official F1 World Championship 2011 Thread

[ahmz]

Wet races are exciting because they're NOT planned.

[MightyJordan]

Wet races are exciting because they're NOT planned.

How about wetting the track at a random lap then? Say in one GP, they wet the track 5 laps before the end, then the next GP, they wet the track after just 10 laps.

[Kerm]

^Urgh, I don't think planned 'random' wet laps would work. The excitement to me is that the guys are out there racing, come rain or shine they are battling against the road, each other and the elements and we get to see them battle it out.

Having people in a Truman show control room pressing the rain button or even pre-wetting the track takes away any chance of unexpectedness and completely taints the whole premise.

Enough of the sport is controlled and babied already. Lets at least try and leave some reality in there before they become life sized scalectrix cars.

[JoeC]

The excitement with wet races at the moment is how the driver judges how wet it's going to get. Some enormously entertaining drives (like Jenson last season) have been when one driver has just got a feeling that it's not going to need the wet tyres, or maybe went to the wets a bit early, and profited hugely. By just saying "It will 'rain' at some point in this race" as soon as that 2-lap warning goes off, everyone knows there's a mandatory pit stop coming up to put the right tyres on, and then continue as normal.

I was initially in favour of the artificial wet race idea, but after thinking about it for a bit, I don't think it'll work as well as I first did.

[acnpt]

Preview show on BBC Radio 5 Live now.

[deuz]

I would like to see Bernie's ideas implemented. The best races last year were the wet ones.

so is f1 a sport or is it entertainment. If you want it to be entertainment and not a sport then i say go for track wetting.

[Subject Delta]

I am not a fan of the idea of artificially wetting the track. The whole reason wet races are so good is that they are unpredictable, and don't happen often. If this happened the teams would just adjust to it and it would become routine.

[san.W10]

Webber quickest as final test begins

Pos Driver Team/Car Time Gap Laps

1. Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 1m22.544s 97

2. Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1m22.910s + 0.366 74

3. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1m22.937s + 0.393 27

4. Sergio Perez Sauber-Ferrari 1m24.117s + 1.573 90

5. Nick Heidfeld Renault 1m24.735s + 2.191 20

6. Paul di Resta Force India-Mercedes 1m25.039s + 2.495 38

7. Davide Valsecchi Lotus-Renault 1m25.406s + 2.862 50

8. Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m26.004s + 3.460 48

9. Nico Hulkenberg Force India-Mercedes 1m26.030s + 3.486 31

10. Luiz Razia Lotus-Renault 1m26.723s + 4.179 29

11. Jerome D'Ambrosio Virgin-Cosworth 1m32.060s + 9.516 57

With Mercedes, Williams, Ferrari and Hispania not out until tomorrow, Virgin's Jerome D'Ambrosio was the only other driver in action. The team seemed to be concentrating on a variety of assessments rather than outright pace, as though its rookie driver covered 57 laps, he did not set a competitive flying lap and was often in and out of the pits repeatedly.

[san.W10]

Vettel keeps Red Bull on top in testing

Red Bull remained on top on day two of the final winter test at Barcelona, as world champion Sebastian Vettel gave another impressive demonstration of his team's 2011 pace.

After Mark Webber's timesheet-topping run yesterday, Vettel swiftly moved to the head of the order this morning, and then put in a blistering 1m21.865s time at the start of a five-lap stint.

Though Vettel's pace swiftly dropped off, his initial lap was 0.7 seconds quicker than anyone had managed in Barcelona testing so far, and he would dip into low-1m21s again on several other short stints. In the afternoon he focused mainly on long runs, doing a pair of 16-lap outings in which his times averaged in 1m28s before fading.

It was a one-two for Red Bull-owned teams, as Toro Rosso continued its encouraging winter with second place for Sebastien Buemi.

His best time of 1m22.396s came on an afternoon qualifying-style run, and followed a very respectable race simulation in the morning. He also managed to complete 120 laps despite stopping on track and causing a red flag mid-afternoon, and went through a dozen consecutive practice pitstops at the end of the day.

Renault's Vitaly Petrov followed a similar schedule, and earned his third place with a 1m22.670s at the start of a four-lap stint before switching to long runs. He caused the session to end very slightly early when he stopped at Turn 6 and prompted a final red flag.

It was another very tough day for McLaren. A hydraulic leak and then two exhaust issues interrupted Lewis Hamilton's morning, forcing the team to abandon a planned race simulation. He later got up to fourth on a single-lap, qualifying-style run in the afternoon.

Ferrari was back in fifth with Felipe Massa as it introduced a new exhaust and some aerodynamic changes, but its form was more encouraging than the result suggested. There were no one-lap-only runs from the Brazilian, whose best time came at the start of a five-lap outing, and on longer runs of around 14 laps his pace often matched Vettel's.

