In the round-up: Jenson Button doesn’t believe the FIA can successfully enforce its planned clampdown on radio traffic.
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McLaren’s Jenson Button believes F1’s new radio rules are unenforceable (The Guardian)
"The FIA will simply not be capable of policing it. They won’t be listening to every radio message, so we’ll have to see how it goes."
Radio clampdown gets poor reception from F1 drivers (Reuters)
"It's strange the direction that they are going... in the era of communication and technology, Formula One try to restrict it, which is probably not the normal way to go."
Bernie Ecclestone: I'm backing Ferrari to put the brakes on Mercedes this season (Daily Mail)
"The reason for saying I’d rather Ferrari win the championship is because it would be good for the sport."
Bernie Ecclestone backtracks on claims F1 has never been worse (City AM)
"It was what I believed was going to be the position this year but I can see I was wrong from the results of testing and some other information I’ve been happy to receive concerning Ferrari. I’m confident that we are going to see some good racing this year."
Pirelli tyre cliff plan didn't work (Autosport)
"We honestly can't see the difference between this year's tyre and last year's."
Fernando Alonso admits he would feel 'regret' if Ferrari win 2016 title (Sky)
"So if they win the championship this year I probably will feel that I could have had that opportunity as well if I was able to drive as good as the champion if they win."
Aston Martin claims Adrian Newey hypercar will lap faster than an F1 car (ESPN)
"As we sit here today, the raison d'etre that we've given the team is to be faster than an F1 car around Silverstone - or indeed any other F1 track."
F1 2016 Changes - Charlie Whiting Interview (FIA via YouTube)
New driver, new rules, but how are the teams shaping up for start of the season? (Eurosport)
Read the first in a new series of articles by me for Eurosport. Check back after the race for my verdict on the top drivers of the Australian Grand Prix.
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Comment of the day
Adrian Newey is designing a road car? Yes, please…
Finally! A chance to see what the man can do on a production vehicle.
Sadly, I doubt there will be a huge fan sucking it to the floor or skirting around the side to create massive forces of ground effect. But it’s still going to be awesome, could there be a better man to designated ‘Hyper’-car?
It’ll be insane.
@Hare
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On this day in F1
On this day 15 years ago Michael Schumacher led a Ferrari one-two with team mate Rubens Barrichello at Sepang despite the pair skidding off when a rain storm hit early in the race.
@HoHum (@hohum)
18th March 2016, 0:52
Well, even the drivers are into self interest, take the rubbish tyres, Ro Gro driving a slow car wants tyres that can last longer if driven slowly, bet he’d want something different if he was driving a MB.
Sumedh
18th March 2016, 3:06
Agree on the reaction to radio ban. In an effort to keep the sport “pure”, we are artificially keeping it backward.
I don’t get the argument of ‘it shifts the onus on the driver’. F1 is a team sport first and emphasis should be on team not individual.
@HoHum (@hohum)
18th March 2016, 3:11
I prefer the concept of; the team build the car, the driver drives it.
grat
18th March 2016, 16:06
2012 demonstrated that a fantastic driver in a really good car can’t win the championship without a championship team behind him– If it was solely to car performance, or driver performance, Hamilton would have won in 2012.
Geeyore (@geeyore)
18th March 2016, 10:55
Although I’m half-sympathetic to (what seems to be) the majority of drivers having concerns about reduced radio, I’m also *not* sympathetic. Not one tiny bit.
If the cars have become so complex, so over-engineered, and so data-driven that drivers can’t adequately handle the machine on the track on their own impetus, then the cars and the current trajectory of F1 are simply wrong. Or maybe not “wrong,” but so divergent from the tradition of motorsport that it’s become “something else,” and what that “something” is I do not know.
It is one thing to recognize an F1 team and and F1 effort as including the car, the driver, the engineers, the management, and the mechanics. It is quite another thing to essentially operate the car from the pits. That’s got to stop. And if driver can’t do that on minimal radio, I’d say it’s time to simplify on data-driven engineering strategies.
Formula1 (@s2g-unit)
18th March 2016, 4:15
“Pirelli tyre cliff plan didn’t work”
Pirelli is HORRIBLE, they have no clue what they are doing. People need to stop defending Pirelli by saying the FIA asked for tyres that degrade. NOBODY asked for overly sensitive, thermal deg, low grip, too hard but only last 10 laps if driven at 70-80% tyres.
RaceProUK (@)
18th March 2016, 14:51
Except the FIA and FOM. Y’know, the people who run F1.
BaKano (@bakano)
18th March 2016, 6:52
Regarding COTD, it is wrong. An hypercar is hardly a production car. It might not even be road-legal if the claims that it will be faster than a F1 in any track are true…
Jim PROFIT (@jim0profit)
18th March 2016, 7:51
Sad, very sad to see where the F1 is going.
