Crown

Rossi:

Did I already say that I hate Vettel? 

He's not doing a lot to change peoples opinion of him is he?

http://www.phrog.co.uk

Great victory for Hamilton, bad luck for Button, terrible Vettel, Teflonso showing once again the vulgar driver he has become.

ResB:

Rossi:

Did I already say that I hate Vettel? 

He's not doing a lot to change peoples opinion of him is he?

Vettel is a moron of the year.

A very enjoyable race - I'm happy the weather really mixed things up nicely

Well done Hamilton. I just feel so sorry for Button - Vettel drove foolishly - he lacks judgement and keeps on taking himself and others off the track.

Soild races from Webber and Kubica to finish on the podium.

Also, Sutil, Massa, Rosberg, Schumi all quietly, uneventfully drove to good results.

Alonso was really unlucky to be hit by Barrichello but thereafter he just made too many mistakes. He should be as great as ever - but what Alonso is lacking is in his mental side - in his last championship winning season for Renault, he drove almost flawlessly every race for the entire season. Where has that Alonso gone? With that mindset, he would be one of the favourites, even now, to win this championship. He certainly has a fast enough car.

 
RT Moderator - 997.1 Carrera S GT Silver/Cocoa, -20mm/LSD, PSE, short shifter, SportDesign rims, Zuffenhausen collection

 the problem is that there are to many latins at ferrari, they will never makes thing work.! it is the history saying this in ferrari.....

Great race! It's great to see the McLaren team back in the hunt, Hamilton did a superb job, as did Button until he was neutered by "the Vet."

Vettel is a piece of work -- knocked out Button and Liuzzi and there was a message during the broadcast that the stewards were investigating him for an incident in the pits with Alonzo, apparently shortly before Alonzo crashed. He's a bit too dangerous, isn't he? If they gave out championship points for knocking other drivers out of the race, he'd surely be in the lead. He did issue an apology to Button after the race, the first time this season I've seen him take responsibility for his actions. Although, looking at it, it seems clear to me it was just out of control driving that put him into Button, not an attempt to bump in out of the way as he's done before with others.

I think the boy needs some time with Dr. Kerry Spackman, one of the F1 personal coaches. I'd describe his style as "high-anxiety driving", always on the edge of desperation, resentment and a sense of being unfairly treated if it's not going his way. And it's not like it's working for him. He doesn't just take others out, he constantly removes himself from contention. Other than that, as the neighbors said, he seemed like such a nice, normal young man.

Spa is such a great course. Great to see Webber hang in there, too. 

--

Winning through radical experimentation.

BTW, once again the stewarding it's been pathetic, not to mention the always biased Charlie W.

xander71:

 the problem is that there are to many latins at ferrari, they will never makes thing work.! it is the history saying this in ferrari.....

 I bet you will beat Ferrari any day, right? Don't stereotype please.

 The big question is....will McLaren and Redbull focus their efforts on Hamilton and Webber now!!?!?!?!?

They have pulled out a lead over Button and Vettle....

Perhaps they will wait one more race...and then make their decision?

Hmm, they can't really 'focus' on one driver, there is not suppose to be team orders, they don't really want to pull a 'Ferrari Alonso'

Not to mention Schumacher only finished 15 seconds behind the leader. Gap is closing. I think next season they will run at the top again. great race, sorry about SV that was lame. anyone have a youtube link? 

indeed shifting is ancient technology - so is a fuel burning engine..  I happen to like both :) 

indeed shifting is ancient technology - so is a fuel burning engine..  I happen to like both :) 

when in ferrari there where only italians, they did not manage much, it is the mentality, you cannot change those things, the italian mentality is wonderful in creating things, art etc... but when it comes up to organisation and hard work..well it is not for us! sadly I'm telling you this because we are a 3 word country with some exeption people that make all italy look exotic and fantastic, but it is not the true!

Vettle proved one more time, that he is a complete joke...

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/86276

Horner reckons Button braked unexpectedly

--

"Form follows function"

Whoopsy:

Hmm, they can't really 'focus' on one driver, there is not suppose to be team orders, they don't really want to pull a 'Ferrari Alonso'

Can one driver assist the other during the race, or is this against some rules too?

--

"Form follows function"

reginos:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/86276

Horner reckons Button braked unexpectedly

--

"Form follows function"

Horner is drinking too much Red Bull lately, probably version with some kind of illegal substance added...