Paul di Resta was in the top three for a while during a morning of testing Force India's qualifying pace, as he quickly bounced back from causing a fuel pressure issue that caused a stoppage. He covered 118 laps by the end of an afternoon of longer runs, taking sixth in the order ahead of Kamui Kobayashi's Sauber.

Mercedes brought a new exhaust and some bodywork upgrades today as well, with more significant changes to follow later in the week. Nico Rosberg's eighth place was a quiet start for the package, though some medium-length stints of around 10 laps averaging in 1m27s compared well to other teams.

Jarno Trulli was ninth for Lotus, followed by Pastor Maldonado, as a KERS problem severely hampered Williams. The team had to miss most of the morning as a result, and only managed 29 laps later on after disconnecting the energy recovery device.

Virgin's Jerome D'Ambrosio completed the field, 7.1s off the pace. He also lost some running to an electrical problem.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/89821

[Subject Delta]

The lack of speed coming from McLaren is a big disappointment at the moment.

[simonlang]

i ve seen ennough :/

1.vettel (with some impressive 40 seconds over the rest)

2.massa (will trash alonso thanks to pirelli tires)

3.heidfeld (gets through the field thanks to some lucky safety car periods)

4.schumacher (same as massa, pirelli tires favouring real racing drivers and not granny-drivers like webber, button or alonso)

in melbourne; mclaren will suffer a dnf their car is shocking :crazy:

i cant believe the mp4/26 LOOKS very fast, aggressive designed and i even like the sidepods ... but.... :(

[san.W10]

Schumacher puts Mercedes on top

Michael Schumacher was quickest and Nico Rosberg third-fastest on the final major day of winter testing at Barcelona, as Mercedes took plenty of encouragement from its new upgrade package.

Today was the first day that Mercedes' full raft of Melbourne developments had been on the car, and Schumacher wasted no time in showing their potential.

A series of qualifying-style one-lap runs this morning took him to 1m21.268s, as he beat Ferrari's Fernando Alonso by 0.346 seconds and went half a second quicker than anyone had done at Barcelona this winter before today.

Mercedes is one of the teams staying at Catalunya to test tomorrow as well, but with forecasts suggesting a wet Saturday, the team elected to put Nico Rosberg in the car for the final part of today to make sure he got some dry mileage with the latest version of the car.

Rosberg managed 19 laps to Schumacher's 67 and managed to grab third with a time half a second off the pace.

Alonso's lap to split the Mercedes also came on a qualifying-style run. Ferrari attempted a race simulation later, but it was interrupted by a red flag for Kamui Kobayashi's Sauber stopping on the circuit, although Alonso still managed 141 laps.

<snipped>

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/89875

[ahmz]

[MightyJordan]

We've made McLaren a second a lap faster, says Whitmarsh

McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh says that some tough decisions have been taken following the team?s poor performance in winter testing and the result, he believes, is a one second per lap improvement in the car.

Two of the key areas are the floor and the exhausts, where a simpler solution has been employed.

Speaking in a Vodafone phone-in with leading F1 websites, he said, ?I was not satisfied with where the car was from a reliabiliy or performance point of view. We have made some dramatic changes to the car. There is some risk, but we hope that it pays off and the car is more competitive.

?The changes are aimed at making the car over a second quicker than it was in the tests.?

The team found that some of the solutions on the car which had the potential to make the car very fast, were not delivering and were causing reliability problems. These have been changed.

One of the major areas of innovation this year is in the exhausts blowing on various aerodynamic areas; this is becoming something of an arms race in itself. McLaren had what Whitmarsh described as a ?very extreme? solution on its car and it has now been changed back to something ?simpler?.

Although he did not mention it today, hydraulics have been another area that McLaren has had reliability problems with. This is something that has also affected Force India, who buy their drivetrain and rear end from McLaren.

Whitmarsh admitted that the enforced lay off caused by the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix had been good for McLaren, buying it some time to radically change the car, ?It could be very crucial, but we?ll be able to answer that in the next few days. We?ve been able to significantly change the car.

If the car is reliable and quick then this will have been crucial.

? I think the car fundamentally isn?t a bad car, we need to unlock the exhaust blowing potential and we had some very creative ideas, some of which could have worked spectacularly well but in order to do that they had to be durable and raceable and frankly some of our solutions weren?t. That?s why we had to go back and in doing so we found some interesting performance.?

Source

[deuz]

WTF there's f1 on the tv now......awesome :D completely forgot about it.

finally a race in the right timezone :shiftyninja:

[Subject Delta]

The fact that Ferrari used flowvis paint on Massa's rear wing was interesting.

