Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
Yeah it's quite a clever spot from Renault, to be honest.
You definitely couldn't copy the inside structure of brake ducts from photos, you'd need a copy of the designs or a reference part. And, since brake ducts weren't a listed part last year, Racing Point would absolutely have had reference parts since they were using them on the car. Possessing them wasn't illegal, but using them as a reference to design the matching part for the 2020 RP would have been.
So, they may not have had the designs, but they definitely could have had one of the 2019 Merc ducts sitting on their design table while they drew up their own 2020 ducts. It's going to come down to whether they had the foresight to make their ducts' internals noticeably different from the Merc ones.
Hey all, going to update the spreadsheet for the F1 laps this afternoon. Are we still good to continue with 2019, or have people already transitioned to 2020?
Also, for the ACC players out there, the GT4 pack is releasing tomorrow on Steam. No new tracks, but 11 new GT4 cars.
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
Signing Bottas for 2021 is just smart for Mercedes. They are really going for some "smash all the records" stuff with Lewis, and Bottas is a great second driver who can take wins and podiums, but probably isn't going to seriously challenge Hamilton over a full season. Mercedes wants to get Hamilton to 8 titles and 100+ wins and now has a golden opportunity to do it with rules stability until 2022.
Bringing in Vettel, or even Russel, upsets a carefully crafted balance.
And there are rumors out there that Vettel might be signing with Racing Point for 2021. Not sure how I feel about that. It would almost certainly mean that Perez is gone, as I doubt Stroll will fire his son. Is Aston Martin gonna be the title sponsor and team name or also the engine supplier? If they are still with the Merc engine and build on this years copy of the Merc, Vettel could make some noise next season.
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Got an update from Sim-Lab that my P1-X should ship next week. Went ahead and ordered the Sparco EVO QRT XL for the seat. Not cheap, but reviews very well as being comfortable and I want something good that's going to last a while. I flirted with getting a seat riser and getting a laid back F1 style seat but decided against it.
And there are rumors out there that Vettel might be signing with Racing Point for 2021. Not sure how I feel about that. It would almost certainly mean that Perez is gone, as I doubt Stroll will fire his son. Is Aston Martin gonna be the title sponsor and team name or also the engine supplier? If they are still with the Merc engine and build on this years copy of the Merc, Vettel could make some noise next season.
Aston is just going to be the title sponsor of whatever Racing India or Force Point ends up being called.
I don't know if I could see Vettel going there unless there's real evidence of another photocopy, he's not really a mercenary like Kimi and I think he'd rather retire than just slug it out in the midfield for a couple of years.
I'm still hoping for a Vettel -> Red Bull move, simply because it's the best seat still available. It would also be a good move for Red Bull (assuming they can manage the drivers effectively) as right now, their second driver is something of a weakness. This isn't to dump on Albon too much, but it comes down to 'what do you want out of your second driver?'. I'd argue you want both decent pace and quite a bit of experience, depending on how long you intend to keep your lead driver around that is.
With Red Bull it's clear that their main driver is Verstappen, and will be for quite some time. In that case, what use is throwing rookies in to fill the seat in the second car? With a rookie you're basically betting on them having enough natural pace and skill to be a future leader. In terms of set-up and car development, those are skills that improve with experience so a rookie isn't going to be of much use in that regard either. Right now RB are basically throwing any halfway promising driver into the second car simply because they don't have anyone else. For various reasons, they've let the most experienced drivers go and have nobody to fill the spot now. Their refusal to take anyone outside of their driver stable is really hurting them. Of the drivers they have, I'd probably lean towards Kyvat simply because he has more experience and has done a development role with Ferrari.
With Albon, while his pace may improve the lack of experience can't be fixed quickly. Vettel would give them a massive amount of experience and likely better pace as well. It would require the team to be a bit less "Verstappen + other", but think that would probably be best for all involved.
For comparison, I decided to look at the relative experience on a few of the teams by number of races:
Hamilton: 252
Bottas: 141
Vettel: 242
Leclerc: 44
Verstappen: 104
Albon: 23
Sainz: 104
Norris: 23
Perez: 178
Stroll: 64
Ricciardo: 173
Ocon: 52
Kyvat: 95
Gasly: 49
Russell: 23
Latifi: 2
It doesn't tell the full story of course, but does show how much experience Merc have in their driver pairing. Likewise shows how unfortunately little Williams have.
