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Official Formula 1 Thread (Part 8) |
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#6726 |
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Quote:
In which case, statistical cherry picking aside, we are left with just opinions.
Button won't be remembered as a great driver, he'll be remembered as a steady driver and from what I've read, the pit lane jury is still out regarding Vettel's qualities. If my opinion is wrong about these two "average" drivers and they are both given good cars, then 2015 could be a very good year for F1. |
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#6727 |
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Quote:
Canada 2011
The unfortunate thing about Button is that, for the vast majority of his career, he's ended up in cars where his goal has always been to maximise points scored rather than indulge in spectacular battles for great victories. Aside from his year at Brawn, his first year at McLaren was probably one of the best opportunities he had to "battle" and he aquitted himself rather well, if memory serves. I'm not really a "fan" of either Button or Vettel but, even so, I don't have any problem giving them the respect they deserve for taking the car they were given and doing the best they could with it - in one case meaning maximising points or, in the other case, dominating the sport for four years. |
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#6728 |
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Quote:
Indeed.
The unfortunate thing about Button is that, for the vast majority of his career, he's ended up in cars where his goal has always been to maximise points scored rather than indulge in spectacular battles for great victories. Aside from his year at Brawn, his first year at McLaren was probably one of the best opportunities he had to "battle" and he aquitted himself rather well, if memory serves. I'm not really a "fan" of either Button or Vettel but, even so, I don't have any problem giving them the respect they deserve for taking the car they were given and doing the best they could with it - in one case meaning maximising points or, in the other case, dominating the sport for four years. |
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#6729 |
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Join Date: Jan 2007
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I think Hamilton learned a lot from him when they were teammates.
Hamilton was always (and still is, to some extent) the sort of driver who just gets in a car and "thrashes the tits off it" and that always served him fairly well. When Pirelli came on the scene it really looked, for a while, like Hamilton might not be able to get his head around the idea of pacing himself, rather than going balls-out all the time, and in 2011 Button really gave him a lesson in the benefit of understanding what a car is capable of and ensuring you achieve at least that rather than fighting for the win (and often sticking it in the hedge in the process) in a car that isn't capable of it. I guess Button is a lot like Rosberg in that respect; he's a guy who's almost certain to bring home whatever points are likely. If it hadn't been for his time with Button, Hamilton's "2011" might have been this year instead, and Rosberg would've taken the title this year. |
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#6730 |
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Join Date: Apr 2011
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There wasn't much of a choice though was there.
Button is just an average driver who got lucky one year. Vettel's another average driver who got lucky four times. I reserve the right to back track next year if results prove otherwise. I don't believe Button will go down as an all time great but he's a bloody good driver make no mistake. |
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#6731 |
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McLaren comparison: From their time together at McLaren there really isn't a great deal in it.
2010 Season - Hamilton 4th, Button 5th 2011 Season - Button 2nd, Hamilton 5th 2012 Season - Hamilton 4th, Button 5th Total points scored - Hamilton 657, Button 672 Total wins - Hamilton 10, Button 8 |
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#6732 |
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#6733 |
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Quote:
I guess his McLaren contract was good news too, given that getting fired a couple of weeks before getting hitched might've put a downer on things. |
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#6734 |
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So how do you rate Hamilton, as by many criteria Button outperformed him at McLaren?
I don't believe Button will go down as an all time great but he's a bloody good driver make no mistake. |
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#6735 |
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Lets get the year going..
I presume you have all read about the loop hole in the engine regs to allow in season development, which has been approved by the FIA. Also Bernie and the TWC are looking at pushing forward with 1000bhp engines, bigger tyres and less aero that we may see as soon as 2017. |
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#6736 |
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Quote:
Also Bernie and the TWC are looking at pushing forward with 1000bhp engines, bigger tyres and less aero that we may see as soon as 2017.
