F1 Fanatic round-up: 11/8/2010

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We’ve already got F1 Fanatic T-shirts on sale and soon they should be followed by F1 Fanatic mugs too – have a look at this picture of an early prototype by Luke of Unlap.

Here’s today’s round-up:

Links

Practice Makes Perfect – McLaren’s Pitstop Team at MTC pre-European Grand Prix (Youtube)

Splitters Explained (Scarbsf1’s Blog)

“One of the explanations for the low wing ride height on the RB6 are suggested to be the splitter is allowing lower ride height by deflecting. Certainly trackside images suggest the Red Bull and the Ferrari are running significantly more rake in the set up at speed (i.e. nose down). Other teams suggest that this level of rake and low front wing ride height cannot be achieved with normal rear ride heights. But do not suggest how the car may be able to run that low. But the inference is that the splitter is in some way deflecting to allow this. I’ve not seen the detail of Red Bull’s splitter mounting, but I doubt they are able to deflect the splitter without any obvious compliance in its mounting or undue wear to the skid blocks.”

First major truck racing event held on Russian soil (RT)

Hermann Tilke’s new track in Russia has opened with a round of the European Truck Racing championship. The video below includes comments from FIA vice president Graham Stoker:

Comment of the day

Has to be bosyber for the inspired phrase ‘downforce monster’:

Red Bull already have a downforce monster, they made the trade-off with the extra drag that produces leaving them down on top speed themselves. Renault themselves do not have a problem with their engine, after all.

So far Red Bull’s choices gave them the car on the grid that got round almost all tracks the fastest. I don’t resent them for that, I think it is good work by the team. They clearly made the right development choices there, others have to catch up. But they are now, again, asking to have that downside to their winning choice eliminated – why would anyone else want to oblige?

And what purpose would it serve? To make them truly invincible, apart from engine failures due to the tinkering? What is in it for the FIA, for the FOTA, for the general F1 fans? Engine freeze was a practical matter, not an attempt at creating a spec engine. Everyone gets to work with what they have got – they can try to request permission for changes, as Ferrari has managed to obtain, sure why not, but if other teams decline to give that permission, no one should force them to, for some imaginary single engine spec, which does not exist. Red Bull should learn to live with their package as others have been forced to.
bosyber

From the forum

TomD11 asks an interesting question about the 1982 F1 race at Long Beach.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Glue!

On this day in F1

Happy birthday to Lucas di Grassi too, who is 26 today!

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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45 comments on “F1 Fanatic round-up: 11/8/2010”

  1. https://www.racefans.net/forum/topic.php?id=273#post-4280

    I counted up a tally of nationalities earlier of people from the Forum. Obviously, Britain made up a lot of the list, but there were also people from all over the world- Argentina, Brazil, Slovenia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, America, Italy etc… It’s amazing how people of all nationalities and languages use this site!

    1. Don’t forget down under! Australians and New Zealanders are here too!

      1. Ned thanks for mentioning Bangladesh. Many people don’t often realize that there is a country where there are few F1 fans. There are some fans from Bangladesh in this blog or forum but they usually aren’t regular. If there are any please do leave a message.

        1. fans from uae are there too.

    2. I think Keith could make some analysis about readers’ nationalities. (before or after his honeymoon…)
      Would be interesting to have a look.

    3. and Kuwait, and Kieth how about making a poll that says which country are you from? so we can have a better idea of the readers.

      1. This would be really fun great idea to to, but….

        With the unfortunate few people people who repeatedly suggest, all of you are brits this, or the Italian reader was giving favouritism to the Columbian and what not, I fear that if Keith did it, it would be nothing but a mine field in the comments…

        1. Well we could have a World Map,and “we stick pins” in our country.This maybe more fair for than having your nationality after the name?

  2. Great to see a truck racing video in the round up for the second time in a matter of days! It looks like a lot of fun… I predict that within a few years the Formula Truck will have replaced F1 as the worlds premier motorsport category!

    1. Gives new meaning to “doing the ton ” :-)

    2. Truckracing, the last motorsport where they have 1000 hp and more! A shame they have to curb those trucks to about 160 kmh for safety reasons.

      That Smolensk circuit looks pretty good as well. Not bad for Tilke

      And i love the Russian voice over who was probably trained watching US sport channels for his english!

      1. LOL, yes, that commenter is great. It is scary seeing those big trucks go trough the corners, seeming so close to loosing it. If they were not capped at 160 kmh, we would see at least a few trucks missing a corner after each straight!

        Jay, comment of the day.

    3. fecklessmoron (@)
      11th August 2010, 15:52

      Formula Truck is so aero independent that I’m sure the drivers would complain it was too easy to overtake.

      Does anyone have a link that shows what the layout of the Russian track is?

      I would love to know what it looks like.

      1. fecklessmoron (@)
        11th August 2010, 15:54

        Sorry, just found the link below.

  3. Here’s another take on things: the special analysis on engines that was featured on James Allen’s blog last year:
    http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2009/11/analysis-of-f1-engine-performance-in-2009/

    Most teams reached the conclusion, based on acoustic analysis and GPS, that the spread of engine power from the best to the worst engines was less than 2.5% this year. This means that, if the Mercedes is believed to have had 755hp, the least powerful engine [which was Toyota, by the way, not Renault] was 18hp down, which is worth just under 3/10ths of a second per lap.

    And yet Christian Horner was claiming that Renault was 20-30 HP off of Mercedes, despite the engines being the same since then. That’s 2-18 HP more than an engine which was worse than the one they have now.