Exactly, and you can see how happy he is with that so far
Maybe he and Kimi have been chatting and Kimi's been telling him how awesome it is just to race around in the midfield with no pressure to deliver wins and titles. All the racing excitement, none of the Italian media.
I don't see Vettel going from being relegated to No. 2 driver effectively and having all the pressure of delivering wins for Ferrari to being a no. 2 driver behind Verstappen and still having the pressure of delivering wins and help Verstappen win a title at Red Bull. Him going there and Red Bull just going "Eyh, all we need is a driver with a little more experience than Albon" is not gonna happen. They can have Hulkenberg for that role and he'd cost a whole lot less.
Racing Point or any other mid field team would be a whole different beast.
It kind of depends in that it's a bit of a bet on the new 2021 2022 regulations, hoping that midfield teams can actually get a win under the better aero.
While Hulkenberg would be a solid choice for #2, Red Bull will absolutely never hire him or anyone else outside of their driver program. At least while Marko is still there. Vettel at least can skirt around that by having been part of it.
It does look increasingly like a move to RP though, which means Perez is likely to be booted out.
Quite a lot of attempts later... managed a 1:45.768. I had a much better lap at one point, with (for me) a brilliant S2 with next to nothing obviously 'wrong' - then totally threw it getting through the last chicane. General rule of thumb with the last corner chicanes is that they will totally bugger up your lap at the last moment so you can rue what might have been.
Had to throw on more downforce than I would have liked to get through Eau Rouge semi-reliably. Slightly off line and you're gone - especially if you're running light on rear wing.
Tweaked setup a bit more. Took off some wing as I got more confident around the track, made the roll bars a bit stiffer and decided to experiment with the diff settings. End result was a 1:45.094.
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
qualifying vs last year
Red Bull slower than last year. At least Ferrari has the cheating excuse, Red Bull would have just literally been better off rolling out last year's car.
Racing Point had both cars faster than both 2019 Mercs.
Mercedes managed to find a second and a half year on year in stable regulations.
There's only two possibilities, either Merc are not human beings, or they stopped developing last year and were sandbagging the entire year even while in the process of utter domination
Bloody hell that Merc is a beast! Blitzing the field on slower tyres is just ridiculous.
Other notable mentions - Stroll gets credit for outqualifying Perez (although had to chuckle at Stroll parking the car back with the rest out of habit), likewise Vettel for outqualifying Leclerc and maintainging that record of 5th or higher. Ferrari better than Austria, but still only 5th at best. Even accounting for track evolution, Russell's lap was brilliant. Very good performance to get him up to P12.
That comparison with last year is very interesting Dhalphir. Wouldn't have thought Red Bull had got worse. There was some talk of an engine issue with Verstappen's car at the time? Albon just seemed slow and that outburst on the radio will not have helped. I am starting to wonder if they just have a bad car though. In Austria I heard a few mentions that it was somewhat tricky to control and prone to snap oversteer. It seems as if it might be a very fickle and unstable car. Verstappen was complaining of unusual and erratic handling throughout qualifying.
Bloody hell that Merc is a beast! Blitzing the field on slower tyres is just ridiculous.
Other notable mentions - Stroll gets credit for outqualifying Perez (although had to chuckle at Stroll parking the car back with the rest out of habit), likewise Vettel for outqualifying Leclerc and maintainging that record of 5th or higher. Ferrari better than Austria, but still only 5th at best. Even accounting for track evolution, Russell's lap was brilliant. Very good performance to get him up to P12.
That comparison with last year is very interesting Dhalphir. Wouldn't have thought Red Bull had got worse. There was some talk of an engine issue with Verstappen's car at the time? Albon just seemed slow and that outburst on the radio will not have helped. I am starting to wonder if they just have a bad car though. In Austria I heard a few mentions that it was somewhat tricky to control and prone to snap oversteer. It seems as if it might be a very fickle and unstable car. Verstappen was complaining of unusual and erratic handling throughout qualifying.
Kind of telling that the Alpha Tauris were also complaining about the engine, so it might have been Honda issues in this track in particular.
