Most liked posts in thread: F1 - 2011

Nobody has commented on the Hamster's remarks to Will Buxton in the post crash interview, the thing he said (that I could not believe in this day of sanitized "it's all for the team" quotes) .... when asked by Will how his crashing out would affect his championship he said something to the effect of "we never had a shot at the championship"

 

But he and McLaren didn't have a chance..............:biggrin5:

 

It also seems that Quick Nick, who did not race last time around is still tied for points with his team mate? Ah, the mysterious logical thinking of F1 teams.

 

Somehow this seemed appropriate:

 

:lol:

 

Ha! Just as I suspected.....

Renault confirms Senna as Heidfeld accepts settlement

Renault F1 has announced that they have officially split with Nick Heidfeld, and that Bruno Senna will drive for the team for the remainder of the season.

Heidfeld was dropped by the team before the Belgian Grand Prix, but maintained that his contract was still valid. The German driver threatened to take the team to court later this month in order to get his race drive back, but a deal has now been reached with Heidfeld to part ways with the team.

Rest of the article here.....wonder how much $$$ it took to void his contract?

F1 News > Renault confirms Senna as Heidfeld accepts settlement

 

It's called downforce.

 

This year, it's more than just choosing a compromise between low drag (good on the straights, but slow on the corners) and higher downforce (quicker in the corners and probably quicker over a whole lap - but you can't overtake in corners).

With DRS (drag reduction system) available all the time in practice, but only when following another car on the designated one or two straights in the race, they have choose between gearing that gives a good qualifying lap time (higher gearing, so that the car can run flat out with the DRS flap open - which will also overtake more easily with DRS in the race) and good general race setup (lower gearing, so the car runs up to max rpm and power on the straights without the DRS flap open).

Remember that the standard ECU has a 18,000 rpm rev limiter, so that opening the DRS flap doesn't do you any good if you're already at 18,000 - you just bang into the rev limiter. I liked Martin Brundle's comment that "these cars feel dog slow if you only get to 17,000" (or words to that effect) - meaning that gearing the cars high to optimise DRS effect leaves them a lot slower the rest of the time.

So one might expect Red Bull to be 'slow' on qualifying top speed (ie, with DRS flap open) as if you're quick enough to get pole position, you won't be doing much overtaking so you want a car that does quick laps in the race with the DRS shut.

And it took me 30,000 iterations of my Fisher Price F1 Race Simulator ("makes authentic brmm, brmm noises"), including crying a spare set of AA batteries out of Mum, to work that out so don't be asking any tricky questions, or my rattle's going through the plasma screen.

 

Alas those double A's were not sacrificed in vain! Good explanation!

 

Not sure how competitive over all it is to see the top three teams lap everyone else, but there were a lot of good scraps to watch. Good race. The podium ceremony is very impressive, indeed.

 

With all that is Monza, today's F1 was over when it started. Hard to believe that just a few weeks ago this F1 fan was so excited about the new found competitiveness and actually thought some teams might be catching up to the Red Bull dream wrecker that is Mr Vettel...

Well after today's total domination by Vettel and Red Bull, we are left scratching our heads along with the other teams and drivers wondering if there is such a thing as kryptonite....

Congratulations Red Bull and Seb, well done indeed!!

 

All true, but it make one wonder (or at least this one) who well guys like Alguishari, Buemi, etc. who routinely make up several place from the starting grid would do in more competitive cars.