[Other Sport] F1 2022

[Deleted member 2719]

The new regulations are certainly making it interesting. That was a highly entertaining race.

Sir Lewis did well coming from 16th on the grid to tenth in the race and would have been higher if his team had managed to tell him to pit in time under the VSC.

Russell only made up one place but is ahead in the overall deservedly by the looks of things.

Bottom line is the Mercedes engine is nowhere near good enough yet for either the works' cars or their clients. Russell said last week that they know what the issue is. Given their straight line speed (lack of) and porpoising, they haven't exactly fixed it, but then they've spent the week crossing the Middle East and preparing for a high speed and dangerous track.

Let's see if they pull anything out in Aus.

Very fair summary GB.

Merc will be back, making it a 3 horse race.

This season could be very special.

 

[Bold Seagull]

The new regulations are certainly making it interesting. That was a highly entertaining race.

Sir Lewis did well coming from 16th on the grid to tenth in the race and would have been higher if his team had managed to tell him to pit in time under the VSC.

Russell only made up one place but is ahead in the overall deservedly by the looks of things.

Bottom line is the Mercedes engine is nowhere near good enough yet for either the works' cars or their clients. Russell said last week that they know what the issue is. Given their straight line speed (lack of) and porpoising, they haven't exactly fixed it, but then they've spent the week crossing the Middle East and preparing for a high speed and dangerous track.

Let's see if they pull anything out in Aus.

Not sure if that’s the case? Most of the noise seems to be the PU is competitive, it’s the aero packages and effects that are creating the speed deficit. The reason Merc and other teams expect them to start competing is that the aero problems may well be resolvable - a dodgy PU wouldn’t be. Might not happen for a while, but expectations are Mercs will find some time.

 

[Weststander]

Max whined about everything again. The white line, the lights on the back of the Ferrari, the "closeness" and so on,

He's the footballer in the other team when you're playing or watching that spends the whole game waving an imaginary yellow card at the ref or banging the turf in mock injury and then gets in a rabbit punch when the ref's back is turned.

Whilst Horner is F1’s Eddie Howe, the insufferable whiner, seeing cheating/bias where none exists, at school the unpopular school snitch.

 

[LamieRobertson]

Only saw the last five laps….not really into F1 ..trying harder as my son in law is very keen and he’s making an effort on the footie front…all looked like something from a console racing game…all very polished…re the race those last five were quite interesting …and then post race the sight of LH and his lovely hair …hmm

 

[A1X]

Only saw the last five laps….not really into F1 ..trying harder as my son in law is very keen and he’s making an effort on the footie front…all looked like something from a console racing game…all very polished…re the race those last five were quite interesting …and then post race the sight of LH and his lovely hair …hmm

I think a large part of the console feel is both races so far have been night races, which always feel somehow less “real” to me. Next up is Australia, classic race track and in the daylight which should hopefully make it all feel a bit more “real”.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Not sure if that’s the case? Most of the noise seems to be the PU is competitive, it’s the aero packages and effects that are creating the speed deficit. The reason Merc and other teams expect them to start competing is that the aero problems may well be resolvable - a dodgy PU wouldn’t be. Might not happen for a while, but expectations are Mercs will find some time.

All the Mercedes powered cats are doing badly though. Have they all got the same aero issue? I stand corrected if they do.

Would love to read [MENTION=33374]Audax[/MENTION] take on it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Icy Gull]

All the Mercedes powered cats are doing badly though. Have they all got the same aero issue? I stand corrected if they do.

Would love to read [MENTION=33374]Audax[/MENTION] take on it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

True, it’s a shame that Riciardo and Alonso’s fails caused the pit lane to be closed and deny Hamilton the chance to pit during the virtual safety car. He was having an inspired and very patient drive and it would have been interesting to see how he would have done if he could have pitted.

Got to feel for Perez, he got fecked over by serial crasher Latifi’s massive influence on a race for the second time in three races

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

True, it’s a shame that Riciardo and Alonso’s fails caused the pit lane to be closed and deny Hamilton the chance to pit during the virtual safety car. He was having an inspired and very patient drive and it would have been interesting to see how he would have done if he could have pitted.

Got to feel for Perez, he got fecked over by serial crasher Latifi’s massive influence on a race for the second time in three races

His team have done ok out of it in the past though

 

[Audax]

All the Mercedes powered cats are doing badly though. Have they all got the same aero issue? I stand corrected if they do.

Would love to read [MENTION=33374]Audax[/MENTION] take on it.