Because this track is all corner-into-corner-into-corner, the onboard footage was very educational to the viewer about who was able to hook up their car and really throw it around, or who had to nurse it.
The onboard of Russell's beat Q1 lap was especially good. The commentators mentioned that he had some sort of track record until recently, and it shows that he had a car that could express that pace in. Compare that onboard footage say with Suzuka last year and the cars are clearly different beasts - big improvements
Mercedes operating on a different planet. There was a pretty standard shot of both cars leaving the pits together in Q3 that filled me with dread. Like "Oh shit they're rolling out, here they come". I think the black livery gives them a real Evil Empire feel
Is there a race tomorrow? What time? And what channel?
Its 3.10 pm CEST. I am watching it via F1 TV - what channel depends on where you live. Its on Sky in the UK, don't know about the US. Its on RTL (free TV) and Sky in Germany.
I tried a hot lap today in Spa. Went in F1 2020 first. Standard setup, nothing custom - with a few assists on. Automatic gearbox, brake assistant on medium I believe, traction control on low? Not really sure. Definitely not the required "no assists" setup. I drive with a Thrustmaster wheel.
Managed a 1:45.990 after a few attempts and quite a few "your lap is invalidated because you went a hair outside the lines" stuff.
Switched over to F1 2019 after that. Only managed a 1:47:something there, again with a few assists on (if I leave traction control off, I might as well enter a drift competition).
So there is a noticeable difference between the 2 games - either the assists are better in F1 2020 or the car just handles better, but after those few tries there was about a 1.5 second difference for me.
Tried to advance my career in F1 2019 as well. In Baku. AI level is at 35% - so I easily went on pole and had about a 9 second advantage going into the pits. Managed to bin it 3 times in the second stint and finally gave up. Lets see what Barcelona brings. I'll probably try and up the difficulty to 50 or even 60%.
Or I abandon it altogether and dive into the MyTeam Career mode in F1 2020. Have been following a few YouTubers (tiametmarduk especially) on their journeys and it looks like a whole lot of fun.
What even is this season at this point? Hamilton nearly a second ahead of the first non-Mercedes, and apparently on slower tires? Unless Mercedes has reliability issues or incidents, or something weird happens with the weather, it's basically just a race for the final podium spot it seems.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
What even is this season at this point? Hamilton nearly a second ahead of the first non-Mercedes, and apparently on slower tires? Unless Mercedes has reliability issues or incidents, or something weird happens with the weather, it's basically just a race for the final podium spot it seems.
And copying last year's Mercedes is making RP a front runner. It's ridiculous.
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You definitely couldn't copy the inside structure of brake ducts from photos, you'd need a copy of the designs or a reference part. And, since brake ducts weren't a listed part last year, Racing Point would absolutely have had reference parts since they were using them on the car. Possessing them wasn't illegal, but using them as a reference to design the matching part for the 2020 RP would have been.
So, they may not have had the designs, but they definitely could have had one of the 2019 Merc ducts sitting on their design table while they drew up their own 2020 ducts. It's going to come down to whether they had the foresight to make their ducts' internals noticeably different from the Merc ones.
Also, for the ACC players out there, the GT4 pack is releasing tomorrow on Steam. No new tracks, but 11 new GT4 cars.
Steam | XBL
Bringing in Vettel, or even Russel, upsets a carefully crafted balance.
I really hope Bottas pulls a Rosberg
Aston is just going to be the title sponsor of whatever Racing India or Force Point ends up being called.
I don't know if I could see Vettel going there unless there's real evidence of another photocopy, he's not really a mercenary like Kimi and I think he'd rather retire than just slug it out in the midfield for a couple of years.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
With Red Bull it's clear that their main driver is Verstappen, and will be for quite some time. In that case, what use is throwing rookies in to fill the seat in the second car? With a rookie you're basically betting on them having enough natural pace and skill to be a future leader. In terms of set-up and car development, those are skills that improve with experience so a rookie isn't going to be of much use in that regard either. Right now RB are basically throwing any halfway promising driver into the second car simply because they don't have anyone else. For various reasons, they've let the most experienced drivers go and have nobody to fill the spot now. Their refusal to take anyone outside of their driver stable is really hurting them. Of the drivers they have, I'd probably lean towards Kyvat simply because he has more experience and has done a development role with Ferrari.
