Webber: Clutch and tyres key to poor starts

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: Mark Webber gives insight into his poor starts this year.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Mark Webber column (BBC)

“When the lights go out, we quickly release one clutch paddle on the steering wheel and feed in a second gradually – that’s the one the driver uses to modulate the grip of the rear wheels. This year, we have seen the biggest fluctuation in starts for years, which is purely down to the new Pirelli tyres and how they perform off the line. ”

Bahrain set to spend its way out of unrest (FT)

“Last Saturday, however, around 83 per cent of voters shunned polls held for 14 of the 18 seats vacated by Al Wefaq, the main Shia opposition group. The other four seats were won uncontested. The by-election appears to have undermined Manama’s bid to put the political process back on track, and observers fear that political stalemate will continue to stymie the economy.”

Dietrich Mateschitz: Red Bull’s F1 returns show no sign of decelerating (The Independent)

“[Toro Rosso is not for sale] although partnerships would not be ruled out, as long as the partner is the right one.”

Selling Toro Rosso (Joe Saward)

“Mateschitz told someone I know and trust that he has already sold a minority shareholding of the team to the Abu Dhabi investment company Aabar, and that this company has an option to take over the majority of the shares in the team.”

Kubica 2012 decision due within weeks (Autosport)

Robert Kubica will be ready to inform Renault about his chances of being fit to race in 2012 within the next six weeks, says his manager Daniele Morelli.”

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Comment of the day

F1Yankee’s pithy take on Bernie Ecclestone’s latest dig at the Formula 1 Teams’ Association:

Sounds like “When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.”

From the forum

Some interesting details from Fer no. 65 on the first race car in Antarctica.

Happy birthday!

No F1 Fanatic birthdays today. If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.

On this day in F1

Mika Hakkinen scored his final F1 victory ten years ago today in the United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis.

Hakkinen qualified second but started from fourth on the grid following a penalty for exiting the pits under a red light during a practice session.

Michael Schumacher led but was passed by Juan Pablo Montoya, only for the Williams driver’s car to break down.

Using a one-stop strategy, Hakkinen took the lead off Schumacher and became secure in first when Rubens Barrichello dropped out following his second stop. Schumacher took second in front of David Coulthard.

The race was well-attended despite being held less than three weeks after the Setepmber 11th terror attacks.

Here’s a video from qualifying for the race featuring Fernando Alonso taking provisional pole position in a Minardi. Look out for Schumacher keeping an eye on the driver he would battle for the championship five years later.

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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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64 comments on “Webber: Clutch and tyres key to poor starts”

  1. Too much wheel spin

    1. drop the “wheel” and you would have had it right.

  2. Daniele Morelli says a lot of things, doesn’t he..

    Anyway, I do hope Bob is back in 2012 and is as fast as he was prior to his crash.

  3. Disheartening news about a former CART champion:
    http://espn.go.com/racing/indycar/story/_/id/7035001/al-unser-jr-clocked-100-mph-charged-dwi

    And you thought Hamilton doing burnouts was bad.

    1. This isn’t a frivolous crime. Anybody drink driving should be banned for a long period of time.

      Whilst people like Al Unser Jr may not care much to consider their their own lives, it’s innocent people who ultimately pay the price for their stupidity.

    2. I saw this news a little earlier tonight on another forum. I can’t tell you how saddening it is for me considering he was a HUGE childhood hero of mine. :/

      1. wow, drunken 3 am canyonero drag racing. and a 2-time offender, too. still, the professional consequences will be stiffer than the law.

  4. I’d say Webber should spend a day at an airfield just practicing starts – which I’m surprised he hasn’t already done.

    1. He wouldn’t be able to use the current car..

      1. You can use current cars for straight line testing, and this is all that it would be.

        However, if the problem is the tyres, it might be hard to effectively test the problem.

        1. You’re allowed a limited amount of straightline testing

        2. If the problem is the tyres, how come Vettel hasn’t had the same issue? The problem is Mark.

          1. Because the problem is the interaction between Mark and the relevant parts of the car. Clearly Mark could learn from Sebastian, and a day of straightline testing would certainly help him, if Red Bull has any test days left.