My personal take on it:

1. None of the Mercedes engined teams have got their cars working yet.

Mercedes: I'm not convinced their minimum-size sidepod concept is the right direction. However, we won't know until they get their porpoising problem under control. From what I've seen, the suggestion is that porpoising that's bad enough to force set up compromises is costing multiple tenths of a second per lap. If they can solve the porpoising while retaining the underlying performance, they could be back in the fight. Not sure it's that simple, though. Merc were playing around with multiple rear wing designs for Saudi - i think partly to see if they could iron out some of the worst of the porpoising, and partly because they needed to minimise drag.

McLaren: they've admitted they simply don't have enough downforce on the car. Lack of downforce = slower through the corners; slower through the corners = slower down the straights due to lower corner exit speeds. They've also still not fully solved the front brakes issue.

Aston Martin: Their car isn't working either. Talk is it's going to change *a lot* when they get their first significant upgrade onto the car.

Williams: They just seem slow still. Very different concept from everyone else (except Merc), I don't think it's working.

So for all of the Merc engined teams, there's a definite non-engine take on why they are where they are. But ...

2. Red Bull is a very fast car in a straight line. Think that's a combo of the car producing very efficient downforce (meaning less drag) and a very capable Red Bull (errr ... Honda) engine.

3. Ferrari have taken a massive step forward on the engine side.

Clear evidence for this in the factory team itself, but also in the fortunes of Haas and Alfa Romeo. Haas and Alfa have both built good cars around the engine as well, but it's striking how much better all three Ferrari engined cars are this year. OK, RBR did Ferrari for straight line in Saudi - but that was at least partly down to the set up choices that Ferrari made.

On the customer team side of things: Haas still has obvious porpoising that is potentially costing them performance, just like Merc. There's more to come from that car, partly from development and partly from the driver side - Magnussen isn't fully F1 race fit yet, I think another 5th place was possible on merit had he been fully fit and thus not lost his neck during Qually. Bottas is doing great things with that Alfa as well, and it seems to be a better race car than qually car - certainly these two races Bottas has looked stronger as the race has gone on.

4. I think Alpine (errr ... Renault) has also made a step forward on the engine side, although it remains to be seen if it will also be reliable.


So, adding it all up: I don't think Mercedes has a problem with engine performance as such. But I do think everyone else has finally caught up, if not slightly edged ahead, and that means that pure engine performance is no longer able to hide any deficiencies in the cars

---

As for the race: What. A. Cracker. My word, do we appear to have a season ahead of us. Not convinced that the new rules have fully achieved what they wanted, but they have certainly delivered two absolute gems to start the season in terms of enabling some genuine racing for the win. Neither race was won in the pits, both were won following some intense on-track action taking place over multiple laps. And, I think it was very important that even after Verstappen got past Leclerc he wasn't able to pull away. In fact, Leclerc took the point for fastest lap after Verstappen got through.

I think we're in for a big season between these two, with the potential for both Sainz and Perez to act as spoilers from time to time (still don't think either will be consistent enough to be WDC contenders).

Behind them, it looks like Merc will be spending more time looking over their shoulders at Haas and Alfa Romeo (WTF did I just write?) at least in the short term. And what a battle that Haas / Alfa Romeo battle looks to be brewing into, which could be the 4th/5th WCC battle this season (as much as it pains me to say it when I want to see those McLaren's at the pointy end).

 

[highflyer]

Been an interesting experience, the start of this season.

I hate everything that surrounds F1. The 'glitz and glamour' (aka the excessive wealth, conspicuous consumption and tax avoidance), the carbon footprint, the sportswashing and the rather obvious race fixing (thus my absence from this thread until now).

But at the urging of people I trust, I have been watching 'drive to survive' and really enjoyed it. Apart from being very well made, it does a good job of stripping away most of the crap to show the essence of a high risk sport based around individual battles and strong characters.

So I thought I'd try watching a race again. And...nope. Still dull as ditchwater. Somehow the racing sequences in the netflix doc make it all look about 100 times more real and exciting than the live coverage. And for me it's much more interesting to follow individual teams and drivers than the overall race.

Maybe F1 should just ask the people that did the netflix programme to create an alternative race by race coverage for people like me?

 

[Audax]

Been an interesting experience, the start of this season.

I hate everything that surrounds F1. The 'glitz and glamour' (aka the excessive wealth, conspicuous consumption and tax avoidance), the carbon footprint, the sportswashing and the rather obvious race fixing (thus my absence from this thread until now).

But at the urging of people I trust, I have been watching 'drive to survive' and really enjoyed it. Apart from being very well made, it does a good job of stripping away most of the crap to show the essence of a high risk sport based around individual battles and strong characters.

So I thought I'd try watching a race again. And...nope. Still dull as ditchwater. Somehow the racing sequences in the netflix doc make it all look about 100 times more real and exciting than the live coverage. And for me it's much more interesting to follow individual teams and drivers than the overall race.

Maybe F1 should just ask the people that did the netflix programme to create an alternative race by race coverage for people like me?

