All's I know is there is a race this weekend and my DVR is set and I can watch it on my iPhone if I want to.
Bernie does have intermittent useful thought....lol They keep this mess up and they'll have another CART, Indy Racing league fiasco on their hands. Bernie is right when he says the teams and those actually doing the racing should write the rules as long as he keeps his 2 cents in the Berniebank.........like that'll ever happen.
Two practice sessions done and HRT have managed a single lap so far. Since they never managed to run it during testing, that's their first and only lap in the new car so I suppose it was a big one..... Liuzzi drove the installation lap then actually said "... we now have some numbers to work on for tomorrow." Really? One lap and they have useable numbers? There's a strong hint in Karthikeyan's words re just how close they are to having the car fit and ready to run "We have everything here, but just to trim parts and fit them into a car is a time consuming process."
Loved the comment from David H.: "If you Twitter you're a twit." Followed by a few seconds of air silence from the rest of the commentating team.
Don't NEED them but... Any idea why the new ALMS LMP cars all have this mandated shark fin now? I know it's "mandated" but I can't find anything that explains why. Peugeot Aston Martin Lola Audi (new R18)
F1 banned the "full size" Shark fins for this year and severely limited the size. The original design had nothing to do with the F-duct, it was a means to modify the air flow around the rear wing. Machett had an explanation on it some time back. Not sure about ALMS having mandated those fins. They weren't seen on the cars at Sebring.......? Is that maybe for LeMans and the European series?
I was pretty sure I saw at least one watching Sebring but couldn't remember whether it was on track or a pic the commentators showed to talk about new rules. Did some Googling and I keep finding "required" and "mandated" for ALMS and for the 2011 season but only for new cars. I think cars carried over from 2010 are grand-fathered in without the fin. Check out the spotter guides here. If they're accurate, there were shark fins on the track at Sebring. (I wish I'd found the guides before the race...)
I believe the fin is to help prevent the car from flying. NASCAR introduced a similar fin for the same reason. One unintended consequence for NASCAR was it also aides lateral stability (a bit) if cars briefly come in contact. .
Pretty impressive start to the season by Red Bull, Vettel is on form as usual, and the only other team I can see taking the fight to them at least in the opening rounds is Big Mac. 1 sec a lap faster without using the KERs is pretty damn inpressive! Ferrari, Renault, Williams and Mercedes are all on the second tier as far as I can tell. HRT better find some speed and quickly, there's not much point in flying your cars all around the world to NOT race.... Tires, tyres, tars......could be the real deal breaker. Imagine working all race to gain 1/2 second on the track only to watch them drive by because an air gun stuck and you lost 1 second in the pits! But, that actually could work to the benefit of some of the slower teams if they could do one or two fewer pit stops due to not wearing their tires as hard.
Sadly with all the off season Lotus action, their first qualifying effort of the new season showed little, if any competitive improvement for the brand......
That qualifying session was full of surprises and not just for fans/viewers. There were plenty of teams left scratching their heads too. Some of it was tires already so no surprise if tires and pits have a big effect on the race. Thanks primarily to the tires and the rear wings I think it's going to look a lot different than we've seen the past few years. I'm looking forward to it.
I'm waiting to see how the heavy-hitters fare in racectrim when tire management comes into play. Jensen may have them covered....