          2. I agree. Mark is just blaming the tools instead of admitting that Vettel has adjusted to the new tyres, and he hasn’t.

    2. I agree I said this to myself a few times earlier in the year when, you saw onboard shots of his bad starts. I thought he’d be trying to mock test some starts…guess not.

  5. I don’t think he should hurry if possible he can take some race in GP2 or even some Friday running in 2012,so that he can have full full preparation to attack for 2013,meanwhile his management can talk with teams like Red Bull, Ferrari or even Mercedes for 2013.

  6. Just looking through some of those Youtube clips and came to this one of Montoya and Schumacher in 2003

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEyVJJrKPk0&feature=player_embedded#!

    Is it me or is that a young Vettel in the Ferrari pits at 1:49 – certainly looks like him

    1. It could be him

    2. Great spot! Definitely looks like Seb.

      1. Makes sense too.

        He is wearing a Red Bull cap and top. In 2003 RB didn’t have a team, Schumacher knew him. He was in with Schumacher’s Ferrari team.

        1. Red Bull didn’t have an F1 team in 2003 but they sponsored lots of drivers in junior formulas.

          This included the young Sebastian Vettel, then driving for Eiffelland Racing in Formula BMW ADAC which was one of the support races at the European GP.

          So it’s entirely plausible for Vettel to have been in the pits that day wearing Red Bull gear.

    3. Wow! what a spot! It does look like him.

    4. He’s identical! Nice spot!

  7. I think Webbo forgets that we all know that Vet has the same car with the same clutches n tyres as his. His excuse doesnt really hold water.

    1. same software?

      1. Software has nothing to do with starts. There is no traction control or launch control these days. If you’re referring to software regarding setup, I’m pretty sure they have the identical version for both drivers, or else, Mark would be whining non-stop

        1. start engine map settings is software todfoddy. cornering and engine map feeding the diffuser is software. software, software, everywhere

          1. Thats what I meant by ‘setup’. Engine mapping to control exhaust gases fed to the diffuser has nothing to do with getting off the line cleanly. So whats your point?

    2. In F1, “the same car” is assumed because of identical pantwork. There is a lo that goes on that makes that assumption anything but the case.
      During the formation lap, Vettel and Webber went over the exact same spot on the Singapore track, Vettels skid blocks were generating sparks continousy for about 2 – 3 seconds, while Webbers car underbody hardly made any contact with the road. This on a car witha heavy fuel load.
      At Monza, they were running different gear ratios. The driver doesn’t choose his gear ratios.
      When Vettel wrecked his car during free practice some months back, pictures later surfaces of 2 cables running through the nose of the car that no one could explain the reason for them being there. Well I have a strong feeling those cables are used to flex the nose or frong wing.

      1. lol, sounds like it’s tinfoil hat time!

      2. Those are sensor cables. Not used for anything else. Also Webber actually said he chose his own gear ratios in Monza. They would have made him faster in qualifying.

        Which part of the formation lap are you talking about? If they were sparking on the formation lap, then they would be disqualified by the end of the race probably, given that you’re only allowed 1mm of wear

    3. He is admitting that it is his problem not the cars…

    4. I think Webbo forgets that we all know that Vet has the same car with the same clutches n tyres as his. His excuse doesnt really hold water.

      At the Italian Grand Prix, an Australian commentator asked Christian Horner if he could explain why Webber was getting sluggish starts, citing Spa as a particular example. Horner described the processes that the drivers have to go through in order to get the car ready for the start, and said there is a very fine window that the driver must get into in order to execute a respectable start. It wasn’t obvious from seeing the footage of the start in Belgium, but Sebastian Vettel was within one hundred RPM of bogging down on the start line the way Webber did.