It was kinda fun so see the cars sliding around in the first couple of races of 2014 and I'm sure somebody's decided that it'd be fun to see more of that. Trouble is, in a series where the tyres are made out of tissue paper and the team have to make 100l of fuel last to the end of the race, it's in everybody's best interests to drive efficiently rather than spectacularly. And now Bernie wants to add 1,000bhp engines into the mix too? Pretty much none of those ideas stand up to scrutiny however attractive they might seem at first. More powerful engines sound great but, as I said, we've already got the 100l limit and we've got fragile tyres so nobody's going to create a beast of a car even if they do have a 1,000bhp engine in the back. Think of what "turbo's" were like back in the 1980's and compare that to what we saw last year. Did you see the turbo's procuce anything especially exciting last year? It's the 21st century and car manufacturers are very good at creating software to make an engine run tamely and efficiently regardless of BHP. Hell, even Barry can cobble together a 1,000bhp Skyline that can be used to go shopping in so F1 teams shouldn't have any problems. Bigger wheels are kind of interesting but I don't think the benefits outweigh the problems. The most common assertion is that you can fit bigger brakes inside bigger wheels which might lead to more overtaking under braking. Except that it's already perfectly normal to lock up the current brakes so bigger brakes aren't required. The weak link is between the tyres and the track and, once again, with fragile tyres the last thing you want to be doing is locking up the wheels. The other thing about bigger wheels & tyres which might seem attractive is that they offer higher levels of grip. Trouble is that lower-profile tyres also have more sudden breakaway and they're much harder to recover once they do let go. Sure, it might seem like it'd be exciting to see drivers having sudden snap-oversteer but when that usually ends with a driver going backwards into the armco (or another car) every time he breaks traction, it's soon going to become tiresome. Far better to have smaller wheels & tyres which break away more progressively so that a driver has more chance to try and balance the car on the edge of adhesion. As for less downforce, we're back to tyres and fuel saving again. Unless you plan to make F1 slower than it is, you can't reduce downforce without, at least, providing tyres that are more durable or relaxing the fuel limits. If you reduce downforce without conceding any of the other things, all that's going to happen is that drivers will go slower so they can get to the end of the race using the current tyres and fuel allocation. Wonder if this is Bernie trying to shit-stir by deliberately coming up with ideas which contradict the philosophies that Napoleon has put in place? |
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#6737 |
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Trouble is, in a series where the tyres are made out of tissue paper and the team have to make 100l of fuel last to the end of the race, it's in everybody's best interests to drive efficiently rather than spectacularly. The idea is to allow more fuel and faster fuel flow rates.
And now Bernie wants to add 1,000bhp engines into the mix too? |
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#6738 |
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Join Date: Aug 2012
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I don't get why so many ppl try to put Button down, they probably don't like his personality and let that cloud their judgement. No doubt Hamilton and Alonso are quicker in qualifying, but Buttons race craft and his tactical awareness can make up for it. I think Hamilton learned a lot from him when they were teammates.
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#6739 |
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Quote:
Can't really see how anybody could disagree with that.
Hamilton was always (and still is, to some extent) the sort of driver who just gets in a car and "thrashes the tits off it" and that always served him fairly well. When Pirelli came on the scene it really looked, for a while, like Hamilton might not be able to get his head around the idea of pacing himself, rather than going balls-out all the time, and in 2011 Button really gave him a lesson in the benefit of understanding what a car is capable of and ensuring you achieve at least that rather than fighting for the win (and often sticking it in the hedge in the process) in a car that isn't capable of it. I guess Button is a lot like Rosberg in that respect; he's a guy who's almost certain to bring home whatever points are likely. If it hadn't been for his time with Button, Hamilton's "2011" might have been this year instead, and Rosberg would've taken the title this year. But, I think it was his coolness and focus that really was his forté. It was a shame he lost that from 2010 until just recently. |
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#6740 |
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Join Date: Jan 2007
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The idea is to allow more fuel and faster fuel flow rates.
It probably would be kinda fun to watch the sort of low-tech, fire-breathing cars that Montezuma, and now Bernie, seem to want but they need to realise that the only way they're going to keep major manufacturers involved is to advocate technologies that are actually relevant to modern car manufacturing. And, besides, Monte's whining always rang false because he was quite happy with technologically advanced cars while Schuey was getting a red one to the flag in front of everybody else. Seems like Bernie just wants to see F1 implode before he carks it himself. Quote:
I wasn't a great fan of JB's when he first started, I thought he was arrogant, cocky and a bit of an @rse, I have to honest. But, when he started to mature, around about 2005/6, I gave him a little more respect for his abilities.
In one interview, a few years ago, he said that he had a "playboy" image to begin with and that it wasn't entirely unjustified - at the time. I think Button probably has a lot in common with Alonso. Both have admitted that they're not the "fastest" driver out there (which was quite a statement for Alonso to make) but that their success comes from maximising every opportunity without throwing them away. I guess that attitude just isn't going to appeal to everybody, and that's fair enough, but you've got to have some respect for the results that their attitude has produced. Given that Button is often considered a bit dull, I don't think he's ever been properly blown-away by a team-mate so he must be doing something right. Even while he was up against Hamilton, Lewis might've been the more spectacular of the two but Button's tenacity and level-headedness ensured that he held his own. |
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#6741 |
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Just noticed that the FIA have relented and allowed Honda the same leeway to develop their engines that the other manufacturers have.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me. The whole "Everybody else had to run an undeveloped engine for a year so Honda should have to do the same" seemed a bit mental to me. It was, basically, insisting that Honda remained a year behind all the other teams and that's just bonkers. You can't expect a major competitor to join F1 and then spunk a heap of money up the wall with no hope of success just to emulate what other teams did the previous year. |
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#6742 |
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1000bhp engines, bigger tyres and skinny wings... so basically back to the 80s. Actually I can see the sense. F1 cars are too easy to drive (hence why there are so many young drivers) and the formula is still too aero-dependent. Take away the aero but replace it with mechanical grip via fatter tyres, but at the same time up the power making the cars much more of a handful to drive requiring more experienced, older drivers and hopefully we'll get closer racing where the eventual results will be as much to do with the drivers' skills as the intrinsic pace of the cars.
