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Formula One 2020


wood

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Finally getting to watch FP2 just now. Ted's interview with Renault's Marcin Budkowski was very telling. It seems the main thrust of Renault's protest of RP is based on the interior of the brake duct...i.e. that photos won;t reveal the interior design of the brake duct, and that if RP's brake duct is the same on the inside as the Merc 2019 brake duct, then they had help with that design.

At the end of the interview, he said something to the effect that if the internals were the same, that he would think the FIA would then go ahead and inspect the entire car. In other words, I don't think he's saying identical internals would constitute proof so much as it would constitute just cause for investigating the car further.

Edited by wood
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The Mercs are dominant, then put a driver the caliber of Hamilton and that car can't be beat unless he screws up, which is rare. If he surpasses Schumacher  in wins and championships, is he the GOAT?

No. He’s the greatest Of this era. Schumacher was the best at his time. Technology changes, as well as the cars. GOAT arguments are impossible.
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2 hours ago, Kdub said:

The Mercs are dominant, then put a driver the caliber of Hamilton and that car can't be beat unless he screws up, which is rare. If he surpasses Schumacher  in wins and championships, is he the GOAT?

I think too dominant.  They need to level the spending, years ago. I don’t want them to become NASCAR, but the playing field has to be much more level.

49 minutes ago, Goofyboy said:


No. He’s the greatest Of this era. Schumacher was the best at his time. Technology changes, as well as the cars. GOAT arguments are impossible.

I’m pretty much in complete agreement.

Schumacher will always be my favorite.

Edited by PittsburghTiger
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I dont know shit about shit... like i said I'm a relative newbie. But vettel owned hamilton at red bull. Was it just that they were so close that when Mercedes said f it and threw everything at it, the car combined with driver is that good?  And why can't the ponies keep up?   They spend more than anyone. 

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18 hours ago, pops said:

I dont know shit about shit... like i said I'm a relative newbie. But vettel owned hamilton at red bull. Was it just that they were so close that when Mercedes said f it and threw everything at it, the car combined with driver is that good?  And why can't the ponies keep up?   They spend more than anyone. 

decades ago it was said that the difference between the best and worst drivers on track was about half a second a lap.  best and worst cars was several times that.  those RB machines hacked the rules. 

it's rare we get really equal comparisons in F1 - the best drivers aren't usually in the same equipment and the equipment matters more than the driver in F1.  we do have one of those data points for hamilton.  he just edged alonso as a rookie when both were at mclaren (tied on points, came in second in the championship on tiebreakers to alonso's third). 

hamilton also won the last split driver/constructor championship, which should probably count for something.

that said, vettel has never lost a championship to someone like nico rosberg. 

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12 hours ago, Kdub said:

The Mercs are dominant, then put a driver the caliber of Hamilton and that car can't be beat unless he screws up, which is rare. If he surpasses Schumacher  in wins and championships, is he the GOAT?

Statistically, yes ... but in this sport, the car matters more than the driver. Stats in F1 rarely get you close to the real story when it comes to drivers. So I'd say no. The car has been so dominant since 2014 that if you put a Max, Alonso, Leclerc etc in it, they'd cruise to championships, too. Look what Vettel did with RBR.  And some say that other drivers wouldn't have lost out to Rosberg and/or that they would have dominated even more thoroughly, esp earlier in this PU era.

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9 hours ago, pops said:

I dont know shit about shit... like i said I'm a relative newbie. But vettel owned hamilton at red bull. Was it just that they were so close that when Mercedes said f it and threw everything at it, the car combined with driver is that good?  And why can't the ponies keep up?   They spend more than anyone. 

Vettel destroyed everyone at RBR. And look at what he's done since.  Just goes to show how dominant the car is in F1.

The main thing (among others, of course) that killed Ferrari is lack of in-season testing. They used to just throw everything at testing, and could afford to out-test everyone by a huge margin. In this era, having a massive engineering infrastructure like Merc does is huge. I've also heard good info that Toto has said "money is not an object" and that Merc was willing to spend "whatever it takes to win" and dominate in F1 (yes, they're quotes, but you won't find them in any source). The only two that can come close to that are Ferrari and RBR, but I doubt they can win in a spending war with Merc, even if they had the will to do so.

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11 hours ago, PittsburghTiger said:

I think too dominant.  They need to level the spending, years ago. I don’t want them to become NASCAR, but the playing field has to be much more level.

Yep ... and they finally are. A cap of $145M is going to put a hurt on the big spenders much more than it will teams like Renault, McLaren, RP, etc. They're used to working with budgets in that ballpark, but the big teams are going to have to re-learn learn how to do things where how much you spend overall really IS an object, and you have to decide how much you can allocate to this, that, and the other thing. If it's enforced well, it's going to be interesting. 

That's why we see Alonso coming back and Renault prioritizing 2022. Anything could happen with the new formula and a budget cap.

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BTW, a couple of things from the F1 weekend, not really related to this race ...

 

- Ted's FP2 interview with Renault's Marcin Budkowski was very telling. The main thrust of Renault's protest of RP is based on the interior of the brake duct...i.e.  that photos won't reveal the interior design of the brake duct, and that if RP's brake duct is the same on the inside as the Merc 2019 brake duct, then they very likely had help with that design.

At the end of the interview, he said something to the effect that if the internals were the same, that he would think the FIA would then go ahead and inspect the entire car. In other words, I don't think he's saying identical internals would constitute proof so much as that they would warrant investigating the car further.

I've said since the beginning that I don't believe RP copied that car  - and made it work - simply by photographing it from the outside. You could use photos to make a design that looks like a Merc, but making it work would require more than just knowing what it looks like on the outside.