And although McLaren appear to be in far better shape than I expected, the pace that Red Bull appear to have is ominous.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Webber goes fastest in first practice

Mark Webber and Red Bull made the perfect start to the 2011 season by going fastest in opening free practice for the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.

Though it's too soon for most of the questions over 2011 form to be answered, it seems at least that predictions about the competitiveness of the new RB7 were correct as both Webber and world champion team-mate Sebastian Vettel spent long periods of the 90 minute session at the top of the times. The pair ended up locking out the first two positions fairly easily.

In the end Webber's 1m26.831s, set on a new set of Pirelli's hard 'prime' tyres on the final lap of the session ensured he fired an early shot to Vettel - the German ending up some .0327s behind after a late run of his own.

Ferrari's Fernando Alonso was third fastest, more than half a second behind Vettel, ahead of Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg.

Rubens Barrichello, now fully recovered from his travel dramas, set an impressive fifth fastest time late in the session for Williams ahead of McLaren's Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton who both showed respectable pace throughout the morning to go sixth and seventh in the revised MP4-26 - which sported a simplified exhaust similar to that of Red Bull and Ferrari.

Michael Schumacher was eighth fastest ahead of Kamui Kobayashi, whose Sauber shed part of its engine cover late in the session. Vitaly Petrov completed the top ten for Renault.

The session was relatively incident free, though several drivers had off-track moments, including Webber and Felipe Massa - who ended the session 11th ahead of Nick Heidfeld.

Only Karun Chandhok hit the wall in the Lotus, as he exited the pits at the start of the session. On cold tyres the Indian's car appeared to snap right and spun him straight into the wall - forcing Heikki Kovalainen to take on development duties for the team.

Virgins Jerome d'Ambrosio and Timo Glock were some 8s off the pace as Virgin flirts with the prospect of the 107% qualifying cut off in qualifying while neither HRT ventured on track at all.

Pos  Driver         Team                   Time              Laps
 1.  Webber         Red Bull-Renault       1m26.831s  +        20
 2.  Vettel         Red Bull-Renault       1m27.158s  + 0.327  19
 3.  Alonso         Ferrari                1m27.749s  + 0.918  20
 4.  Rosberg        Mercedes               1m28.152s  + 1.321  16
 5.  Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth      1m28.430s  + 1.599  24
 6.  Button         McLaren-Mercedes       1m28.440s  + 1.609  29
 7.  Hamilton       McLaren-Mercedes       1m28.483s  + 1.652  26
 8.  Schumacher     Mercedes               1m28.690s  + 1.859  14
 9.  Kobayashi      Sauber-Ferrari         1m28.725s  + 1.894  13
10.  Petrov         Renault                1m28.765s  +  1.93  15
11.  Massa          Ferrari                1m28.842s  + 2.011  20
12.  Heidfeld       Renault                1m28.928s  + 2.097  14
13.  Sutil          Force India-Mercedes   1m29.314s  + 2.483  19
14.  Buemi          Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1m29.328s  + 2.497  21
15.  Maldonado      Williams-Cosworth      1m29.403s  + 2.572  24
16.  Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1m29.468s  + 2.637  23
17.  Perez          Sauber-Ferrari         1m29.643s  + 2.812  18
18.  Hulkenberg     Force India-Mercedes   1m31.002s  + 4.171  20
19.  Kovalainen     Lotus-Cosworth         1m32.428s  + 5.597  13
20.  d'Ambrosio     Virgin-Cosworth        1m35.282s  + 8.451  17
21.  Glock          Virgin-Cosworth        1m35.289s  + 8.458  15
22.  Chandhok       Lotus-Cosworth         no time              1
23.  Liuzzi         HRT-Cosworth           no time
24.  Karthikeyan    HRT-Cosworth           no time

All Timing Unofficial

Source: Autosport

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Button tops second Australia practice

McLaren defied pre-season perceptions by dominating the times in the second practice session for the Australian Grand Prix as Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton proved the only men to break through the 1m25s barrier.

The session, which was run under race conditions for the last 30 minutes to test out the new overtaking zone, saw most of the fastest running take place, predictably, just before the hour mark when everyone tried the soft Pirelli 'Option' tyre.

It was during this period that first Hamilton posted a 1m25.854s, and then Button improved upon it to go 0.132s faster still. Whether or not McLaren's pace is a true measure of the overall picture remains unclear however, for Red Bull's drivers, who dominated session one, were instructed not to use their adjustable rear wings for much of the session.

In the end, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber were unleashed, once they got on to the Option tyres, but neither could match Fernando Alonso's Ferrari, which ended the session third.

Michael Schumacher improved to sixth fastest in the Mercedes, having been fastest of all for a while. Felipe Massa, one of several drivers to run off-track during the session, was seventh.

