In the round-up: Fernando Alonso says the new Ferrari is able to warm its tyres up more quickly than its predecessor.
Links
Alonso sees early signs of Ferrari tyre warm-up breakthrough (James Allen)
“I think we’ve managed to get more out of the tyres right from the first lap, which is something we weren’t able to do last year. What definitely needs improving is the aerodynamics and the reliability.”
Lotus ‘will bring best out of Raikkonen’ (Autosport)
Eric Boullier: “We tried to handle his personality and make sure that we don’t bother him too much with too many intrusions, and he’s a real racer. This team is full of proper racing people and he has fitted very well because we speak the same language.”
Alan Permane: “Everyone is straight back to working hard in preparation for the next test” (Lotus)
“The first as we’ve mentioned before is the reliability of the car, which has been very impressive so far. Although we had a few niggling issues there was nothing that stopped us running for a significant length of time. The second is the way the car responds to set-up changes. The E20 is clearly a nice package.”
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Comment of the day
GeeMac hopes HRT are on the verge of a breakthrough:
I’ve got a real soft spot for HRT. It has been years since we have had a team that seems to be desperate to hang on to its place on the grid, to hang on to its right to compete. In the current F1 world where major motor manufacturers come and go on the whim of their boards, it is truly refreshing.
They do seem to finally be going about things the right way. They’ve finally managed to get everyone under one roof and they’ve managed to bag a solid driver in Pedro de la Rosa. His experience in top level F1 car development will no doubt help push the team forward. I know their new car didn’t fail the crash tests by much, but I really wish they had. I liked the string of positive stories that were coming out of the team and it seemed like everyone was starting to get off their backs at last.
GeeMac
From the forum
- Rubens Barrichello is going to test for IndyCar team KV Racing again within the next two weeks
- We’re drawing up a list of the best F1 racing games
- India will host the final race on the 2012 GT1 World Championship calendar
- Tom_EC1 asks are the best nine drivers in the first nine cars?
Happy birthday!
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On this day in F1
Michael Schumacher had his first run in the Ferrari F2002 ten years ago today. Thanks largely to that car, he finished every race on the podium in 2002.
Image © Pirelli
ed24f1 (@ed24f1)
14th February 2012, 0:06
It’s all well and good that Ferrari can now warm up their tyres faster (and the cold conditions in Spain were a good test for that), but the question is if they can still look after the tyres for long periods as well, or if they’ve just shifted the whole ‘cycle’ forward a few laps.
UKFan (@)
14th February 2012, 1:02
Yes, thats whats bugging me aswell. They have never runed this suspension configuration before, still since 07 that Ferrari has cclaimed to be too soft on the tyres, hopefully they can mantain it, it was a nice characteristic but I think Ferrari prefers to have less issues with tyre warm up than the contrary, Paul Hembery also said that basically that only Mclaren and Red Bull were able to heat the tyres properly anyways since the abu dhabi GP we know that Red Bull had a clever system to warm-up the tyres instead of being related only on geometry so…. yep I dont know.
raymondu999 (@raymondu999)
14th February 2012, 5:08
@UKFan @ed24f1 While I have no firsthand experience on these Pirellis; I was talking about them the other day with several tyre engineer friends; and it appears that what the Pirellis do is degrade proportionally to how well you heat them. If you can heat them more; you’ll degrade them quicker. And vice versa.
raymondu999 (@raymondu999)
14th February 2012, 5:09
I meant @ukfanatic
MahavirShah (@mahavirshah)
14th February 2012, 11:07
Should’nt heating the tyres make them less prone to degradation as they would become less brittle so to speak?
raymondu999 (@raymondu999)
14th February 2012, 11:28
@mahavirshah I get what you’re saying – but f1 tyres don’t get anywhere near cold enough to “harden” and become brittle. Heating the tyres will cause more degradation in the actual rubber.
matt90
14th February 2012, 16:54
I assume that the rubber becomes softer, meaning it wears quicker.
raymondu999 (@raymondu999)
14th February 2012, 17:47
@matt90 to be honest we don’t know if that happens to the Pirellis. Wear… maybe. Depends. Wear is different from degradation. Wear is closer to graining
raymondu999 (@raymondu999)
14th February 2012, 17:51
@matt90 fundamentally; heating a tyre in itself doesn’t really “wear” a tyre. Wear is kind of like the eraser on your pencil – basically the more you use it, the less rubber there actually is on it. “degradation” is more the compound breaking down.