    Of course, the figures might not be correct, but I don’t see how Red Bull would have access to more accurate analysis than the one used – that method would have probably been used instead anyway, if that was the case.

    Like bosyber says, with the amount of downforce the RB6 produces, most of even the inflated figure of 20-30 HP can be explained away.

    1. Not entirely correct. Engines can, and have been modifed for “reliability” reasons, so the power figures produced last year would vary a little bit from this year. All in the name of reliability, of course.

      1. I doubt it’s the amount Horner spins it to be. Actually with all the Red Bull spin this year they should harness it and they’d have no problems with top speed!

        1. I reckon that the suggestion by Horner to put all engines on a dyno and to check their power/torque etc. is not a bad idea. The testing can be done behind closed doors and the results could be given in terms of ‘best engine/worst engine’ rather than naming the particular brands.

          This would end the dispute once and for all. Allegedly (at least what the aussie F1 media have said anyway) that it was Mercedes who baulked at that idea.

          I wonder why…

          1. maybe their engine is not as good as it is said to be?

          2. I don’t know for sure – but shouldn’t a dyno test be done with the whole exhaust system attached? And maybe also the teams engine mappings? Tuning of engines is usually for the most part tweaking the engine mapping to give the best results for what you want to do with the car – so it might be very team dependant. Or maybe I show here that I never did anything like that, myself :-p

    2. Interestingly, Ferrari claimed to have found about 30 hp with their reliability and fuel saving efforts over the winter.

      But the biggest improvement was said to be due to improvements in lubricants.

    3. Nobody knows the correct figures – we can only speculate and decide whether to believe or not to what comes from the paddock – but if RBR issue was so bad, they would’ve whine a lot more about it. Apparently, Renault F1 team has no issues with the engines itself – RBR is already using the engine at its max, so they had several issues. Besides all this, Renault as a manufacturer already had a chance to alter the engine. RBRs, however, are not complaining about the less fuel they carry on the start line, right ? As opposed to the heavy Ferrari and Maclaren …

    1. Magnificent Geoffrey
      11th August 2010, 3:07

      Apparently, Tilke got his inspiration for this track’s layout after he trod on a paperclip.

      1. It really does look a bit like a paperclip. But i suppose it’s to short for F1 (3361 m, that means doing about 90 laps in a GP), although i would not mind a short one.

        Altough Bernie should have a try at getting the teams to do some testing or mini-race there to test the possibilities of a Russian GP.

    2. Is this track going to be used for F1. If so, the last corner is going to be awesome.

      1. i agree, good prep for an overtake down or after the straight

        1. Are you sure the cars would be able to follow each other closely around such a sweeping high-speed corner?

          1. They do around the Parabolica at Monza…

      2. I think it’s category two, which is not suitable for F1.

  4. US Williams Fan
    11th August 2010, 6:48

    Mugs are a good idea.

    Just got my shirt – a little snug. I guess the Euro sizes are a little smaller. Or perhaps us Americans are just *ahem* rounder than our European friends.

    1. actually the logo really needs some work. the mug could use a border line or something in addition to the plain letters

  5. With the number of poles and front row lockouts RBR have had this season, with Wunderkind having won a couple and Webber having won four, I think RBR’s request for equalisation will–and should–fall on deaf ears. BTW, has anyone offered them some cheese for their whine ?

    ————————————

    Truck racing is actually quite interesting. I first saw it several years ago. Don’t know what the current tech spec is, but when I watched it, they had water-cooled rear brakes. All the trucks were using their windshield wipers, LOL. No, really, they did!

    1. “Wunderkind” That’s what Schumacher was called eh?…

    2. “I think RBR’s request for equalisation will–and should–fall on deaf ears. BTW, has anyone offered them some cheese for their whine ?”

      I think RBR are just trying to divert attention .. surely they cant be that naive to think that equalisation tests would actually work

  6. Looks like McLaren looked at the same information Keith presented us here a few races ago (with McLaren being somewhat behind on Mercedes and Red Bull in pitstop speed).
    From that video they badly needed the practice, there are “huge” differences between those shown.

    1. Looking at it again, you are right, they definitely aren’t consistently fast, varying between low 4 to over 5 seconds, it seems.

      1. Mclaren had the fastest stop that stood for the a long time at the early season (3.4 LH in malaysia). Also Jenson button was 2nd quickest in Hungary. I think you are just focusing on a bad spell they had 2/3rds through the first half of this season.

        1. Actually I think being inconsistent (very fast at times, but slow at others) is an even better reason to train the stops than being consistently slow.

  7. I had a reread of the “splitters explained” and just had to ask weather anyone here knows what’s the device (looks like some dynamo in a drop form) just under to nosecone and at the top/in front of the splitter support in the first picture (http://scarbsf1.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/p1010561.jpg?w=300&h=225 )

  8. Mid season, so it is about time my pre-season prophecy to fullfill: a political scandal including Flavio Briattore.

    1. Maybe he recieved a diamond studded G-string from an African dictator

  9. After years of Silverstone bashing by Bernie, are we in for another 4 years of Interlagos bashing (their contract runs another 4-5 years)?

    http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns22517.html

    1. “worst circuit”??? By whose standards? From what I’ve seen, Brazil keeps producing great racing.

      1. Of course it’s the worst. It’s extremely popular with fans and produces great racing. This means it’s more difficult for Bernie to drop it, giving him less leverage with regards to how much money he can get. And if there’s anyone who needs more money during the worst recession of the last 70 years, it’s Bernie Ecclestone!

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