When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Ross Brawn has pledged to step in and work with the teams and the FIA to find a solution if the on-track Formula 1 action proves to be unspectacular in 2017.
Brawn, in his new role as the sporting managing director of F1, has said he is committed to finding a way of fixing the racing for 2018 if the fears of poor action come to pass this season. “If we see things this year that we don’t think are great for the sport, then we will be fighting our corner, and we will be fighting at every level. “You can rest assured that we will be working with the teams and working with the FIA to find solutions if we don’t feel the racing is as good as it should be.
“If you look at the configuration of the aerodynamics we have, we have cars with very complicated bodywork structures which create very sensitive flow regimes around the structures. It means as soon as they are disturbed by a car in front, they suffer.“So can we come up with a set of regulations where we can still use the power of aerodynamics to give us the speed and spectacle of the cars, but in a more benign way so they can at least race each other more closely without it having an impact? That is my ambition, that is my objective.”
Following Friday’s FP1 session in Melbourne, the Haas F1 team was ordered to remove the T-wings from its VF-17s after it was seen flexing on TV images.
Teamwork. The attribute that is engrained into our heads from elementary school all the way through our journeys in sports, business and even the Wednesday morning spin class we go to. It is about putting individual ego aside for the greater good of the group.
While we hear about this ad nauseam in basketball, football and every other sport that requires a ball, it is often overlooked in motorsports; aside from the couple of times a race when we come in for tires and fuel. The driver is put on a pedestal and the end results are centered on whether or not a driver performed well that day. A driver's performance, while still most important, is only a piece of the puzzle.
Let me explain.
I could be the best driver to have ever put on a helmet, but without a car that is fast, I won't be competitive. Knowing how to make a car fast consistently is equivalent to knowing how to cook a pancake right every single time. It's hard. It's a lot harder than people think. You would not believe the amount of effort that goes in behind the scenes on a daily basis from both an engineering and a mechanical side to develop a race-winning car. It takes a nine-to-five job and turns it into a 12-plus hour day the majority of the time, and these guys never flinch. They are as competitive as the drivers themselves. We feed off each other's energy and bond over a shared addiction to winning, and it's just a fundamental part of us as human beings. There is no agenda, no search for compliments; just everyone doing their job to be successful. It is only at this point where the opportunity to win presents itself.
Now, let's take a step away from the engineering and mechanical side of things and look at a driver's relationship with his teammates. When I came into the Verizon IndyCar Series at the beginning of the 2016 season, I knew very little about the championship, and even less about the car and tracks. In Formula 1, you had a working relationship with your teammate, but that is where it ended. There was a data share, but no advice, explanations or suggestions on a direction to go with your driving or car setup. At Andretti Autosport, this is the polar opposite of how the team is run, and a huge reason as to why the team has seen so much success, particularly at Indianapolis.
From day one at the Speedway last year, I relied on the other drivers to help me understand concepts that were completely foreign to me, since it was only the second oval I'd ever seen. We spent every evening as a group debriefing in a roundtable format, sometimes until midnight, discussing the positives and negatives of each driver's day. We would take the good and try and apply it to our own car, and cross the negatives off our list. Without a doubt, this is why all five of our cars last May had a chance to win, and we went into that Sunday knowing that we were the strongest team.
As many of you know, my Indianapolis 500 was a hectic one, with fueling problems in the pit stops that caused us to go from being toward the front to solidly in the back. I assume you've all heard the story of how my engineering team on the timing stand developed a strategy that was either going to win us the race or end in heartbreak, as I could potentially have run out of fuel before the finish. But what you don't know is that one of the primary reasons I won that race was because of two of my teammates – Ryan Hunter-Reay and Townsend Bell.
They both had an issue earlier in the race and were two laps down, so instead of just running their own race and being done, they both made the last third of their races about helping me get to the end. Allowing me to sit behind them and save fuel, is without question, what made the difference that day.
So the next time that you see a victory celebration and the driver doing donuts or spraying champagne (or drinking milk) know that there was an entire team trackside, back at the workshop and sometimes even on the racetrack, that all played a pivotal role in the result. The driver is the face in the helmet, but the rest is the men and women that commit everything to the sport that they love and are already thinking about how they are going to win the next one. This, in my mind, is what makes motor racing the ultimate team sport.