UKFan (@)
14th February 2012, 18:32
What you’re saying is that Ferraris capability of protecting the tyres was only because of the incapability of warming them up? So logically you would rather have the capability of using the tyres to the fullest, giving the driver the responsability of protecting the tyres. Renault said something in my view pretty stupid, you may have read it aswell, renault said that their 2012 units were capable of giving an advantage to users due to their better fuel economy, possibly trying to say that Renault is able to balance the ratio between power and economy enabling to run less fuel from the start which isnt a surprise still other teams seem to be able to start better at least from the line, they also said that they were behind in power, correct me if im wrong but if other power units are more powerfull they should be able to have a wider range of control of their engine economy because mostly economy is related to the power output.
raymondu999 (@raymondu999)
14th February 2012, 19:43
@UKFanatic an engine with more power does NOT automatically mean worse fuel consumption. It’s how efficiently the engine can convert that fuel into power that counts in that area.
Ferrari’s inability to heat the tyres was one of many things that helped them in protecting the tyres.
The start really has very little to do with the fuel weight the cars are carrying – that would be more down to the clutches; the gearing; the launch mapping and the car’s traction. Basically they would start the race with less fuel than the Mercedes/Ferrari engines, and that would, in turn, mean that they could lap quicker in the opening laps. There is a crossover though. A liter of F1 fuel weighs about 711 grams.
If we assume that Mercedes engines need 250 for a race distance, and the Renault needs 18 less (that was the quoted figure); while producing 15 (assumed) bhp less than the Merc, (which is assumed to have 765bhp over the Renault’s 750), over a 60 lap race,
a Renault engine runner, should, in terms of fuel weight vs engine power, have an advantage, as they have a power to weight ratio of 0.9595 (including the car’s 640KG). The Mercs would have 0.9567bhp/kg.
By lap 11, the Mercs would start having an advantage – as they would have 0.9896bhp/kg over the Renault’s 0.9894bhp/kg. By the last lap, the Merc would have 1.1903bhp/kg over the Renault’s 1.1675.
Basically the advantage would be on the Renault side for the first 10 laps, then Merc afterwards. Note that this isn’t taking into account the various other things that SHOULD come into the equation as well.
UKFan (@)
15th February 2012, 0:30
I know all about the starts and Red bulls tactic of starting with less fuel and then managed the advantage, anyways that piece of math is quite interesting though, still as you highlighted the equation is far more complex because of all factors, all different setting, conditions and so on, despite all that I bet that both Ferrari and Mclaren knew what were their perfect ratios and they also knew that they had more flexibility in terms of fuel efficiency because despite not being automatically yes taking in account what these teams do with lubricants an efficiency, horsepower is the biggest factor for fuel efficiency and both Mercedes and Ferrari should have been capable of saving fuel at least almost aswell as Renault but they could never surpass the other engines in terms of power and thats and advantage for both Ferrari and Mercedes finally i just wanted to say that these comments by Renault arent that smart despite trying to emphasize how smart their strategy was, and I just see that as marketing.
egsgeg
14th February 2012, 6:48
Lets hope they dont repeat the overheating issues Merc had last year.
JPQuesado (@joao-pedro-cq)
14th February 2012, 0:08
I really hope Ferrari haven’t gone too radical with this F2012. I would very much like to see Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari, and two or three more if possible, all close on top.
NinjaBadger (@ninjabadger)
14th February 2012, 0:38
Agreed. I don’t want to think they’ve gone radical for the sake of being radical
JCost (@jcost)
14th February 2012, 10:06
That would be great. Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes and Renault should all have race winning machines so we could enjoy the hyped-up circumstance of having 5 WDC to the most.