I have been a fan of Vetel sinc ethe beginning, but I must admit that he is making way too many rookie mistakes. He is a great driver, but need to control his temper much better.

 997.2 C2S, PDK, -20mm

Formula One: Red Bull RB6 - front wing controversy...

(1 August 2010)

"Although TV footage has shown the Red Bull front wing appear to almost touch the track surface at speed, the rules demand that when static it has to stay 75mm above the ground..."

Formula One: Revised front-wing flex test...

(29 August 2010)

"The front wing must be no lower than 75mm above the reference plane, which is the lowest point of the car without the plank (yellow dotted line). To check compliance with this rule, prior to this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, in scrutineering a load of 50kg was applied to the endplates (smaller red arrow), with a permitted flex of up to 10mm. After rival teams voiced suspicions that the front wings of Red Bull and Ferrari were flexing more than this at speed, the FIA has doubled the load applied in the test to 100kg, now measured in the middle of the wing's side section (larger red arrow), with a permitted flex of 20mm. Both Red Bull and Ferrari cleared scrutineering at Spa...."

F1-Technical-News_Revised-front-wing-flex-test

Formula One: Revised floor flex test...

(29 August 2010)

"The FIA carry out load tests to check whether a car's floor flexes beyond the permitted 5mm (yellow highlighted area) under a 200kg load. The test, which uses a piston in the centre of the floor, was introduced at the 2007 Spanish Grand Prix following the controversy surrounding Ferrari's 'moveable' floor device. Stricter front-wing flex tests have been introduced here at Spa and at the next round in Italy a stricter floor test will be added. Whilst the same weight will be used, the test will be applied to the side of the floor too. It will also be prohibited to run a section of plank less than 100cm in length..."

F1-Technical-News_Revised-floor-flex-test

BELGIAN GP – TECHNICAL INTRIGUES ON FERRARI, RENAULT AND RED BULL...

(30 August 2010)

Formula 1 started up again at Spa Francorchamps after the summer break, which incorporated a compulsory two week factory shutdown.

Despite the lack of development time during this period, there were nevertheless some fascinating technical stories, including two significant upgrades on front running cars, which had been scheduled for the Belgian Grand Prix weekend.

And there was also a more stringent test to ensure that front wings do not flex beyond what the amount allowed in the rules. Would this force Red Bull and Ferrari into changes and slow them down?

And we’ll also look at the difference between the wet set up and dry set up of the two Ferraris.

Flexi wing tests

After the heated debate in Germany and Hungary about the Red Bull front wing flexing to increase front downforce, a new more stringent test was introduced by the FIA. Red Bull passed the test.

The Red Bull wing at Spa featured fewer elements than the Hungary wing and observers say that it did not flex out on track as much as in Budapest. The team says that they have changed nothing in the wing apart from things they would normally do when moving from an ultra high downforce circuit like Hungary to a faster circuit like Spa. However senior composites technicians from the team’s Milton Keynes base, who do not normally attend Grands Prix, were noticed in the paddock, which means that something out of the ordinary was taking place. The theory is that the wing flexes outwards due to a sophisticated layering process of the carbon composite material.

The new test involved double the load being placed on the wing, so now it was now 100kg. As the severity of the new test is arbitrary, there has been a considerable amount of lobbying of the FIA technical people by Red Bull and Ferrari on the one hand and McLaren and Mercedes on the other.

The outcome from Spa was that McLaren and Mercedes were both privately unsatisfied that the test was stringent enough, while observing that the Red Bull wing flexed less than it had in Budapest, when out on track. The car was much closer to the performance of its rivals than it had been in Budapest, but there are several possible explanations for that, including the weather and the fact that the wing has significantly fewer flaps and thus is creating less downforce anyway.

Rivals suspect that the flexibility of the floor stay may be a larger contributing factor to Red Bull’s speed and have successfully lobbied the FIA to introduce a more stringent test for Monza.

As Monza is a low downforce, power circuit and Red Bull’s deficiency is in engine power, they are likely to be at a disadvantage there anyway and it will be tricky to draw many conclusions on what effect these new tests have had. We should see any differences more clearly in Singapore and particularly Suzuka.

New Ferrari diffuser

Ferrari had a significant upgrade to its diffuser in Spa. The team introduced an exhaust- blown diffuser for the first time in Valencia, copying the idea which Red Bull had revived this year. The concept uses the gas pressure of the exhaust passing through the diffuser to gain more downforce.

