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For me it is also about too much clean air dependence for the cars. Although there is urgency for that I don’t want to see knee-jerk reactions though, and it would seem Liberty knows that. I wish for less aero dependency soon but acknowledge that presumably if it happens it may not be until the next major reg changes. But I am buoyed by the fact that Brawn has said he never was a fan of DRS, so I am hopeful that eventually we will have less aero influence and no DRS. For me it is about fixing the product on the track and then other positives such as a growing audience should follow.
Well…there was that rule instigated a few years ago and debated about here on this site et al, that a car width must be left. That said I think every incident continues to be looked at individually. I think what lessened this incident was that NR faltered a bit at the start and therefore admittedly owned a bit of the turn 2 ‘clash’. LH is also the sentimental favourite with having truly earned his way to where he is. Taking a cue from Wolff though who called it Nico being ‘forced off’ while Lewis was ‘understeery’, I do think the team should thank Nico, and probably have, for avoiding a collision, still coming in second for the team, and for being diplomatic about it in the end. Some say he should have held his ground, like a true champion, but a champion does not become thus by being hit off the track and his race and his teammate’s done. We all know what happened the last time Nico was stubborn that way. The team owes him for seeing through to them achieving a 1-2 after a terrible previous weekend. Standing his ground sounds good and Championy on paper, but how would everyone have truly reacted if both cars dnf’d? Not in NR’s favour I’m pretty sure.
Drivers today are not able to show feats of greatness. They are far too limited by tires and management of everything. And as FA just pointed out, sometimes they are lapping 10 seconds slower on race days than 10 years ago. F1 needs to be put back in the hands of the drivers before we can consider any of them amongst the true Greats of the past. They are not able to be gladiators out there.
Very debatable stuff really. I think Hill was the better driver in 94 because he didn’t crash in the last race like MS did, and got whacked by MS anyway. And that Benetton was rife with illegalities all season. In a legal car MS wouldn’t have achieved the numbers he did that year. But I often bring things down to how drivers handled the pressure when it was at it’s greatest. And MS crashed.
So I think DH was the better driver and the more deserving in 94, JV was stronger than MS in the end so the better and more deserving driver, and I think FM also did everything right in that last race when the pressure was at it’s greatest while LH did everything to lose it and very nearly did.
Yeah that might be right but I guess I was just thinking in terms of the multiple winners and how it seemed to be a crapshoot in the first half of the season and we were all questioning when we might see the first repeat winner, which the odds were always going to increase as the races went along. That tells me that lots of teams were scratching their heads initially, and for sure Merc too, and the fact that Merc still isn’t lighting the world on fire indicates they have other issues besides figuring out tires.
Yeah true, but there is also the tire lottery from the first half of the season particularly, so I’d say it was hard for the teams to know exactly what they had because first and foremost they had to nail the best setups for the day depending on track and air temps, like NR happened into in China. The comments from the teams initially had to do with working towards setting up the cars on Friday based on that days air and track temps, and when those turned out to be different by Sunday then the tires did not treat them well at all.
They might as well design a whole new car as this current one isn’t cutting it. What do they have to lose? They’re a distant 5th in the WCC with Sauber knocking on their door. Of course that wouldn’t quite be the case if NR hadn’t been knocked out two races in a row, but the point is they are nowhere near top 3, so they need some radical rethinks obviously.
Is MS having a better season than it looks? Just basing it on pace I think the answer is yes, he definitely has shown pace on a par or better than NR’s. And he has made fewer gaffs than last year, the one with Senna that also cost him for Monaco being the main one. Last year there were several. At the same time NR has also outpaced MS. So it really depends on the day, as we have experienced with pretty much all drivers and all teams thanks to the unpredictability of the tires.
Of course reliability has been the glaring issue for MS, so in that sense he cannot take the bulk of the blame for his low points tally. But I used to defend JV vs. Button that year at BAR for the same reasons…JV had half of Button’s points, but had far worse reliability, so I always claimed and will to this day, that JV had a better season than JB, or at least a better season than it looked, taking the unreliability into account. But most people didn’t seem to care. It all came down to the points tally and the standings and how that looked to the masses.