Both Alonso and Hamilton deserve another shot with a competitive car.
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
14th February 2012, 13:39
@joAo-pedro-cq I don’t think they have gone too radical to be honest, if the signs are there that the tyres are heating up as desired then that’s one of their biggest 2011 problems out of the way.
vjanik
14th February 2012, 14:17
What do you mean by too radical? They had to do something radical to catch red Bull. There is no point sticking to something thats just not working.
The question is has it paid off. But there is no doubt that starting with blank slate was the right thing to do.
Robbie (@robbie)
14th February 2012, 17:29
Agreed, vjanik…they had to do something…and ‘radical’ is a term being used by an armchair observer…perhaps Ferrari would use the term ‘necessary’ to compete against the likes of Adrian Newey.
Calum (@calum)
14th February 2012, 0:11
I think it’s brilliant that HRT get slagged off for being basically crap, yet they’ve never actually finished last in the season standings in the two years they have competed.
mantolwen (@mantolwen)
14th February 2012, 0:43
2010: They got more 14th place finishes than Virgin but only got them in races when all Virgins had retired.
2011: Fairly beat Virgin in Canada for 13th place, and would have had 14th or 15th for Karthikeyan if he hadn’t cut the corner.
So they did improve from 2010 to 2011. I think HRT are underrated.
Eggry (@eggry)
14th February 2012, 10:05
Considering their cars over 2 seasons are almost identical and rarely updated, it should be said Virgin went backward rather than HRT improved. Funny. Even in 2010 performance difference between Virgin and HRT was consisntent while Virgin updated their car many times.
Flying Lobster 27
14th February 2012, 15:45
And I thought Virgin’s cars looked very similar from one year to the next too. As a joke, I reckoned it was due to the CFD design: feed a computer similar rules, it’ll draw a similar car. I don’t think anyone in F1 will be calling on Nick Wirth again though.
raymondu999 (@raymondu999)
14th February 2012, 23:03
CFD doesn’t design the car. CFD is just the evaluation tool. The human designers still have to do the grunt work. The design is just fed into CAD which does all of the calculative work.
sato113 (@sato113)
14th February 2012, 0:24
@Geemac
but I thought you liked HRT? :D
GeeMac (@geemac)
14th February 2012, 5:16
I typed it up at work! Should say “I really hoped they has PASSED THEM.”
Doh!
F1Yankee (@f1yankee)
14th February 2012, 2:57
oh, is that all?
Gibo is driving (@)
14th February 2012, 5:53
Yea, my thoughts exactly. It does sound as if the “package” is not exactly right
dennis (@dennis)
14th February 2012, 9:11
+1
topdowntoedown (@topdowntoedown)
14th February 2012, 11:17
“And the power. And the grip.
But it’s a nice colour!”
GeeMac (@geemac)
14th February 2012, 5:17
Woohoo! COTD on Valentines Day…the internet loves me! ;-)
BasCB (@bascb)
14th February 2012, 9:40
We all love you @geemac!
Fixy (@)
14th February 2012, 10:32
@geemac <3
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
14th February 2012, 13:42
@geemac Nice COTD! Agree 100% with you. Toyota and BMW can leave with a moments notice and have far from a shoe-string budget. I have a lot of respect for HRT and what they’re doing.
Brandz (@brandz)
14th February 2012, 8:22
*pirelli
Dan Thorn (@dan-thorn)
14th February 2012, 8:22
Totally agree with the COTD. I really like HRT, they’ve got that ‘plucky backmarker’ image that the likes of Minardi had and they really feel like ‘an F1 team’ as opposed to ‘a car manufacturer masquerading as an F1 team’.
MahavirShah (@mahavirshah)
14th February 2012, 8:29
Another day another Raikonnen story by Autosport.
Proesterchen (@proesterchen)
14th February 2012, 9:23
I’d rather have an arrow to the knee than read another in-between interview.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
14th February 2012, 10:04
@Proesterchen What’s an “in-between interview”?