The blown diffuser is a complex piece to get right and Ferrari’s strategy was to introduce a basic model and get it working quickly, learn from it and then introduce a more sophisticated one at Spa. This strategy seems to have worked quite well, the team did not lose time in getting it working as McLaren did, for example.

The new diffuser is similar in concept to solutions on the Renault and McLaren. There is a very large hole, made legal by two longitudinal fences which run the length of it. The lower channel of the central section of the diffuser, has a slightly different top profile, whose outer edges now are rounded downwards.

There were also small changes to the bottom tips of the rear wing, which echo Red Bull.

Alonso's rear wing on the grid at Spa

For qualifying and the race, held in changeable weather conditions, Ferrari ran two different specifications of rear wing. Fernando Alonso ran a slightly higher downforce wing, which was therefore more of a wet set up, while Felipe Massa ran the lower downforce example. Massa’s was the newer design and it featured different end plates with curved gills similar to Red Bull, no slot between elements and a smaller main wing element.

Performance wise the differences were subtle but still noticeable. On the fastest laps in qualifying, Massa’s car was 2 km/h faster through the speed trap than Alonso’s and was a tenth of a second slower through the middle sector of the lap, which is a good indictor of downforce.

Massa's rear wing on the Spa grid

Both wings incorporate the drag reducing F Duct device, which showed its greatest advantage of the season so far around Spa. With the need for high downforce in the middle sector and good straight line speed on the two long straights in sectors one and two, cars equipped with F ducts could have it both ways and the device was worth half a second per lap here, a huge amount by F1 standards for a single component.

Next time out on the high speed Monza circuit it is likely that the teams will not use the F Duct. As the elements of the rear wing will be so small, it’s hard to incorporate the device and the performance gain is small in any case.

Renault F Duct

With so much to gain from running an F Duct at Spa, it was the perfect time for Renault to introduce their version. This being round 13 of 19 races, it comes quite late, by the standards of a top team. McLaren pioneered the idea at the start of the season, Sauber had one soon after and Ferrari and Force India soon followed. It’s another complex piece of engineering, involving fluidic switches, which channel and switch on air flows.

Renault has been rebuilding its aerodynamic capacity after the difficulties of 2009 and has focussed on perfecting other areas of the car, like front wings and blown diffusers before trying out its F Duct. The strategy has worked and the car has been steadily improving, as shown by Vitaly Petrov’s season best results in Budapest. So the half second gain from the F Duct at Spa put Robert Kubica right in the hunt at the front of the field. He both qualified and finished in third place.

In common with most systems where the F Duct concept is an add-on, rather than designed into the monocoque like McLaren, the drivers activate the system using their left hand.

F1-TECHNICAL-INTRIGUES-on-FERRARI-RENAULT-and-RED BULL_JA-LINK

reginos:

Whoopsy:

Hmm, they can't really 'focus' on one driver, there is not suppose to be team orders, they don't really want to pull a 'Ferrari Alonso'

Can one driver assist the other during the race, or is this against some rules too?

--

"Form follows function"

As in crashing the car to help the team mate a la Renault Alonso?

Teammate can't really 'help' each other, other being difficult to pass. But only to a certain point when the next rule about block applies.

Not sure what's a legal assistance on track now.

http://www.phrog.co.uk

Focus on the effect of Button's slipstream on Vettel's frontwing... Not flexible, huh?

On the other hand, it passed scrutineering so they play by the rules..

F1 Technical Analysis: "Red Bull's Flexible Front Wing in Action..."

"Focus on Vettel's front wing and see what Button's slipstream does to it!"

Whoopsy:

reginos:

Whoopsy:

Hmm, they can't really 'focus' on one driver, there is not suppose to be team orders, they don't really want to pull a 'Ferrari Alonso'

Can one driver assist the other during the race, or is this against some rules too?

--

"Form follows function"

 

As in crashing the car to help the team mate a la Renault Alonso?

Teammate can't really 'help' each other, other being difficult to pass. But only to a certain point when the next rule about block applies.

Not sure what's a legal assistance on track now.

Fuel consumption could become 'critical' for Button if he gets in front of Hamilton in the next few races.

RBR denies flexi clampdown hurt form...

(1 September 2010)

Red Bull Racing has hit back at claims from its rivals that the FIA's flexi-wing clampdown is the real reason why it was not so fast in Belgium last weekend.