With Albon, while his pace may improve the lack of experience can't be fixed quickly. Vettel would give them a massive amount of experience and likely better pace as well. It would require the team to be a bit less "Verstappen + other", but think that would probably be best for all involved.
For comparison, I decided to look at the relative experience on a few of the teams by number of races:
Hamilton: 252
Bottas: 141
Vettel: 242
Leclerc: 44
Verstappen: 104
Albon: 23
Sainz: 104
Norris: 23
Perez: 178
Stroll: 64
Ricciardo: 173
Ocon: 52
Kyvat: 95
Gasly: 49
Russell: 23
Latifi: 2
It doesn't tell the full story of course, but does show how much experience Merc have in their driver pairing. Likewise shows how unfortunately little Williams have.
Maybe he and Kimi have been chatting and Kimi's been telling him how awesome it is just to race around in the midfield with no pressure to deliver wins and titles. All the racing excitement, none of the Italian media.
Racing Point or any other mid field team would be a whole different beast.
It does look increasingly like a move to RP though, which means Perez is likely to be booted out.
Still need to rearrange the leaderboard by lap time and award points for Hungary!
Steam | XBL
1:46.006
Steam | XBL
Had to throw on more downforce than I would have liked to get through Eau Rouge semi-reliably. Slightly off line and you're gone - especially if you're running light on rear wing.
Steam | XBL
Racing Point had both cars faster than both 2019 Mercs.
Mercedes managed to find a second and a half year on year in stable regulations.
There's only two possibilities, either Merc are not human beings, or they stopped developing last year and were sandbagging the entire year even while in the process of utter domination
Other notable mentions - Stroll gets credit for outqualifying Perez (although had to chuckle at Stroll parking the car back with the rest out of habit), likewise Vettel for outqualifying Leclerc and maintainging that record of 5th or higher. Ferrari better than Austria, but still only 5th at best. Even accounting for track evolution, Russell's lap was brilliant. Very good performance to get him up to P12.
That comparison with last year is very interesting Dhalphir. Wouldn't have thought Red Bull had got worse. There was some talk of an engine issue with Verstappen's car at the time? Albon just seemed slow and that outburst on the radio will not have helped. I am starting to wonder if they just have a bad car though. In Austria I heard a few mentions that it was somewhat tricky to control and prone to snap oversteer. It seems as if it might be a very fickle and unstable car. Verstappen was complaining of unusual and erratic handling throughout qualifying.
Mercedes operating on a different planet. There was a pretty standard shot of both cars leaving the pits together in Q3 that filled me with dread. Like "Oh shit they're rolling out, here they come". I think the black livery gives them a real Evil Empire feel
WHAT
Its 3.10 pm CEST. I am watching it via F1 TV - what channel depends on where you live. Its on Sky in the UK, don't know about the US. Its on RTL (free TV) and Sky in Germany.
I tried a hot lap today in Spa. Went in F1 2020 first. Standard setup, nothing custom - with a few assists on. Automatic gearbox, brake assistant on medium I believe, traction control on low? Not really sure. Definitely not the required "no assists" setup. I drive with a Thrustmaster wheel.
Managed a 1:45.990 after a few attempts and quite a few "your lap is invalidated because you went a hair outside the lines" stuff.
Switched over to F1 2019 after that. Only managed a 1:47:something there, again with a few assists on (if I leave traction control off, I might as well enter a drift competition).
So there is a noticeable difference between the 2 games - either the assists are better in F1 2020 or the car just handles better, but after those few tries there was about a 1.5 second difference for me.
Tried to advance my career in F1 2019 as well. In Baku. AI level is at 35% - so I easily went on pole and had about a 9 second advantage going into the pits. Managed to bin it 3 times in the second stint and finally gave up. Lets see what Barcelona brings. I'll probably try and up the difficulty to 50 or even 60%.
Or I abandon it altogether and dive into the MyTeam Career mode in F1 2020. Have been following a few YouTubers (tiametmarduk especially) on their journeys and it looks like a whole lot of fun.
And copying last year's Mercedes is making RP a front runner. It's ridiculous.
I am so glad RP are doing what they're doing.