He still impressed me given his lack of experience compared to Stroll.
Oh I wasn't taking a shot at him at all. He did an awesome job. Had an hour in the car to try and get a setup for Q and for race that worked for him and still almost managed to put it in Q2.
"[There are] few times I've had such a an uncompetitive car, without any winter preparation, having to save fuel in a brutal way - I think we had to lift about a second per lap - and even so we were in the points.
"It was a pretty big surprise what we were doing, but in the end we couldn't complete it.
"But it was probably one of the best races I've had.
eh? honda is a gas hog? or running rich for reliability concerns?
eh? honda is a gas hog? or running rich for reliability concerns?
I'm guessing the 2nd 1. The lean burn/TJI is rumored to be the cause of the vibrations. Makes sense that the quick solution wood be to richen up the mixture.
I believe there was very little if any passing in AUS last year too. I think that as the cars are developed the tyre wear will increase and we'll see a little more difference between strategies. Also AUS is not really a good overtaking track. Lets see what happens when they get to moar favorable tracks.
McLaren racing director Eric Boulllier has had another timely swipe at Japanese engine manufacturer Honda, on the eve of the new season starting in Australia.
Unfortunately for the pairing, bad publicity has dominated the news since their performance troubles became apparent during pre-season testing. Boullier believes that a better understanding of formula one, and its racing culture will steer Honda down the path of success.
“They only need one thing, which is to understand and integrate the F1 racing culture,” Boullier told Motorsport.com
“What I mean by that is: the way we behave in racing and Formula 1 is all driven by a calendar, by some fixed targets, fixed dates, laptime gains; we always try to go to the best solution as fast as possible.
“Where a car manufacturer is running a project, you can have a few weeks delay and it’s not going to change the product, it’s not going to change the business model. “In racing, if you don’t bring your upgrade for race one, in race one you will be nowhere. That is this racing mentality. It’s as far as going to suppliers and making sure that if they do something in one month, the next time they do it in three weeks, and from three weeks to two weeks.
“We value more the time gained than the money spent. This is a different approach from the rest of the world.”
Pressure is mounting on the Woking based squad, and tensions are surely rising as another season of struggle looks imminent. Honda have built a small factory in Milton Keynes to bridge the gap between Japan and England, but Boullier believes this is still not enough. The main point here is the slow turnaround of development parts ready to race.
“This is why Mercedes is based in England, and I guess they benefit from the supply chain, from people with experience of F1,” Boullier added.
“Our suppliers maybe cost twice as much [as Honda’s] but are three, four, five times faster. In some ways you can realise the corporate influence is not helping to be efficient.
“The more you behave like a corporate company, the more process inherited from a corporate company, the slower you are, the less agile you are, which doesn’t fit the racing culture.”
So in summary… apart from having a slow unreliable engine, your development is slower than your engine, and the infrastructure to get upgrades to the track… is slower than your development.
03-24-2017, 06:22 PM
Re: The Official Formula 1 2017 Season Thread
I could be the best driver to have ever put on a helmet, but without a car that is fast, I won't be competitive. Knowing how to make a car fast consistently is equivalent to knowing how to cook a pancake right every single time. It's hard. It's a lot harder than people think. You would not believe the amount of effort that goes in behind the scenes on a daily basis from both an engineering and a mechanical side to develop a race-winning car. It takes a nine-to-five job and turns it into a 12-plus hour day the majority of the time, and these guys never flinch. They are as competitive as the drivers themselves. We feed off each other's energy and bond over a shared addiction to winning, and it's just a fundamental part of us as human beings. There is no agenda, no search for compliments; just everyone doing their job to be successful. It is only at this point where the opportunity to win presents itself.
As many of you know, my Indianapolis 500 was a hectic one, with fueling problems in the pit stops that caused us to go from being toward the front to solidly in the back. I assume you've all heard the story of how my engineering team on the timing stand developed a strategy that was either going to win us the race or end in heartbreak, as I could potentially have run out of fuel before the finish. But what you don't know is that one of the primary reasons I won that race was because of two of my teammates – Ryan Hunter-Reay and Townsend Bell.
McLaren racing director Eric Boulllier has had another timely swipe at Japanese engine manufacturer Honda, on the eve of the new season starting in Australia.