F1 Fanatic

Several times during practice sessions the commentators have said the teams need to be careful on choosing the gear ratios on Friday night as they are they locked in for the weekend. They have speciffically mentioned it when Friday has been wet and cars haven’t been able to run at top speed. And at high speed circuits like Monza where last year Hamilton wasn’t able to overtake Schumacher because he hit the limiter in the DRS zone down the pit straight.

If this is correct how come RBR were able to change ratio’s just because the car was taken out of parc ferme conditions, the cars are not in parc ferme during FP3?

Very well said @raymondu999 , That is the reason why RBR was able to change the gear ratios on Vettel´s RB8 and the downforce settings, thus ensuring he was going to be able to make better use of the DRS and not hit the limiter so he could overtake … Smart move on their part but seriously killed his “achievement”….

I’m afraid you haven’t said anything I didn’t say.

So I still do not understand. If you can change gears when not in parc ferme then surely gear changes can be made between FP3 and Qualifying.

@raymond, In reply to your last, surely a punishent is meant to be just that. A punishment.

Not an excuse to re-jig the car so you can gain an advantage.

Lets put this clearly

Gear ratios are declared two hours after FP2.
FP3 is NOT under parc ferme conditions. But you cannot change gears.
After start of Qualifying until start of race the cars are in parc ferme condiions, but you can change the cars spec if the team takes it out, but must start from pit lane.

Even the new teams would be able to catch up to the back of the field from the pit lane. Because if you hadn’t noticed the cars are spreading out and therefore the back markers are going slower than normal.

@W-K That’s basically the situation, yes. To be fair – anyone can choose to start from the pits. Even Hamilton could on Sunday. But it makes it much more dangerous, much harder, and you compromise your race by being in traffic.

@catracho504 They gave him additional straight line speed, but it meant that his car was (over a lap) slower. Look at the times – on soft tyres that were 7 laps younger than Alonso’s medium tyres, he was only 0.1 quicker than Alonso

Slower teams don’t need to start from the pitlane to make changes. They already know they are starting last, so they do their best to set the car up as good as possible.

Red Bull doesn’t. They try to set the car up to be on pole and control the race there. It’s a massive difference in terms of setup if you start on pole than in the middle of the pack. The difference is where they are supposed to qualify.

Adrian Newey said (in that clip where he’s driving the Leyton House and the RB6) that their simulations tell them that the fastest laptime is achieved with maximum downforce and not su much top speed. So they do it that way, to ensure a good place in qualifying. That’s why Webber often struggles to overtake everyone else, cuz he’s often behind Vettel, and he gets in the mix with other cars and get stuck. Surely that’d had happened to Vettel had they not changed their gear ratios and downforce levels.

What it is interesting is how fast he was on race day. This car isn’t as good as the RB7 in terms of qualy pace compared to the others, so they must be scratching their heads about what to do now, now they know their car is very competitive on sundays with the longer gear ratios and the different downforce settings. Surely they can’t risk it and aim for pole no matter what, and if they miss, the get stuck behind others.

@catracho504 while this really should be a discussion for another thread…

What happens is the FIA fuel sample actually is not done for all 24 cars. At each race weekend, there is a random selection (If I remember correctly, either 5 or 6 cars are selected) of cars that are tested. So in fact, if Lewis in Barcelona, or Vettel in Abu Dhabi, had just driven back into the pits calmly and acted like nothing happened, then maybe the FIA might not have checked their fuel, and they could’ve started where they qualified.

I don’t know about which cars were selected in Barcelona, but I know for a fact that it turns out, in fact – that Vettel was not selected for the fuel sample in Abu Dhabi. Had he just calmly drove back and acted normal, in reality, nothing would have happened to him. Whether or not that is the right thing to do, is a different issue. I’m just discussing the facts in this post.