 

- And this ... is nothing short of remarkable...

Apparently after talking about it again, the stewards & FIA say the outcome of an incident like STR-RIC in Austria will be different if it happens this weekend.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/150691/ricciardo-fia-would-now-review-stroll-move-differently?_ga=2.258558090.1847307833.1594751981-1850046265.1584561792

Quote

...

The incident was discussed in Friday's drivers' briefing in Hungary, where on hearing that the stewards had changed their view Ricciardo joked that he would like his points back.
"If it happens again today then we'd swap positions," he said when asked by Autosport.
"I think after the facts, they accepted that they would have done something different.
"But once Sunday night passes and Monday rolls over, the results are fixed. And you can't go back and switch positions or anything. So obviously a bit frustrated."

...

It doesn't help me now, or a few days ago, but I think that they are aware that there's a difference between that incident and the Leclerc/Verstappen incident last year, and that's that's the big one, it's the same corner. And it's still a very different outcome of the incident. So I think they're aligned with that now, it's not the same. At first, I think they did feel it was the same, which is why the initial penalty wasn't given."

 


I mean really. Think about that for a moment. An incident that almost everyone could instantly see was very different from VER-LEC 2019 was seen by the stewards as being the same. And then they come back a week later and basically admit they really didn't look very hard at it in the first place, which led to the mess that cost 2 teams points.

Wow.

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Besides the spending cap, did they follow through on any of the other suggestions?

A few I remember that would seem to help competition. 
 

Get rid of the tire sensors/monitors on the cars. Make the driver responsible for that. 
 

The other was assisted driving like in the case of Haas this weekend. Allow less communication from the team to the driver during the race. Make them make their own engine mapping decisions, button pushing etc. no more “mode 7 for 5 seconds after turn 8, then push button 11 for three seconds etc. “. Make the driver more responsible (almost totally) for the driving and management of the car on track. 

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17 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Besides the spending cap, did they follow through on any of the other suggestions?

A few I remember that would seem to help competition. 
 

Get rid of the tire sensors/monitors on the cars. Make the driver responsible for that. 
 

The other was assisted driving like in the case of Haas this weekend. Allow less communication from the team to the driver during the race. Make them make their own engine mapping decisions, button pushing etc. no more “mode 7 for 5 seconds after turn 8, then push button 11 for three seconds etc. “. Make the driver more responsible (almost totally) for the driving and management of the car on track. 

Absolutely, I'd be all for all of that but, iirc, no, they didn't. They did make a coaching rule, but I thought they had walked that back a bit, so I was taken aback by the penalty yesterday. I guess I'm misremembering.

Getting rid of the telemetry and pit wall control of the PU, tires, fuel, etc, at least during qualifying and the race, would be huge imho. 

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Is the spending cap really going to affect mercedes and Ferrari,  though?   Can't they just pretend they are throwing money at the next la Ferrari  or AMG halo car and then implement that into the F1 car?  I think the last number I saw was Ferrari spending 750 million per year on their f1 cars. Mercedes has to be similar. No way in the world the just say fuck it....guess we have an extra 600 million. 

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18 minutes ago, pops said:

Is the spending cap really going to affect mercedes and Ferrari,  though?   Can't they just pretend they are throwing money at the next la Ferrari  or AMG halo car and then implement that into the F1 car?  I think the last number I saw was Ferrari spending 750 million per year on their f1 cars. Mercedes has to be similar. No way in the world the just say fuck it....guess we have an extra 600 million. 

Enforcement has been where my budget cap skepticism lies, too ...  but F1 is starting a whole new department just for monitoring and enforcement of the cap, & they say they'll be able to track it. I suppose they actually could do that, if they're serious and smart. But we'll see...

Edited by wood
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Saw this on reddit. Max vs Albon at Hungary. Max is fucking demolishing him.
oUblGRw.thumb.png.42aec0810d9d8c718843db91bbcbee13.png

To be fair albon had a bad setup on the car all weekend. He was never happy with it. I like albon though

How happy is Ferrari with caps? I thought they were against it?
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2 hours ago, Hawndoh said:

If Ferrari actually does start up an IndyCar program just to keep from laying off a ton of people that would be pretty cool.

I wonder if Merc ne Ilmor goes back to supplying Indycar engines for the same reason.  I know, Ilmor never left Indy, providing various Chevy-branded engines and also helping engineer the Honda v8, but that's a different company with Mario Illien and The Captain, no Paul Morgan. 

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37 minutes ago, Updawg said:


To be fair albon had a bad setup on the car all weekend. He was never happy with it. I like albon though

How happy is Ferrari with caps? I thought they were against it?

I like Albon too. He was stuck in traffic a lot while Max was in free air "chasing" Lewis.

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13 hours ago, wood said:

Statistically, yes ... but in this sport, the car matters more than the driver. Stats in F1 rarely get you close to the real story when it comes to drivers. So I'd say no. The car has been so dominant since 2014 that if you put a Max, Alonso, Leclerc etc in it, they'd cruise to championships, too. Look what Vettel did with RBR.  And some say that other drivers wouldn't have lost out to Rosberg and/or that they would have dominated even more thoroughly, esp earlier in this PU era.

Agreed. Gun to my head Verstappen is the fastest driver right now and I wouldn't really hesitate. 

Where I'd hesitate would be if asked for the most consistently fast driver, i.e. including car management, consistency both in race and week to week, etc. I can believe Hamilton may be the best from that perspective. But if you lined the current grid up in identical cars and gave them all the same odds for a race I'd put all of my money on Verstappen. 

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