The final test is in Barcelona. Here are today's times. For comparison, last year's pole lap was 1:25:232. Note Button in the Mc-Honda did over 100 laps and best time less than a half second slower than the 2014 pole time. DAY TWO TIMES Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4 Column 5 Column 6 Pos Driver Car Time Gap Laps 1 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m 22.792s 106 2 Valtteri Bottas Williams/Mercedes 1m 23.995s 1.203s 90 3 Felipe Nasr Sauber/Ferrari 1m 24.071s 1.279s 141 4 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1m 25.339s 2.547s 143 5 Jenson Button McLaren/Honda 1m 25.590s 2.798s 101 6 Pastor Maldonado Lotus/Mercedes 1m 26.705s 3.913s 140 7 Max Verstappen Toro Rosso/Renault 1m 26.766s 3.974s 139 8 Daniil Kvyat Red Bull/Renault 1m 26.965s 4.173s 84 9 Nico Hulkenberg Force India/Mercedes 1m 28.412s 5.620s 77
Sheesh, has MBZ been sandbagging a bit? Or was this just a banzai run to psyche out the other guys right before the first race?
Just to fuel the fires of speculation... :devil: Rosberg claims he wasn't even trying for a hot lap, also complained of being unhappy with the setup. Want more? Someone from another team said he happened to be watching during that 'banzai' run and claims Rosberg didn't even open his DRS.
Looks like it could be a boring season with MB dominating again. Anymore it seems like every time there is a major rules change one team gets it right until the next major change. McLaren, Williams, Ferrari, Red Bull, now MB. Maybe there should be flipping the rules around every 2-3 years just to keep it interesting. Not making things tighter just different. It would get innovation going again.
I dunno, even with the MB domination last year, and the RB domination of the last 4 years, I've still seen some pretty good racing. Besides, F1 always has been "the team with the fastest car wins," so it's sort of the nature of the sport. Not that it couldn't be improved by having more relaxed rules.
I suspect Red Bull going back to what is essentially the same livery fits the same sort of ease-of-recognition logic blamed for the new helmet rule. Race promoters lobbied for helmet change ban (grandprix247.com)
Never liked how Infiniti is on the car and now it's larger, and a lot more visible! Then they have advertising like Infiniti has anything to do with the engineering and performance of the F1 cars.
I don't care that Infiniti is on there any more than I care about the name of a bank or a drinks company or whoever else decides to help pay the bills in exchange for a bit of fast-moving ad space. That's been a part of F1 (and all other motorsport) since before the days of John Player Special. However, I'm definitely not a fan of the purple that comes with the Infiniti logo... :frown2: Speaking of Infiniti, I wonder who gets to be the new Infiniti "Director of Performance" now that Vettel has abdicated the position. I'm picturing a coin toss with both Ricciardo and Kvyat hoping to lose.
I think I it makes Infiniti look bad and I would not buy one. If your an auto company and want to be seen in a race series than you should put your big boy pants on and come race.
Now I get it, they're actually in the car making biz. Makes sense but I gotta admit I never thought of it that way. Probably because when I see Infiniti on the cars I just think of them as a sponsor and the fact they're an automaker doesn't even cross my mind. I'm sure Infiniti think people take it the exact opposite way, like their association with Red Bull means they're actually involved. After all, Red Bull is just an energy drinks company...what would they know about building cars? There was a point last year when Red Bull was having so much trouble with the Renault engines they supposedly briefly studied the option of making their own. Speculation was if they'd done it the engines would have had Infiniti badges.
If they had done it and the engine had a Infiniti badg then that would be great. Infiniti advertise as a sport sedan. What they are doing is like those brats that would hang around big guys so they could pick a fight and let there friends finish the fight for them because they are a p....
The fact that Infinkity doesn't have a part on the car doesn't bother me. It's only a badge $aying where a bunch of money came from.
What gets me is the redundancy. Total is on both wings, and Infinity is not only the GIANT SIDEPOD logo, but also on the rear wing. Even the Red Bull charging logo is on there twice per side, with the words Red Bull as well. And that's not counting all the other repetitions visible from the front or rear. They really need to hire a better livery design firm, rather than Craigslisting an empty-nester with Corel Draw and MS Paint. :/
A lot of the redundancy is because they sell sponsorship by location and companies are paying for more than one spot. The designers have to make small adjustments for the sponsors, and they can only do so much if the team wants the money. The best looking cars were the tobacco sponsored cars even though their name was repeated all over the car.
The tobacco logos/paint schemes were so good they could leave their names off & you still knew who the sponsor was.