Be careful with DTS. They dramatise it - some of the stuff from last season is used massively out of context. Norris is made to look bad in some sequences as a result. Verstappen hasn't been included (beyond race footage) in any of the last three seasons of DTS because he objected to the dramatisation, and there's other drivers who've spoken out against it as well.

 

[Bold Seagull]

My personal take on it:

1. None of the Mercedes engined teams have got their cars working yet.

Mercedes: I'm not convinced their minimum-size sidepod concept is the right direction. However, we won't know until they get their porpoising problem under control. From what I've seen, the suggestion is that porpoising that's bad enough to force set up compromises is costing multiple tenths of a second per lap. If they can solve the porpoising while retaining the underlying performance, they could be back in the fight. Not sure it's that simple, though. Merc were playing around with multiple rear wing designs for Saudi - i think partly to see if they could iron out some of the worst of the porpoising, and partly because they needed to minimise drag.

McLaren: they've admitted they simply don't have enough downforce on the car. Lack of downforce = slower through the corners; slower through the corners = slower down the straights due to lower corner exit speeds. They've also still not fully solved the front brakes issue.

Aston Martin: Their car isn't working either. Talk is it's going to change *a lot* when they get their first significant upgrade onto the car.

Williams: They just seem slow still. Very different concept from everyone else (except Merc), I don't think it's working.

So for all of the Merc engined teams, there's a definite non-engine take on why they are where they are. But ...

2. Red Bull is a very fast car in a straight line. Think that's a combo of the car producing very efficient downforce (meaning less drag) and a very capable Red Bull (errr ... Honda) engine.

3. Ferrari have taken a massive step forward on the engine side.

Clear evidence for this in the factory team itself, but also in the fortunes of Haas and Alfa Romeo. Haas and Alfa have both built good cars around the engine as well, but it's striking how much better all three Ferrari engined cars are this year. OK, RBR did Ferrari for straight line in Saudi - but that was at least partly down to the set up choices that Ferrari made.

On the customer team side of things: Haas still has obvious porpoising that is potentially costing them performance, just like Merc. There's more to come from that car, partly from development and partly from the driver side - Magnussen isn't fully F1 race fit yet, I think another 5th place was possible on merit had he been fully fit and thus not lost his neck during Qually. Bottas is doing great things with that Alfa as well, and it seems to be a better race car than qually car - certainly these two races Bottas has looked stronger as the race has gone on.

4. I think Alpine (errr ... Renault) has also made a step forward on the engine side, although it remains to be seen if it will also be reliable.


So, adding it all up: I don't think Mercedes has a problem with engine performance as such. But I do think everyone else has finally caught up, if not slightly edged ahead, and that means that pure engine performance is no longer able to hide any deficiencies in the cars

---

As for the race: What. A. Cracker. My word, do we appear to have a season ahead of us. Not convinced that the new rules have fully achieved what they wanted, but they have certainly delivered two absolute gems to start the season in terms of enabling some genuine racing for the win. Neither race was won in the pits, both were won following some intense on-track action taking place over multiple laps. And, I think it was very important that even after Verstappen got past Leclerc he wasn't able to pull away. In fact, Leclerc took the point for fastest lap after Verstappen got through.

I think we're in for a big season between these two, with the potential for both Sainz and Perez to act as spoilers from time to time (still don't think either will be consistent enough to be WDC contenders).

Behind them, it looks like Merc will be spending more time looking over their shoulders at Haas and Alfa Romeo (WTF did I just write?) at least in the short term. And what a battle that Haas / Alfa Romeo battle looks to be brewing into, which could be the 4th/5th WCC battle this season (as much as it pains me to say it when I want to see those McLaren's at the pointy end).

If it hadn't been for the VSC on the penultimate lap, looked like Leclerc was all set up to take the lead back as well.

There is a lot of time for teams to catch a break this season - especially given no single team has an outright advantage at this point. There does seem to be a general feeling from F1, comments from other teams etc. that the Merc might not be far off getting back in contention, but that could be a few races time. Horner has suggested that shorter speed trap times for the Merc show that it's fast, it's just this own boucing / aero thing which does also suggest the PU isn't the problem - there is even the thought that the Merc teams are having to turn it down a notch to alleviate some of the problems they have.

I recall Brawn winning the first 6 of 7 races in 2009 after a rule change, but second half the season the Red Bulls got their car sorted ready for their 4 years of dominance. What will be interesting to see is who has pretty much got the speed they're going to carry for much of this season as they're already at the peak of what their car can do, and who can unlock hidden potential that a bit of development might reveal.

Norris went a bit under the radar yesterday, but he got a really credible 7th to suggest the McLarens are finding something at least.

