FIA’s Massa tyre measurement was wrong – Williams

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Williams explain their grounds for protesting Felipe Massa’s disqualification from the Brazilian Grand Prix.

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Alexander Wurz as Manor team principal sounds good to some:

It would be brilliant if Alex Wurz takes over at Manor. It could be seen as a passing of the baton from true racers like Lowdon and Booth to Wurz.

I’ve always admired Wurz for the way he has conducted himself on and off track. He has proven to be very level headed in his comments and a true professional, a great ambassador for motorsport in general. His position as the GPDA chairman shows he remains a highly influential figure.

With Manor ushering in a new era, getting the likes of Wurz on board to lead the charge is not only symbolic, but perhaps a prerequisite? It would be wrong to place much fault on Fitzpatrick for deciding to dispense with Booth and Lowdown, as they’ve probably brought the team as far forward as they can. With brighter prospects looming next year, perhaps it was a good decision to do away with the old? We’ve seen this happen at football clubs over the years (Alan Curbishley at Charlton comes to mind). Football club chairmen see this as prerequisites to take their clubs to the next level, sometimes it works, sometimes in doesnt.

A couple weeks ago, I was disappointed when the news broke about the imminent changes at Manor as I was expecting some “businessy” type bean counter to be made team principal. In light of this news with Wurz being linked, I fully support it. I cant seem to think of a better person to take over the reigns to drive Manor ahead. There aren’t many drivers out there with Wurz’s experience and knowledge.
Jay Menon (@jaymenon10)

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On this day in F1

Several future F1 drivers tested Formula One cars in the Young Drivers Test which began on this day five years ago. Formula Renault 3.5 driver Daniel Ricciardo for Red Bull, Jules Bianchi for Ferrari, Esteban Gutierrez for Sauber and Jean-Eric Vergne for Toro Rosso. A few talents who haven’t raced in F1 yet were also in action: Sam Bird for Mercedes, Antonio Felix da Costa for Force India and Dean Stoneman for Williams.

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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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50 comments on “FIA’s Massa tyre measurement was wrong – Williams”

  1. For me, the best driver in a team is the one who beat them on track, beating in pit lane is good but on track is always better and sweeter.
    While Rosberg have beat Hamilton two times in a row, we need to remember that Hamilton absolutely hammered Rosberg in this season, Rosberg started to recover when Hamilton almost secure his 2nd title. However Rosberg could start 2016 with a big mental boost if he win Abu Dhabi.

    1. Going into the new season on the back of winning a few races or going in as the defending champion with ththe chance to do the treble, who do you think has the bigger mental edge?

      1. I give back the question to you
        What is the diffrence between losing and gaining ?

    2. The thing is that you cannot overtake on track in equal machinery and on the same tyres (age and compound). So to have some chance of actually overtaking on track you need to do something different.

      Hamilton didn’t want to overtake in the pitlane per se, nut just following the guy ahead is never going to amount to anything. They gave Rosberg a different strategy few times. Why not Hamilton?

      Verstappen made some nice passes, but also only when he was on newer or faster tyres than the guy he was trying to overtake.

      1. 3 stop was the fastest strategy by far, so i don’t see the point of doing anything different. Raikkonen had a 2 stop and it didn’t help him. Nor did it help Maldonado. At some circuits, there is more of a grey area, where you can take a chance, cause it is very close and there are some safetycar possibilities. If there is no rain at Interlagos, there are not much options. Why would you choose something 100% slower, cause it is different? His best bet was pressuring Nico into a mistake, which he didn’t make.

        1. I was replying to the claim that Hamilton wanted to overtake in the pitlane.

          In fact he did get an alternative strategy suggested over the radio. Although it was already to late for that.

          Vettel used another soft set in the third stint. Hamilton could have used that to get past Rosberg.

          Also Raikkonen (with an older engine spec), Bottas and Hulkenberg made that 2 stop strategy work just fine.

          So there were plenty of options to try. Pretty sure they would have taken one of those had they actually wanted Hamilton to overtake the guy ahead of him. If it was Vettel for instance.

      2. The only time they gave one of them a different strategy was when they were not fighting directly over the same spot @patrickl.

        They have never given Rosberg a strategy that would have advantaged him over Hamilton either, at most they gave both a bit of variety in that one of them used the softer tyres in their middle stint while the other went with the harder in a middle stint leaving the softer tyres for the last one (in cases where there probably was no clear advantage one way or the other). No reason why they would suddenly have to cuddle up to Hamilton and hand him an advantage. He can stand his own well enough.