      1. Maybe lack of communication within Red Bull explains this. Assuming that Vettel and Webber drive “equal” cars and Vettel is better off the grid, Webber should ask him how he makes his start work… just saying

        1. No, Webber knows exactly what he has to do. He’s just missing the range that he needs to be in and ends up bogging down on the line. If he needs to ask someone what he should do to make a better start, he probably shouldn’t be in Formula 1. He knows what he needs to do – he just needs to get it right.

          1. Apparently the drivers engineer asks the driver to do a series of burnouts just before they take their starting position and from the telemetry decides what settings the driver dials in for the clutches. According to Christian H. Webber was within 100 rpm of the revs Vettel used to get a good start while Webbers was awful, 100rpm difference in an engine turning at over 15,000 rpm is about 0.7% so it seems Webber has that part right, could the difference be in the clutch settings? Does Webber have a different engineer this year? he had no problems with starts last year.

          2. One explanation I can think of is that as Webber is bigger/heavier he needs slightly different settings or a tad more pull to get going.
            Who knows, its really in the range of +/- 1% with the margins everywhere.

          3. he’s missing the range or the engine map is missing the range

    5. yet, if you read the whole article, you can see him admitting it’s his problem, not the car…

    6. Well, I suppose it narrows down what’s styming Mark about these starts. Other drivers in similar scenarios have cited electronics, grip (translation: did not do the research during formation lap) or simply said it’s a difficult process…

  8. I’ll be honest… that 2001 Minardi was a damn good looking car. The angular and blocky style to the whole thing just makes it feel so aggressive, fast and well… cool!

    1. That V10 sound!!! wow, just wow…I know that Minardi never won a championship but it would still be an awesome pleasure to drive one, any one of those V10’s!!!

      1. We all loved Minardi as the little scrappers they were.

        Shame you can’t really say the same about the current backmarkers (except for maybe Lotus).

  9. woohoo cotd, and ‘pithy’ for bonus points :D

    i’m not sure what to make of webber’s comment on tires, especially since there’s another rb7 that fares much better. after the first few blown starts i would have cranked things up a bit.

    as we all know, driver aids like traction control are forbidden. also as we all know, these guys are very clever. they obtain the effects of forbidden technology with what is permitted. specifically, they carefully balance the engine’s power to what they expect to be the tire’s grip, and ta-da! launch control the hard way. this engine setting must be used for the entire 1st lap, if i recall correctly. this trick is also good for making sure you take corners with lots of throttle.

    when is the last time someone lit up the rears on an f1 racing start?

    1. You are on to something there, I also thought it is highly feasible to simulate TC with the ECU mappings…

  10. Can’t help but think Webber is stating the obvious a little! We want to know why you can’t get a decent start out of them.

    1. That said, I should really read the full article ;)

  11. “Mateschitz told someone I know and trust that he has already sold a minority shareholding of the team to the Abu Dhabi investment company Aabar, and that this company has an option to take over the majority of the shares in the team.”

    This might be true, but reading the full article, I found this rather worrying trend:

    “You will read in various places today that Dietrich Mateschitz is telling the world that Scuderia Toro Rosso is NOT for sale. If you follow all these stories back to their source, they all come from the same journalist, who has been selling the same story into different newspapers and reporting it on different websites.”

    That’s fine. But then …

    “My source is a business person, the other is a hack, looking to make a buck.”

    Ouch. This whole article seems to be a case of ‘my source can beat up your source’.

    And people wonder why I dislike Saward. Here I thought he’d recovered from the Liuzzi episode …

    1. To be fair to Saward, in his conclusion he clearly states that he does not want to get into a debate of who has better information (thinking he himself is right is no crime, its what you yourself do all the time ;-) )

      I am not really bothered which story is right and which is wrong and I am really not into any competition between two journalists so at the end of the day it is not that important to anyone. Still, it would be nice to have the matter settled one way or the other,

  12. According to Jon Noble’s Twitter feed, Aldo Costa and Geoff Willis will join Mercedes GP as part of their technical staff.

  13. It’s all down to throttle control Mark Webber.

  14. Mika Hakkinen scored his final F1 victory ten years ago today in the United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis.