I won’t do the same thing to MS that I rued happened to JV, but I will say this. Somehow Merc has managed to on one day win a race, and on the next not even put one car in Q3, nor barely finish in the top ten, so from a team standpoint, a consistancy standpoint, of course a reliability standpoint, and also to look at how much potential they showed in the pre-season testing and in China, to where they sit in the standings both for the WCC and the WDC, this has been a truly terrible season for them. Have they not moved backwards from where they were last year at this time?
Bottom line, MS has been handcuffed by unreliability and sometimes lack of pace, and to ultimately look at the standings, even with the asterisks beside the results, the whole team has not done anywhere near what they had hoped to do this year, as in fight for wins and podiums. Others have done that where they should have if you go by the work they did and the enthusiasm in the off season, and their ultimate goal of progressing to the top. And also if you consider they were supposed to have an ace up their sleeve with the F-duct.
I think to dismiss the possibility of favouritism is ridiculous (see MS/Ferrari era) in that all they had to do was tweek the car to favour SV’s likings moreso than MW’s in the redesign…it doesn’t just have to be about giving one a better strategy than the other during a given race…anybody think that after MS complained of lack of front grip last year they didn’t redesign this year’s Merc to ensure more front grip could be had for him?
Teams in the past, the worst example being MS/Ferrari, find it a lot easier when they have a dominant car to not have one driver robbing points from the other…it’s a lot easier to hang one out to dry and favour the other…I’m not saying I agree with it, nor consider it sporting, which is why I have no respect for MS and his numbers compilation on the back of a contracted subservient for a teammate amongst his miriad other advantages…
All I’m saying is favouritism has taken place before and to very extreme extents, so it should be no surprise especially given Horner’s comments last year about the future for them being with SV, that there might be some forms of favouritism going on at Red Bull…
I hope I am wrong and I would much prefer to see two good drivers in a dominant car duke it out for the WDC right down to the wire…but unfortunately that makes for some strife on a team and some teams would rather avoid that strife and sell out and rob us of true racing in the pinnacle of racing…
I hope that Red Bull is being honourable, and let’s face it, last year both Red Bull drivers had a WDC shot going into the last race of the season, so hard to argue there was favouritism going on, even though mid-season MW hinted at it with ‘wing-gate’…but now SV is a WDC, so we’ll have to see what happens and listen for any comments from MW that something seems fishy…so far, not the case though…I really don’t want to see any team ever do an MS/Ferrari again…that was terrible manipulation of the viewing audience…
Of course given that Horner said last year basically that the future of the team was with SV, it would be understandable to watch for favouritism and/or unfair treatment toward MW…the ugliest example of extreme favouritism was with MS/Ferrari and of course since then everyone is hypersensitive to the skewing toward one driver on a team, and many even think that is an avenue to racing success while ironically having the racing taken out of the equation by the team from their teammate with this type of scenario…
Personally I think it is too early to tell, and as has been alluded to MW will let us know if in fact he starts to feel like something is up…
That said, I will not shed tears for MW if in fact he gets hung out to dry by the team, nor will I support the team, nor will I buy Red Bull if they do screw MW around, while at the same time MW is in a winning car and is the one that went through the experience first hand last year, including hearing the team say their future was with SV, so nobody has a gun to MW’s head that I’m aware of to stay with the team. He’s there with eyes wide open.