        Hamilton has been at the top of his abilities all year, Rosberg never seemed to find an answer, always trailing slightly behind, coming in second, feeling his chances slip away from having Hamilton dictate pace. Now Rosberg seems to have found a way to improve on himself and beat Hamilton on saturday and in the last two races he has not messed up (like he did at a critical moment in Austin) and cracked under pressure. That leaves Hamilton now have to trail until he can find an angle to take another step up.

        I find it fascinating to see, because the result is both of them improving their skill.

        1. @BasCB, Forgot Bahrain 2014? They were closely following each other when they change the strategy for Rosberg. Rosberg really should have won that one after the safety car cut Hamilton’s lead.

          In a way even the race in Hungary 2014, but I guess they were on different strategies already and Rosberg wasn’t able to make his work.

          Was another one, but forgot which that was.

        2. Yes Have!! in Hungary last year, both on the intermediate tyre with over 30 laps to go, they put Lewis on the prime to go to the end while put Rosberg on two USED options, whereas Lewis had 2 NEW option tires. Because spent so long on the Prime, Ricciardo caught him and pass him and only because of smart block he kept Nico behind.

          1. yeah, OlaRay, but Hungary the hugely different approach was only because when they did not figure both were really fighting with eachother, Rosbergs strategy was meant to win the race, and Hamilton probably was expected to be just gaining as many spots as possible and get solid points.

            As for Bahrain 2014, that is exactly what I mentioned, they did give the drivers some variability last year by giving them alternate stints when to run what tyre. But overall there is not that much difference whether to run the softer tyres in the middle stint or in the last. And I think that last year they had to save far more fuel than they seem to be doing this year (better efficiency from the power units), different approaches in fuel use probably had a far larger effect on race strategy (with Hamilton more often than not doing the better job) in 2014.

  2. People can keep whining about the minutes silence but the fact is there was a French flag held by the drivers and a CGI image on the track dedicated to it, both shown on the live FOM feed.

    You could’ve done anything and people would still complain.

    1. @strontium we could also complain about how this is news, yet other atrocities aren’t in the world of social media, world feeds and specially on sporting events like this where they go to places with a big question mark over crimes against humanity, F1 being a prime example of dubious politics…

      1. Yes (@come-on-kubica)
        16th November 2015, 0:55

        @fer-no65 +1000000

      2. Couldn’t agree more @fer-no65

      3. well said

      4. Also agree with you 100% @fer-no65

    2. @fer-no65, @illusive, @strontium I posted it on facebook and I’ll post it here too, some big chief at BBC once said:

      If we did not report it, it did not happen.

      Ask how many people with their french flag profile pictures even know what happend in Nigeria with Boko Haram earlier this year.

      1. @xtwl You wouldn’t have a Nigerian flag lit up in a white house or a opera house in Australia even if they show it happened.

      2. All those other news stories are reported though? This one has been reported more seriously as it is close to home it is an attack in a city that almost never sees attacks and has been without wodespread destruction since ww2. Europe is meant to be safe and it I don’t anymore that’s the whole point. It’s not a measure of who’s more important as everyone is its just many of these other areas are unfortunately attacked very often and have been at war for decades some of these counties have been at war for around 2000 years of you must know. Stop trying to make a political correctness issue out of nothing just because people have taken an attack right next door rather than in a war zone as a shock. It does not however detract from atrocities else where as you’ve rightly stated.

        1. Sorry ignore half the auto corrects, I think it’s obvious what its meant to say. Should proof read on here more often.

        2. Is that why buildings all over the globe were lit with the french flag? Because it is a European thing? Is Nigeria further for New York/Sydney than Paris?

          1. Culturally and politically, yes.

      3. ColdFly F1 (@)
        16th November 2015, 9:55

        Ask how many people with their french flag profile pictures even know what happend in Nigeria with Boko Haram earlier this year.

        That does not make it wrong/hypocritical/insensitive or whatever way you want to describe it. @xtwl
        It’s absolutely normal that people mourn a family member more than a stranger’s death. Therefore, why not allow them to show more grief/disbelief/anger when an attack like this happens to a country they relate to than when it happens somewhere else.
        Or do we all need to be so politically correct to show exactly the same reaction for every single death wherever it happens in the world?

        back to F1 now.