Proesterchen (@proesterchen)
14th February 2012, 10:19
Ah, the downfalls of self-editing.
I was initially saying I’d rather see more days of pre-season testing, but felt that wasn’t quite snarky enough. Of course, in editing the first part, I robbed the second of any context or meaning. My bad.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
14th February 2012, 10:44
Ah OK! I thought it was some new journalistic term I hadn’t learned…
sato113 (@sato113)
14th February 2012, 10:58
Chuck Norris took an arrow to the knee, then became an adventurer
ajokay (@)
14th February 2012, 9:47
Did de la Rosa find his pipe yet?
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
14th February 2012, 10:04
@ajokay You’re not getting two COTDs out of the same gag!
Fixy (@)
14th February 2012, 10:32
Lol @keithcollantine!
ajokay (@)
14th February 2012, 10:47
Awww No valentines day love…
=(
dennis (@dennis)
14th February 2012, 10:39
@ajokay
The new regulations demand that the pipe exits in a certain angle and so de la Rosa’s pipe is currently under review by the FIA for breaking the spirit of the rules.
GeeMac (@geemac)
14th February 2012, 10:59
Ok, now that was genius. :)
Robbie (@robbie)
14th February 2012, 18:49
Lol…isn’t it more important that the pipe enter in a certain angle? Especially on Valentine’s Day?
Dom
14th February 2012, 21:39
+1
Djxo2
14th February 2012, 9:55
that ferrari realy is ugly
dennis (@dennis)
14th February 2012, 10:48
Now this is something no one has mentioned before…
sato113 (@sato113)
14th February 2012, 10:59
http://cfgfactory.com/images/i/4f2d27b992a2a_tumblr_lvrp8bU9AV1qibz0jo1_500.png
Gagnon (@johnniewalker)
14th February 2012, 13:18
Best F1 Racing Simulator – Live For Speed
Bernard (@bernard)
14th February 2012, 13:24
Alonso sees early signs of Ferrari tyre warm-up breakthrough – so it’s nothing to do with Pirelli making this years tyres softer Fernando?
Bernard (@bernard)
14th February 2012, 13:27
Oddly the Paul Hembery interview link I included was removed from the previous post.
Christopher (@twiinzspeed)
14th February 2012, 13:43
Here is a good article about the differences in Pushrod vs Pullrod suspensions. Is this why Ferrari went old school to heat up the front tires??
http://www.vivaf1.com/blog/?p=10173
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
14th February 2012, 13:43
Another thing about HRT, on top of @GeeMac ‘s COTD, HRT are the only one of the 2010 debut teams that have retained the same name. That’s not a dig at Caterham or Marussia, but it is an example of how seriously they’re taking things.
GeeMac (@geemac)
14th February 2012, 14:03
Is that true though? Didn’t HRT “change” their official name from “Hispania Racing Team” to “HRT F1 Team”?
They did also technically start life as Campos Meta 1… ;)
topdowntoedown (@topdowntoedown)
14th February 2012, 14:23
Or how they’ve failed to sell the team to anyone.
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
14th February 2012, 23:40
@topdowntoedown Probably not, but that’s no bad thing, especially if you’ve beaten your nearest competitor two.seasons running.
topdowntoedown (@topdowntoedown)
14th February 2012, 13:55
Saw this earlier elsewhere:
“Roses are red
Violets are blue
To Felipe from Nando
I’m faster than you.”
Happy Valentine’s, F1 lovers. :)
Denzel Brown (@lewiswdc11)
14th February 2012, 13:55
This will help Ferrari massively in quali but in the race I would rather have these warm up problem as it can extend the life of the tyres.
Infected Crayons
14th February 2012, 15:07
Meanwhile, in Bahrain
Infected Crayons
14th February 2012, 15:11
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17025148
Link did not appear in the last post
jon93 (@jonferrari93)
14th February 2012, 17:44
i hope they give red bull a good run for their money