Formula 1's governing body introduced tougher flexible bodywork tests in Spa, and has revised the floor regulations for the next race in Monza, in a bid to ensure that teams are not gaining a performance advantage through flexing front wings.

Although both Red Bull Racing and Ferrari said their wings were unchanged for the Spa event, those claims were disputed by rival teams, who reckoned that changes had taken place. They based this view on the fact that the front wings on both cars appeared to be running further from the ground than they had in recent races.

World champion Jenson Button also told the Daily Telegraph that he reckoned the new wing tests had made a difference.

"I think the circuit characteristics suited us in Spa and that Red Bull's pace was affected by the new tests," Button said.

"I hope the new, even more stringent tests for Monza will have even more of an effect. They [Red Bull] say they won't have to change anything but they said that here. Watching the car here on the track it was not flexing as much."

Red Bull Racing's team principal Christian Horner has responded to those views by insisting that his outfit made no changes to its wings - and he hinted that it was McLaren's wing that was now flexing more.

"I can categorically tell you that they are the same wings that ran in Hungary a month ago," he said when asked about the comments from his rivals that his team's wings appeared to be running higher than before. "Whether that is the same for our competitors I can't say but I would be very interested to know - and you might find it was a silver wing that was most flexible this weekend."

The tougher floor tests and regulations to be introduced at Monza will force almost every team on the grid to make changes to their cars. But the strictness of the new floor deflection tests, allied to new skid block regulations, look set to bring an end to the flexi controversy.

And with McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh and Mercedes GP team principal Ross Brawn saying they hoped a line could be drawn under the controversy, Horner too was optimistic that the issue would soon be at an end.

"On the basis that nothing has changed on our car, I cannot see why they should not be happy," explained Horner. "I would be interested to know who had the most flexible front wing this weekend, because I can guarantee it wasn't us." 

RBR-denies-flexi-clampdown-hurt-form_Autosport-article

ResB:

"Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out."

ANALYSIS OF RED BULL WING FLEX BEFORE VETTEL HIT BUTTON...

(1 September 2010)

There has been a clip on the internet for the last 48 hours showing the on board shot from Sebastian Vettel’s car as he lost control and hit Jenson Button.

The clip was originally on You Tube, but has been taken down on the request of FOM. This is to protect the rights of the broadcasters, like BBC, RTL and La Sexta, who also have the online rights in their countries.

As a result the clip is available on the BBC website today and maybe on your local broadcaters’ site. Apologies for raising this if your local broadcaster doesn’t have it, but the point here is very valid. UK readers can see it here BBC F1 website.

Fans and insiders alike have been interested to see the amount of deflection in the wing, despite the heavier flex tests the FIA carried out last weekend.

It looks like the wing rolls when one side of it comes clear of the wake from Button’s car. This isn’t surprising – one side of the wing is probably only getting about 50% of the air that the side outside of Button’s wake gets.

That difference in wing load one side to the other, combined with the deflection of the wing and the roll that creates will have made the car quite unstable, according to engineers I’ve discussed the video with. It is not necessarily the reason why Vettel lost control of the car, but it will not have made controlling the car any easier.

This has got me thinking – was this in any way also a contributing factor to the Webber accident in Valencia, Webber hitting Hamilton in Australia or the reason why Vettel crashed into Webber at Istanbul, all occasions when one of their cars has been moving out from the wake of another car? There may be nothing in it, but there are some similarities.

If that video clip has reached the FIA’s Charlie Whiting, he may well be thinking that the FIA needs to think about introducing an assymetric wing load test in addition to the new tests introduced in Spa.

No doubt rival teams, led I would imagine by an aggrieved McLaren, will be lobbying the FIA on the grounds of safety, to understand whether this wing flex may have contributed to Sunday’s accident.

Meanwhile all the teams are nervous about the new tests for flexible floor stays which come into force in Monza. Currently a load is placed on the centreline of the floor, but in Monza the FIA will place a load up to 100mm either side of the centreline. This means that many teams, not just Red Bull, will have to construct some compliance device to pass the test.

The concern then is the impact the floor takes from the kerbs in Monza, especially at the second chicane. It’s quite conceivable that some of these compliance devices may get damaged. And in extreme cases that could lead to a broken chassis.

There will be some late nights for the mechanics in Monza...

RED-BULL-WING-FLEX-BEFORE-VETTEL-HIT-BUTTON_JA-Article

Hope this link isn't a re-post (anonymous McLaren employee with overtaking tips for Vettel)

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/overtaking/