Mexican rookie Sergio Perez was an impressive eighth fastest on his first grand prix day for Sauber, outpacing the sport's most experience driver Rubens Barrichello, who was ninth for Williams - another to test the gravel run off at Turn 3.

Nico Rosberg completed the top ten for Mercedes ahead of Jaime Alguersuari's Toro Rosso and Vitaly Petrov in the Renault.

Another rookie, Paul di Resta deserved credit for outpacing team-mate Adrian Sutil in 16th, while Pastor Maldonado was 18th on his first practice day for Williams.

It was not a stellar session for F1's newest teams. Both Lotus cars were the best part of five seconds off the pace, while the Virgins reduced the deficit to front from more than eight seconds in the morning to seven seconds in the afternoon.

HRT, which announced early in the session that it intended to complete installation laps only, managed to get Tonio Liuzzi out on track with two minutes remaining.

The test of drag reduction systems in the last half of practice provided little indication of what might be to come in the race, and eventually was brought to a premature conclusion when heavy rain began to fall in the last 10 minutes.

Pos  Driver         Team                   Time              Laps
 1.  Button         McLaren-Mercedes      1m25.854s            32
 2.  Hamilton       McLaren-Mercedes      1m25.986s  + 0.132   31
 3.  Alonso         Ferrari               1m26.001s  + 0.147   28
 4.  Vettel         Red Bull-Renault      1m26.014s  + 0.160   35
 5.  Webber         Red Bull-Renault      1m26.283s  + 0.429   33
 6.  Schumacher     Mercedes              1m26.590s  + 0.736   31
 7.  Massa          Ferrari               1m26.789s  + 0.935   34
 8.  Perez          Sauber-Ferrari        1m27.101s  + 1.247   39
 9.  Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth     1m27.280s  + 1.426   34
10.  Rosberg        Mercedes              1m27.448s  + 1.594   23
11.  Alguersuari    Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m27.525s  + 1.671   31
12.  Petrov         Renault               1m27.528s  + 1.674   29
13.  Heidfeld       Renault               1m27.536s  + 1.682   22
14.  Buemi          Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m27.697s  + 1.843   30
15.  Kobayashi      Sauber-Ferrari        1m28.095s  + 2.241   35
16.  di Resta       Force India-Mercedes  1m28.376s  + 2.522   33
17.  Sutil          Force India-Mercedes  1m28.583s  + 2.729   31
18.  Maldonado      Williams-Cosworth     1m29.386s  + 3.532   29
19.  Kovalainen     Lotus-Renault         1m30.829s  + 4.975   22
20.  Trulli         Lotus-Renault         1m30.912s  + 5.058   23
21.  D'Ambrosio     Virgin-Cosworth       1m32.106s  + 6.252   36
22.  Glock          Virgin-Cosworth       1m32.135s  + 6.281   30
23.  Liuzzi         HRT-Cosworth          No time               1

All Timing Unofficial

Source: Autosport

[ahmz]

It's going to be a very interesting Qualy tomorrow! And the DRS didn't look like it had a very big advantage when they were testing it at the end of FP2, which is probably a good thing.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

It's going to be a very interesting Qualy tomorrow! And the DRS didn't look like it had a very big advantage when they were testing it at the end of FP2, which is probably a good thing.

The adjustable rear wing is a fairly useless gimmick imho. I can imagine it being dropped entirely after a few races.

[ahmz]

[Subject Delta]

I'm not a fan of the adjustable rear wing either, I feel it adds unnecessary complication for little benefit

Have to admit though, although the pace of McLaren in P2 could have been due to low fuel, from the onboard footage, the handling of the car looked to be pretty good, they are definitely in far better shape than anyone figured they would be, and that pleases me a great deal

[HSoft]

so is f1 a sport or is it entertainment. If you want it to be entertainment and not a sport then i say go for track wetting.

It's both. If it wasn't entertaining then people wouldn't watch, sponsorship would go way down and F1 wouldn't be the world phenomenon that it currently is.

It's also a sport, showing the best drivers, engineers etc. in the world of motorsport.

So what's wrong with having sprinklers on a track and make the track wet for some laps at some random point in the GP? It would showcase just how good the drivers are, the teams for having to pit and change wheels etc. and would generally just make it a better event IMO.

[what]

It's both. If it wasn't entertaining then people wouldn't watch, sponsorship would go way down and F1 wouldn't be the world phenomenon that it currently is.

It's also a sport, showing the best drivers, engineers etc. in the world of motorsport.

So what's wrong with having sprinklers on a track and make the track wet for some laps at some random point in the GP? It would showcase just how good the drivers are, the teams for having to pit and change wheels etc. and would generally just make it a better event IMO.

It's lasted this long without sprinklers. It can survive without them now.

[MightyJordan]

Haha! :laugh: Brilliant ad! :rofl: Great to see one of my old favourites again too. :)