Hmmm…not so sure an old Toyota would give Pirelli the data they need…they probably need to have them (the new tires) on a current car. I think they are particularly worried about Turkey because of it’s turns 8 and 9 so any other place where the circuit is hard on tires might not be relevant to what they are directly concerned with. Again, I get the impression they are harkening back to the fiasco at the US GP where it was one corner in particluar that was of issue, and Pirelli are not wanting to repeat that…if there still was a US GP perhaps the test would have taken place there. Michelin didn’t test there and look what happened. The Michelins were only ever insufficient at one corner of one track all year and we all saw the result when that caught everybody including Michelin by surprise and they had to make a very tough mid-weekend decision to admit they failed to bring sufficient tires and that they could only advise their teams to not race. Gut wrenching for them. Embarassing. Costly too…
And of course I don’t expect Pedro to stay quiet but again, this is about driver safety and ensuring they can race in Turkey safely. It will be Pirelli that carries the data, not PdlR…he will be able to give impressions of how the car behaved, but he will not necessarily be told the exact compounds he is driving on, the exact air pressures etc etc…they probably don’t want him to know anyway, because they would want unbiased opinions each time they send him out on the track…’ok Pedro, tells us how those felt…ok, now go out on these ones and tells us how these are’…all the while looking at the telemetry, stuff like that…they don’t have to share rubber recipes with him, nor tell him the loading data etc…
And who’s to say Pirelli, who are the one’s who will actually have the data, not Mac or PdlR, will not share their findings with all the teams…in fact, I think that is the whole point…Pirelli does not want to risk lawsuits and fines if they do not provided sufficient tires for the extreme loadings that turn 8 and 9 in Turkey provide, so they will want all the teams reassured that they will have safe compounds for that race, and “by the way, here’s our data that shows it”…that’s probably why you are hearing little protest to this…
I’m also quite sure the FIA should be backing them on this test, because they and FOM do not want another US GP 6-car race on their hands either…everyone is on Pirelli’s so there wouldn’t even be a 6-car race…somebody has to do this test in some current car, so if it weren’t Mac it would be another team and the suspicion, if there is any other than with armchair fans, would still exist…
On the one hand I understand your point, but having read the article, and given that ‘people are being surprisingly tolerant of this decision’ I would say it is fairly harmless, and has more to do with Pirelli ensuring that they do not pull a ‘Michelin/US GP’ fiasco where the tires wouldn’t hold up and were deemed dangerous and advised the teams using said tires not to race that weekend, and they didn’t…they want to make sure a newer harder compound tire will hold up structurally for turns 8 and 9 at Istanbul…so it’s far more about all the driver’s safety, and about ensuring the teams will have proper tires for Turkey and be able to race, than it is about giving Mac an advantage.
Chances are that by that race the Mac and many other cars will have changed in some ways and these new harder tires meant to withstand the rigours of turns 8 and 9 in Turkey will be truly new for everybody, and PdlR’s input about them for Mac will be minimal…again…it is about everybody’s safety, not about giving Mac an advantage intentionally…
Now if MS were still at Ferrari with everything under the sun skewed toward MS including the FIA’s own will to see him ‘succeed’ and it was a Ferrari driver testing the tires, then you are right I would have big suspiscions…but the MS/Ferrari era was unique to itself, never done before, never will happen again, and so even if it were a Ferrari reserve driver trying out these new Pirelli’s I would not have an issue going by how Ferrari operates today vs. then…
Well if Red Bull and Vettel are a reincarnation of MS/Ferrari then I am about to lose all respect for SV and Red Bull…I don’t believe in drivers ‘succeeding’ because their teammate was handcuffed intentionally to not be able to compete against them…and if it is only by them sabotaging MW’s chances that SV would be happy beating the one man who should be in the same car with the same chance as him and potentially the only one to beat him if the car dominates all others, then that is not a WDC I can support.
But I agree with the others…the WDC is not decided after one race…they have to run them all to decide that…MW could and should be stiffer competition to SV in the next race…both Macs have shown they have pretty darn good pace too, and the Ferraris will no doubt get closer as the season goes along…and as the season goes along let’s see Red Bulls reliability proven, SV’s ability to avoid mistakes etc etc…ie. if he gets some pressure from the likes of MW and LH and FA, he may make some mental errors, be they in quali or the races…
Of course it is looking good for SV, but many things can happen between now and the last race, and usually do…
For me the best driver of the decades referred to was Senna, and the best car was the Mac of 88 than won every race that season but one…and the nice thing was that there was genuine racing going on between Senna and Prost, with a viscious rivalry both on the track and off the track through the media…so pretty much every race-weekend that year you knew that a Mac was likely going to win, you just didn’t know which one…which is why I despised the MS/Ferrari concept and don’t rate it for best driver/car of the decades in question.