 

[zefarelly]

Only saw the last five laps….not really into F1 ..trying harder as my son in law is very keen and he’s making an effort on the footie front…all looked like something from a console racing game…all very polished…re the race those last five were quite interesting …and then post race the sight of LH and his lovely hair …hmm

Agreed, It's so far removed from reality it's kind of surreal.

I like cars and racing but it's difficult to get into it these days.

 

[highflyer]

Be careful with DTS. They dramatise it - some of the stuff from last season is used massively out of context. Norris is made to look bad in some sequences as a result. Verstappen hasn't been included (beyond race footage) in any of the last three seasons of DTS because he objected to the dramatisation, and there's other drivers who've spoken out against it as well.

Yeah, I realise full well how important 'creative' editing can be in these types of programme. Very well done though, as editing goes, and does make it watchable for those of us with no interest in the technical side.

But it's the racing sequences that really stand out - they give a real sense of the excitement and challenge of racing at those speeds, the skills involved and how a split second loss of concentration will lead to a potentially life threatening disaster. The race day coverage has never really done that for me.

 

[Audax]

Yeah, I realise full well how important 'creative' editing can be in these types of programme. Very well done though, as editing goes, and does make it watchable for those of us with no interest in the technical side.

But it's the racing sequences that really stand out - they give a real sense of the excitement and challenge of racing at those speeds, the skills involved and how a split second loss of concentration will lead to a potentially life threatening disaster. The race day coverage has never really done that for me.

Yeah, I can see that. I'm a different sort of F1 watcher - I'm very much into the under sides of F1 as well as the races themselves. I've got a few F1 sites I keep an eye on (The Race, Motorsport.com, Reddit Formula 1 channel, autosport.com community), and I've recently found some good youtube channels as well. I love all the intrigue and the ebbs and flows of what creates what goes on in the races.

But I'm with you on race day coverage for TV - I normally skip the entire pre-race show these days, and don't always watch the post-race either. I've not got Sky so no idea what their coverage is like, but the C4 stuff is just too dumbed down for me.

 

[Diablo]

Maybe just maybe this season will be exciting.
With Red Bull, Ferrari looking good and several others teams near the mark and I`d bet Mercedes catching up soon.
Here`s hoping for a race rather than procession every race this season.
Haven`t been bothered for several seasons but def looking forward to Australian on 8th April.

 

[Audax]

Haven`t been bothered for several seasons but def looking forward to Australian on 8th April.

They've made some layout changes for Melbourne, intended to help with overtaking. Will be interesting to see if they work. The changes were originally planned for previous seasons, but obviously not seen them due to the covid cancellations. Track should be faster than it was before (although with the new cars still being a little slower, laptime may not reflect that).

 

[Audax]

Even if Mercedes are able to sort out their car problems (Russell says 99% due to porpoising; Hamilton says they need more downforce and more power), it appears they have another problem they will need to solve if they want to be in with a shout of podiums / race wins:

Pit Stops.

OK, so only 2 races in so far. But that's still at least 6 stops per team, most with 8. At this early stage, Mercedes stands out as a team that is significantly under performing what should be expected of a World Championship winning team.

Mercedes are one of just 3 teams who have not yet achieved a stop of under 3s this season (the other two being Haas and Alfa Romeo). Their Median stop time is the second worst on the grid, at nearly 3.6s. That is a full second slower than the median of the fastest two teams (McLaren and Ferrari; the only 2 teams to have stops under 2.4s).

That's more than enough to result in them losing races they should otherwise win (assuming they can get their car in shape). Just look at Sainz vs Perez during the safety car - a "Mercedes standard" stop would have seen Sainz behind Perez at the safety car line instead of marginally in front.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Even if Mercedes are able to sort out their car problems (Russell says 99% due to porpoising; Hamilton says they need more downforce and more power), it appears they have another problem they will need to solve if they want to be in with a shout of podiums / race wins:

Pit Stops.

OK, so only 2 races in so far. But that's still at least 6 stops per team, most with 8. At this early stage, Mercedes stands out as a team that is significantly under performing what should be expected of a World Championship winning team.

Mercedes are one of just 3 teams who have not yet achieved a stop of under 3s this season (the other two being Haas and Alfa Romeo). Their Median stop time is the second worst on the grid, at nearly 3.6s. That is a full second slower than the median of the fastest two teams (McLaren and Ferrari; the only 2 teams to have stops under 2.4s).

That's more than enough to result in them losing races they should otherwise win (assuming they can get their car in shape). Just look at Sainz vs Perez during the safety car - a "Mercedes standard" stop would have seen Sainz behind Perez at the safety car line instead of marginally in front.

Is a possible reason that with less fuel and all their aero problems, are they making wing adjustments on each stop or something?

 

[Audax]

Is a possible reason that with less fuel and all their aero problems, are they making wing adjustments on each stop or something?

Not that I've seen. They're just slow.