        1. @coldfly I did not see the same reactions from political leading figures over the world when the kills were made in Nigeria. There isn’t so much a problem with the people but with the media presenting the facts.

        2. @coldfly But I agree, back to F1.

  3. Kudos to Force India for achieving 5th in the championship after the performances this year.

    I still remember the team being dead last at every race but at a time when being last meant being ONLY 2 seconds off pole. These days, that’s the gap between 1st and 8th.

    Such a great team. Congrats!

  4. “There is a gentleman at the back of the room who needs to finish second in the championship so that is important,” said Wolff with Rosberg also in the team’s motor home. “The primary objective is to make Nico score a lot of points to secure second in the championship. Lewis is absolutely aware this is a team exercise.”…

    Hmmm that’s rather a very interesting bit of commentary from Toto…

    1. Wow really.

      1. Yeah as if LH needs to be told that the team wants the best for both their drivers. As if LH doesn’t grasp inheritantly that while he is not being asked to help, he could also respect that the team is of course not going to want him to hinder their goal of having a driver 1-2 for the WDC. This is all very normal stuff but LH seems to want to jump on the very team that has provided him all that they have the minute he can’t get his way. If he can’t beat NR well there must be a reason that is out of his control.

        How many times has Nico been lost in the same dirty air as LH did this weekend? But if it was Nico in LH’s place this weekend everybody would have been snickering that it was up to him to pass LH but once again he isn’t capable.

        When the shoe is on the other foot, eh LH?

        1. Don’t you suddenly feel like it is Mercedes that made Hamilton a champion in his fight vs Rosberg.

          Im not saying Hamilton gets no credit for his work, but TW seems to give u this ominous feeling of “we made u win… now we make nico win… you’re helpless if we didn’t enable it at the first place.”

    2. Although I support Lewis Hamilton, I try and remain as objective as possible, not getting carried away with all kinds of rumors and conspiracy theories. I am also a bit older, having gotten interested in F1 in the year of the death of Jim Clark, so I do not consider myself a “fanboy” in the commonly used sense of the word. That being said, I have for some time now really begun to question just how “freely” these drivers are actually racing. We all know that with the current technology and telemetry it is possible to control almost all the functions of a F1 car, even overriding the drivers own inputs. Then we have a pit wall that makes it abundantly clear that they and not the driver make all the strategy decisions. Add to that comments from management (aka Toto Wolff) as reported above, and it is not unrealistic to wonder whether the outcome of these races is not actually decided in a “small dark room, on a dimly lit computer screen”.

      I do understand that times change, but it was oh so much better when F1 was about a driver in a car racing for a win, and less about the manufacturers image and keeping sponsors, promoters and tire suppliers happy.

      1. @stubbornswiss Fair comment but surely there is a difference, as demonstrated by the very team we’re talking about, between decisions they might make earlier in the year when there is everything to play for, and Brazil when all that was left for the team to do was get Nico into second in the standings.

        I see this as no different than the normal type of team order, and in my opinion the only time for a team order, that being when an order shouldn’t even be necessary, that being that when one driver on a team has a WDC shot and another doesn’t as the season winds down, it is incumbent on the driver without the shot to not necessarily help, but certainly not impede the one with the shot. It’s just common sense and fair team play for all those who spend the big bucks to field the team.

        I think LH is showing greed and selfishness (yes I know…admirable traits in a WDC to some people) by, even having achieved it all this year, still wanting to impede NR from achieving second in the standings for the team by asking for a mid-race favour from the team because he alone thinks he could win the race. And he’d happily take it and pound his chest at being someone’s worse nightmare on the track, when in fact such a win would only have come from favouritism from the team as he couldn’t do it himself on the track.

        The team says LH knew what the team goal was for Brazil. LH seems to have not been at the meeting or denies any such plan. I say it is a no-brainer, and goes without saying and is impossible that LH didn’t just inheritantly, instinctively know that the team goal would have been to have NR finish ahead of SV in the WDC standings, without any meeting even being needed. So to me he is being very disingenuine. He didn’t get pole nor lead any laps but still wanted to steal a win with favouritism having done it all already this year, except for hs own personal desire to win in Brazil, which he was asking the team to accommodate, and forget about Nico.

  5. I can sort of believe Williams’ explanation and, for once, I think the FIA simply messed up its measurement. I mean Williams lists some pretty convincing arguments in there.