The one sticking point in all this is that the racing will become much more dangerous which in the modern, risk-averse society will be a challenge to sell. On the whole I'd rather F1 stick with the current philosophy for a few more years and see where the technology leads. |
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#6743 |
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Marussia could still make the gird with a potential new owner
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#6744 |
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Quote:
1000bhp engines, bigger tyres and skinny wings... so basically back to the 80s. Actually I can see the sense. F1 cars are too easy to drive (hence why there are so many young drivers) and the formula is still too aero-dependent. Take away the aero but replace it with mechanical grip via fatter tyres, but at the same time up the power making the cars much more of a handful to drive requiring more experienced, older drivers and hopefully we'll get closer racing where the eventual results will be as much to do with the drivers' skills as the intrinsic pace of the cars.
The one sticking point in all this is that the racing will become much more dangerous which in the modern, risk-averse society will be a challenge to sell. On the whole I'd rather F1 stick with the current philosophy for a few more years and see where the technology leads. As with the thing about brakes, we already know that a current F1 car isn't "glued to the track" by aero' so reducing it substantially and making the engines more powerful is likely to simply make it all slower because the cars won't be able to corner as fast or accelerate as fast. And then, of course, the techno-wizards will get involved and, regardless of whether or not traction control is legal, they will find ways to tame the engines and minimise wheelspin which means that, all in all, we'll end up with no improvement in spectacle, slower lap-times and people whining that F1 cars are slower than GP2 cars - just like they did at the start of 2014. It really does seem like Bernie is doing his level best to finish off F1 before he goes himself. Surely anybody who understands this stuff will be aware that the best way to achieve progress is by experimenting with one thing, testing the results and then deciding whether the change takes you in the direction you want to go in? You don't change a heap of things and then hope they're all good ideas because, if you do that, even if you do get a positive result, you have no way of knowing which of the changes you've made was responsible or whether all the changes had a positive effect at all. Keep saying the same thing: The one thing that needs doing is to give somebody a heap of money and ask them to develop a way of quantifying the amount of turbulence behind a moving F1 car. Once they've developed a suitable way of quantifying turbulence, all they need to do is test a car from, say, the 1990s with it, find out how much turbulence it generates and then create a rule which says that modern cars can only produce a similar amount of turbulence. Once you've done that you could actually relax a lot of the other rules because it probably wouldn't matter how teams chose to develop their downforce as long as it didn't result in a turbulent wake which interferes with a following car. |
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#6745 |
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Join Date: Feb 2004
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Jolyon Palmer has signed for Lotus as reserve and test driver.
Never thought of him as being one to watch, but you never know, his style may suit F1. |
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#6746 |
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New cars all over the shop today, i like Force India's new livery.
https://twitter.com/jamesmoy/status/...772354/photo/1 http://www.forceindiaf1.com/TheNewForce |
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#6747 |
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Quote:
New cars all over the shop today, i like Force India's new livery.
https://twitter.com/jamesmoy/status/...772354/photo/1 http://www.forceindiaf1.com/TheNewForce Am I right in saying that there's a change in the rules to control how the front wing is mounted to the car for 2015? I read somewhere that the way Merc' had their front wing attached in 2014, whereby only the very tips of the uprights were connected to the rear edge of the wing itself, is the best way to do it. That FI looks rather conservative in that respect, with the full length of the upright attached to the wing. As I say, I think that's the result of a rule-change for this year though. The video was like watching paint dry though. 50 minutes of corporate shmoozing. VJM looked a bit unsteady on his feet. Is he still going to be taking a hands-on approach to the team? *EDIT* Just seen some images of the 2015 Williams HERE and I see they still have a more merc'-like front wing, where the uprights attach at the rear of the wing. The FI seems to have a much longer nose with the front wing further back. |
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#6748 |
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Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 12,591
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With the rend for more and more silver on cars, it will be getting harder to distinguish which car is which on the track.
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#6749 |
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Join Date: Jan 2014
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I like the way the nose looks.
Am I right in saying that there's a change in the rules to control how the front wing is mounted to the car for 2015? I read somewhere that the way Merc' had their front wing attached in 2014, whereby only the very tips of the uprights were connected to the rear edge of the wing itself, is the best way to do it. That FI looks rather conservative in that respect, with the full length of the upright attached to the wing. As I say, I think that's the result of a rule-change for this year though. The video was like watching paint dry though. 50 minutes of corporate shmoozing. VJM looked a bit unsteady on his feet. Is he still going to be taking a hands-on approach to the team? *EDIT* Just seen some images of the 2015 Williams HERE and I see they still have a more merc'-like front wing, where the uprights attach at the rear of the wing. The FI seems to have a much longer nose with the front wing further back. |
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#6750 |
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Dumfries
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Quote:
I don't think that was FI new car, just last years car with a new front wing as it the launch was billed as a livery launch.
Unless, I suppose, they just cobbled something together so it'd look 2015-ish. ![]() *EDIT* The whole "livery launch" thing was kinda funny; the way the host was asking Perez and Hulk' what they thought about it and they were trying to sound enthusiastic and polite while, at the same time, probably thinking "I don't really give a flying f**k what colour it is as long as it's quick".
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