F1 Most liked posts in thread: F1 - 2013

I watched it live, Sky F1 feed. I won't spoil it either.

 

Is it common practice to let lapped cars catch up when the safety car is out?

 

No I think that was somewhat unusual. It took no time to clear the car & corner workers out of the way. As is often the case you never know what the clerk of the course will do.

 

He certainly earned that one.

 

Yes. All lapped cars must pass the safety and move to their race position before the race can restart. That's the rules.

Everyone bunches up behind the safety car too, so it's a big advantage to anyone who has a gap they need to close. That's why Hamilton did so well in making up the places he lost in his Silverstone blowout, he had several safety cars to use to close gaps.

 

Yes bunching up the field is the norm, but holding the safety car so someone can make up a complete lap seemed unusual to me.

 

Dunno, it's been like that for a couple of years at least, afaik.

Might reduce accidents to not have someone who accelerates twice as fast as a back-marker stuck behind one when the race restarts. Otherwise there might be a lot of driving up tailpipes, I imagine.

 

SPOILERS - My Race Analysis / Opinions




That was a good, clean race. By "clean" I mean good weather, standard track, few incidents. We did have a safety car, due to Jules Bianchi forgetting to engage the handbrake and leave the car in first gear.

There were few surprises for me.

Red Bull had an outstanding start to the race taking the lead from Hamilton very early. Lotus did very well on high track temperatures, and as I expected, Mercedes retreated back the field.

Webber's pit lane accident on Lap 9 cost him a good shot at the podium. If it hadn't been for that, I fully expect that he'd have stood along side of Vettel. His lap times were comparable to Vettel's which is telling as he was also running in clean air for much of the race, then had to fight the pack. He drove an outstanding race, imo.

Romain Grosjean had the best race he's run in a long time, at one point racking up a 12 second lead over Kimi, which was destroyed by the Safety Car. I'm not sure what to make of the team orders for him to get out of Kimi's way at the end - Lotus has some interesting strategy decisions of late.

Regarding Mercedes - Once again they show that they can get the pole but can't keep up the pace. This is exactly the kind of performance we saw before the tests, and on a new tire that in theory was supposed to favor them. If they had gained any significant advantage from those tests, it's hard to see how they benefited from them on Sunday. This race was closest in temperament to Spain, and they performed similarly badly.

Hamilton has "nothing positive to say" about tyres - F1 Fanatic

Speaking of Lewis, expect a few more disappointing races from him. He's on another downward mood swing, due to his recent break-up with Nicole. He's even saying that there's "no point in thinking about" winning the championship now. I kind of think he might be bipolar. His performance seems to hinge very much on his mood.

Good news for me though, as McLaren did better this weekend than they have in a while. I was a little bummed by Jenson losing so much time getting around the backmarkers which I think contributed to his getting passed by Lewis, but still I think they did fairly well

Some nice charts follow

2013 German Grand Prix lap charts - F1 Fanatic

2013 German Grand Prix lap times and fastest laps - F1 Fanatic

 

It was introduced a few years ago so that the front runners got to do the restart without some of them having lapped cars in front of them. It was just a way of not letting lapped cars interfere with the racing any more than necessary. However it does mean there is a minimum safety car period of about three laps or so.

Dealing with the safety car periods is still a learning experience for F1 - until 1993, F1 didn't use safety cars, relying just on track marshal's flags. Lots of old farts still think it is alien to F1, an 'unsporting American import' even.

 

Remember kids, always leave the car in gear and use the handbrake when parking!


Also, this is really the only footage of Massa's crash, and it's from Alonso's point of view. Anybody found a better shot of that? They only did the one replay.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSuogwS1_pE]Massa spinning at Nurburgring German GP F1 2013 - YouTube[/ame]

 

Depends on how he does the rest of this season. He's on a probationary contract right now that gets reviewed every three races. Should be good for him, since this one was a review race.

 

I've been looking for news of any penalty for that, but have come up empty. I wonder if it's because Bernie still hasn't signed a contract with Marrussia for coverage rights or something.

 

Maybe the fire distracted him from leaving it in gear or the blow up destroyed the gear box.

Interesting the Ross is complaining the the new rules about lower air pressures, minimum camber and not swapping the tires is what cost them the race. It tells us exactly what they learned at that test. Now they have to start over and he is asking to skip the penalty and test with everyone else.

So all the things MB was doing to get faster Pirelli now says are bad and shouldn't be done. Why didn't Pirelli realize during their secret test?

 

I can understand the camber angles & tire pressures helping the car handle. What stumps me is what advantage was gained by running the tires in reverse rotation???

Back in the old days when the earth was still cooling I used to switch directional tires side to side to glean every lap I could from tires. Before I did this I checked with my tire supplier at Blackburn Racing & got their blessing. Suppose the GP teams were doing it for the same reason???