    1. @atticus-2 Wouldn’t be the first time. Might as well make a new saying: The FIA couldn’t measure a tyre at a race track..

    2. @atticus-2 I think it’s a ridiculously complicated method. Can’t they just measure it when the tyres are fitted to the car, and then forbid them making changes on the grid?

      They could put a minimum pressure value regardless of temperature (which makes it go higher pressure) and get on with it.

      1. @fer-no65 Yeah, but you can’t just forbid them, you have to be able to check because without monitoring they’ll cheat to find a competitive advantage.

    3. I wondered if the FIA’s Infra-red thermometer was out of calibration. Out of curiosity, is it possible that the device measured something “in the background” as well as the tyre, e.g. part of the exhaust pipe or the brakes?

      1. @drycrust If Williams are correct then it all points to the FIA taking a false reading, however these IR sensors don’t suddenly go out of calibration, specially by such a big margin.

        What could’ve happened though, is something getting stuck on the tyre or in the lens of the sensor, any colour other than black would affect the emissivity of the surface and thus give an inaccurate reading, in the heat of the moment is possible the operator didn’t even notice.

        1. @mantresx Thanks. I did wonder if it was one of those situations a bit like directional radio antenna, where it is possible to receive signals from sources not in the direction the antenna is pointing, just weaker.
          It really comes down to one of those “he said, no he said” situations. I would hope the FIA had taken multiple readings of the “irregular” tyre because the result has been a disqualification.

  6. Thanks for CoTD @keithcollantine

    There must be some serious tension brewing up at Merc.

    Nico to leave at the end of 16 perhaps? Roll out the red carpet for Max?

    1. I wouldn’t read too much into that article about Hamilton saying that they are still fighting in response to someone pitching the theory that the team would want him to somehow help Nico @jaymenon10.

      From what I have seen, the team has just been saying that its a team job in reaction to Hamilton thinking about forcing the strategy desicion in Mexico by not heeding his team’s instruction to come in and pit. In other words, Toto was probably highlighting that the strategy is done not by the driver but by the guys in the garage. And that they are not going to hand strategic advantages to one of their drivers to beat the other this way.

  7. Max is still young as he swaps his helmet with Alonso if you see his smile :)

    1. @macleod One legend giving his helmet to one in the making.

      1. Lets hope so :)

  8. How typical of modern F1, the night of a race and none of the talking points are related to what happened on the track.
    The politics and FIA incompetence used to be an interesting side point to the sport, now it’s the only thing being discussed as next to nothing happens in most races.

  9. Funny how Boullier is blaming Mercedes for the exact same thing they are doing.

    Although I do think there is actually a safety concern for the tyres being able to cope with faster cars or more downforce.

  10. I seriously doubt that Rosberg’s second place in the championship is so important to Mercedes. Webber never finished second in the championship during Vettel’s reign from 2010 until 2013 but I do not think that it made Red Bull look any less impressive or had any negative impact on their exposure or brand value.

    I believe that Mercedes were simply satisfied with another one-two and did not want to risk anything or create any unnecessary tensions during the race, which is understandable. If Hamilton had started the race from pole and / or won the start, then no one would have asked him to let Rosberg “pass for the second place in the championship”.

    1. I beg to differ. I don’t think that Merc was ever going to be complacent about NR’s standing for one second (pardon the pun). I don’t see that in their racing DNA. Just let SV have it? It makes no difference? No way. Never.

      I do agree that if LH was leading and looking to win the race they wouldn’t have had him move over for NR so he could lock up second in the WDC with a win, with one more race still to go. But they certainly would have wanted him ahead of SV, and then, without me figuring out the math, made further moves to ensure Nico finishing ahead of SV in the end after Abu Dhabi. Ie. Nico didn’t need to win this race or risk coming third in the WDC behind SV, as the math was in NR’s favour over that race and the last, but the team was never going to take any chances to jeopardize NR’s chances. He’s earned better treatment and respect than that. It’s not in their DNA to not care AND they are treating two roosters on the team equally…thank goodness. They are doing a great and tough job of managing this rivalry as best as can be done, and complacency toward NR’s second place standing would basically tell him he is in fact merely a number 2 on the team and there’s no way from any vibe I pick up from this team that they would be that cruel to NR and send him into the off-season thinking they don’t care about his standing,

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