Joao (@johnmilk)
18th March 2016, 7:55
What happened to Alonso? that comment doesn’t sound nothing like him.
Drivers don’t have to worry about if FIA will be able to enforce rules or not, they have to follow them and that is it. It is like saying that Police can’t control drunk drivers because they won’t be able to stop them all.
Pirelli failed again to make the tyre that they proposed, this is still news?
Anyway, lets start this already, I’ve bee waiting for too long now. Alarm clocks are already set.
Girts (@girts)
18th March 2016, 8:45
I do not think it takes a genius to build a car that is faster than the W07. Give any Manor engineer technical freedom and proper funding and I am pretty sure we will get a road car that is much faster than the current F1 racing cars that are heavily restricted by the current rules as Horner points out. ‘Unrestricted aerodynamics’ would indeed completely change F1 but I highly doubt if they would make the sport more attractive for most fans.
JerseyF1 (@jerseyf1)
18th March 2016, 9:21
@girts but the problem is that a road legal car (assuming that is the Aston Martin aim) does not give the designer technical freedom. The limits might be quite different to F1 but there are a huge number of limits nonetheless. For example an F1 car can’t even be started without a team of engineers and several hours of advance preparation. This car will need to start at the push of a button on a cold day. And road car crash tests have somewhat different requirements in terms of passenger and pedestrian safety.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
18th March 2016, 11:45
Lol, requiring engineers to start is just because it gives maybe 50 extra hp… In road car you fix that easily by selecting slightly larger displacement.
Road rules do not restrict the size of diffuser, but heavily influence the front of thh vehicle.
Lets see what they make… I bet Ferrari and McLaren guys will sound some alarms and get to work. Soon we’ll have road cars faster than F1.
Girts (@girts)
18th March 2016, 15:27
@jerseyf1 @jureo Thanks for the comments guys. I believe that some road cars are already now faster than F1 cars. BAR Honda claimed to have reached 413 kph in 2005 and I do not think that the current cars would be able to better that. At the same time, a few road cars have been able to reach more than 430 kph. For sure, it does not mean that they would still be faster around Silverstone. It is true that road cars have different requirements & restrictions but I still believe that nothing stops Aston Martin, with or without Adrian Newey, from creating a hypercar with less top speed but so much downforce that it will blow away the current F1 pacesetters.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
18th March 2016, 15:43
Well, that is why i included “around GP track” clause.
anon
18th March 2016, 17:33
@girts, the thing is, Aston Martin does not appear to have anything remotely like the required resources to deliver a car that is as luxurious as the rest of its range (which is therefore quite likely to result in a reasonably substantial kerb weight) whilst simultaneously producing the sort of performance figures that they would need to achieve to deliver on their promises and manage to somehow turn a profit on a car that would be substantially cheaper than other cars in that sort of performance bracket.
Frankly, what I expect will actually happen is that Aston Martin will strategically leak an occasional concept drawing or model to the press in order to keep their profile up, but very little to happen in terms of actual development work so the proposal can then be quietly dropped once they’ve squeezed the maximum publicity from it.
JerseyF1 (@jerseyf1)
18th March 2016, 9:25
I’m betting that the Fiat Uno will trump it on height.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
18th March 2016, 11:30
“Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer said the target is to make a car capable of lapping Silverstone quicker than an F1 car.”
Dayum. Them fighting words… Unbelievable. That is fast. Will have to be some strong Aero, active suspenssion, turbo V12, 8? Probably small V8.
Dayum road car.. Does that imply road legal? Shame on F1 if roadcars can top it on anything resembling a track.
Geez. This is then RBR thanking Ferrari for not giving them an engine supply. “You know what? We’ll make better supercars than you.”
JimG (@jimg)
18th March 2016, 12:31
@jureo It depends on how you define “better”. There are already several manufacturers who arguably make cars which are technically superior (faster, lighter, cheaper, …) to Ferrari, but Ferrari have the mindshare and it will take a lot to shift that.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
18th March 2016, 13:57
Yeah. McLaren for example always one ups things on Ferrari. But for sure… I cannot imagine anything faster on GP circuit than F1 car…
Djangles LeVaughn (@royal-spark)
18th March 2016, 20:06
One thing that’s worth mentioning is the F1 2015 game is free on Steam this weekend. However, its less than favorable reviews suggest you’re better off investing you’re money elsewhere than purchasing the game.
Mike (@grippgoat)
19th March 2016, 1:13
Someone needs to do a meme of Dr. Evil with his pinky up, with Ecclestone’s face, saying “and some other information I’ve been happy to receive concerning Ferrari”
Alex Bkk
19th March 2016, 7:19
I think he’s correct.