Anything else would compromise safety.
Oh, absolutely. They seem to be thinking in terms of back-up plans. Opening the paddock up more for fans was one mooted idea that I can definitely see happening. But compromising safety like that isn't on the agenda and nor should it be. Sorry if I inadvertently implied otherwise.
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Hats off to Alonso as well. He absolutely wrung the neck out of that car to get where he did. The speed trap showed that McLaren were over 10 km/h or more down on the next slowest (314.4 to 326.6 I think?) and yet he still ended up P13. The only car that was as slow in a straight line was Verstappen, who even with a broken engine managed to match McLaren. It would also suggest that the chassis itself is decent if it can make up that much time off the straight.[/quote]
There's a certain irony there as the Formula E race at Battersea Park in London has been canned following residents' complaints after the last couple of years.
We also shouldn't expect a GP on the streets of London just yet; there's concerns over pollution from the cars, at a time when air pollution in built-up areas in the UK and London in particular is a prominent and ongoing news story.
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