    The one thing I hate about the “on this day in F1” bits is whenever I remember watching the races from years ago as it makes me feel old.

  15. A bizarre accident in Rallye France, with Kimi Raikkonen crashing into Henning Solberg and ending up in a ditch while Solberg prepared for a time control ahead of the third stage of the rally.

    1. That’s odd…! Maybe he took revenge of what happened in Canada 2008?

      1. Why on earth would he do that? Henning Solberg wasn’t driving that McLaren …

    2. It gets stranger and stranger: first of all, Raikkonen has simply up and left. Based on reports of the accident, the car was not so much damaged as it was immobilised. It could have easily continued under super-rally regulations. But Raikkonen simply went home to Geneva and left his team manager to explain things. I find this disturbing if he wants to get back into Formula 1; what would happen if his car failed in free practice? Could he be bothered to see out the weekend?

      Secondly, Raikkonen (or at least his team manager) and Henning Solberg are telling two very different versions of the accident. This is how it went down according to Solberg:

      “I was just driving in a straight line on a straight road. I wasn’t weaving to warm up the tyre or anything like that, just driving.

      “I felt the hit from the back of the car, but it was soft, not a big impact or anything. When I looked in the mirror I saw Raikkonen flying off and into the ditch. I don’t know what happened.”

      But this is Raikkonen’s account of the incident (courtesy of his team manager):

      “Henning had passed Kimi on the road section. They were both weaving to warm up their tyres, but Kimi had to go back past Henning because he was going to start the stage before him.

      “Henning had stopped weaving and was in a straight line to the right side of the road. Kimi thought he had left the space for him to pass him, so he went by. Just as he was passing him, Henning braked hard to try and warm up the brakes.”

      Both accounts contradict one another almost entirely. Up goes the weird quotient, I guess.

      1. When I heard he had just left, it made the impression on me of Kimi wanting to put an end to a (in his eyes very disappointing) Rallye drive and get on with something different.

        1. True, the popular belief is that he’s had enough, but at the same time, it’s not a particularly Formula 1-friendly image. From what I understand, he simply up and left and let everyone else deal with the problem. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had no idea where Raikkonen was until he called them from the road, already halfway to Geneva.

      2. I don’t think Kimi would be put off by an accident in free practise. This is more analogous to what might happen if Kimi was in a first-corner incident. Could he be relied upon to try charging up the field in an attempt to claim the bottom end of the points, particularly if he’d been expecting to be in with a shot of mid-points or the podium?

        The accident doesn’t worry me so much – that could perhaps be put down to one or both parties not paying sufficient attention, which every driver falls foul of every so often. It’s what Kimi did afterwards that worries me.

  16. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wCv3fbuVUI

    Onboard view of a flying lap at Buddh Circuit :)) I think it’s quite a lot to do there……

    1. Nice find.
      The track surface might be down, but it looks like there’s a huge amount still do – even if it’s mostly clearing up and cosmetics. And they have how long to go before the FIA inspection?
      It looks pretty difficult to pick ut braking points and lanscape features in some places, and that’s from the height of a motorcycle. From a single-seater height, it would be far more difficult.

    2. nice footage!

  17. A very interesting take on the Bahrain situation in that FT article.

    Its clear, that the Bahrain authorities feel the need to do something after those turnouts with the mid term elections.

    I find it very worrying, that on the one hand we hear and see (not too frequently but consistently doing so) about how this BICI is investigating the whole situation (implying this will only put more blaim on the opposition.).
    But on the other hand Bahrain representatives, the state television and regime supporting bloggers have been all over the net and media trying to tell their own people and the world how horrible those convicted doctors and other protestors behaved and its only reasonable they have been punished for that.

    In effect making a farce of that thorough investigation by BICI that will come out months after all “responsible” for the unrest have been convicted while the government/regime tries to push the blame from itself.
    Lets just hope this does not blow up in the face of an F1 race next year. In the current situation I wouldn’t be supprised if protests start again either in February or to coincide with the GP to get maximum coverage.

  18. Gone are the days when a driver could get into the car of his team mate.

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