F1 2022 Season

It was impressive, though I did think he made some odd tactical decisions. I think he could have potentially held off Leclerc if overtook down the straight rather than dive bombing at turn 1. It made it pretty easy for Leclerc to overtake again down the straight both times.
Yes, it was wierd that max fell for the same routine 3 times on consecutive laps. Thats where his lack of patience let him down. Someone like Alonso or Hamilton would have waited for the 2nd drs zone and made sure they were really close to the car infront going into turn 1, not overtaking them. Then the run up to turn 3 would have got the move done.

On a sidenote, i like the fact that the tyre blankets are 20 degrees cooler this year. Hopefully fia stick to their plan to ban tyre blankets in next few years as that would then make the outlap of a stop perilous and really interesting.
 
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It's not going to be uniform, some engines will perform better than others. Engines need to run hotter which changes the viscosity of the oil, so wear goes up, and there is increased fuel residue (could have been a factor with the Red Bull failures). All those things are a balance that Mercedes appear to have gotten a bit wrong though I'm not sure how much of their speed problems actually come from having to run the car too high rather than the engine. Anyway, the goal was to have a fairly even performance across the engine manufacturers, which leads on to the next point...



It's not completely frozen. There are certain areas especially around fuel where manufacturers can make updates, and the organisers left themselves a get out of jail free card to allow any kind of development if one engine is way behind the others.

Even more reason why Mercedes should have been able to manage the fuel change due to their association with Petronas fuel and oil.
Blending a synthetic oil to cope with higher temperatures should not be much of a problem.
I used to work on military gas turbine engines where the oil scavenge temperature was only just below the temperature for ignition (185C+). And bearings were significantly higher loaded and ran significant quicker than those of the current F1 V6. E10 fuel is hardly brand new to ICE design. Especially organisation like Mercedes Benz.
 
Max was quite erratic wasn't he. Especially with that late breaking into T1 when he was carrying so much overspeed, braked way too late and messed up his tyres. And his positioning on the restart was so bizarre for a driver who's so tactically aware.

Max often tries that tactic. To try and intimidate the leader into going before they want to. But Leclerc was far too capable to be affected by that. And made an excellent restart. So it backfired.

Hope people don't think I am being too hard on Max. But if they do, tough sh1t.
 
Even more reason why Mercedes should have been able to manage the fuel change due to their association with Petronas fuel and oil.
Blending a synthetic oil to cope with higher temperatures should not be much of a problem.
I used to work on military gas turbine engines where the oil scavenge temperature was only just below the temperature for ignition (185C+). And bearings were significantly higher loaded and ran significant quicker than those of the current F1 V6. E10 fuel is hardly brand new to ICE design. Especially organisation like Mercedes Benz.

Shell and Ferrari have just as close an association as Petronas have to Mercedes, and a lot more experience in other motorsport to add to that. It's not a yes/no answer to using E10 fuel, it's fine margins and obviously Mercedes didn't do as good as job as the others.
 
Even more reason why Mercedes should have been able to manage the fuel change due to their association with Petronas fuel and oil.
Blending a synthetic oil to cope with higher temperatures should not be much of a problem.
I used to work on military gas turbine engines where the oil scavenge temperature was only just below the temperature for ignition (185C+). And bearings were significantly higher loaded and ran significant quicker than those of the current F1 V6. E10 fuel is hardly brand new to ICE design. Especially organisation like Mercedes Benz.
Seems kind of obvious then that they should know what the engine should or could be doing. The fact that none of the merc engines did particularly well means there's room for improvement if they know what they are doing or they don't think the engine will survive?
 
Max was quite erratic wasn't he. Especially with that late breaking into T1 when he was carrying so much overspeed, braked way too late and messed up his tyres. And his positioning on the restart was so bizarre for a driver who's so tactically aware.

Yep, he's basically made two wrong decisions/mistakes in his only two chances to win the race.
 
Seems kind of obvious then that they should know what the engine should or could be doing. The fact that none of the merc engines did particularly well means there's room for improvement if they know what they are doing or they don't think the engine will survive?
Mark Hughes article on Sky f1 website covered this i.e Mercedes engines seemingly lack of power. Conclusion was that the powertrain is fine and not down on power. The porposing issue is skewing the data. Basically the teams using Mercedes powertrains happen to have porposing issues from their own car designs. They lift the ride height of the car as a temporary measure to counteract the porposing but that reduces downforce and increases drag therefore slowing the car down.

Will take a few more races for teams to resolve the porposing issues to be sure. The porposing is causing big issues for Mercedes themselves. Russell said they are losing 50% on the straights and 50% on corners due to porposing. If they can resolve this, and get the car on the track to match the simulations, they will have a formidable car again.
 
Yes, and it probably comes down to the E10 issue raised earlier. They can't get the power from it somehow but Mercedes has traditionally had the best engine department so they should be able to fix it quite quickly.
Merc are saying they were overwinged to compensate for the higher ride height to deal with porpoising which does make sense as you would lose a chunk of downforce running higher.

However the speed trap figures for all teams don't lie, there appears to be a deficit there.
Cheers guys.

Could potentially be aero setup. Or could be engine needs upgrades.

I guess it's possible they focused alot much on cooling (no sidepods). And now need to tweak to get the power up.

All will be revealed in the next few races. I imagine at least 2-3 races before we start to see potential improvement.
 
Does anyone know if these new regulations with the focus on ground effect are more suited to Ferrari?

For example, do Ferrari already have sports cars or race cars which exploit ground effect? How does that compare with Mercedes history of building ground effect cars?
 
Does anyone know if these new regulations with the focus on ground effect are more suited to Ferrari?

For example, do Ferrari already have sports cars or race cars which exploit ground effect? How does that compare with Mercedes history of building ground effect cars?

Nobody really does it, only a few road cars have had minor ground effects in the past. It's hard because it needs big tunnels under the car which take up space and it's been banned in most motorsport for years so development wasnt there. Ferrari has its own wind tunnel right at the front gate though.
 
Does anyone know if these new regulations with the focus on ground effect are more suited to Ferrari?

For example, do Ferrari already have sports cars or race cars which exploit ground effect? How does that compare with Mercedes history of building ground effect cars?

No aerodynamicist or engineer in any F1 team will have any real experience of ground effect in practice before now. Unless they're in their 70s.
 
Cheers guys.

Could potentially be aero setup. Or could be engine needs upgrades.

I guess it's possible they focused alot much on cooling (no sidepods). And now need to tweak to get the power up.

All will be revealed in the next few races. I imagine at least 2-3 races before we start to see potential improvement.
It’s easy for casual F1 fans to forget what it’s like when significant regulation changes come in, what it means for F1 teams. We are so used to stable rules and therefore gains year on year tend to be on specific areas and enhancing what’s already there. This is different. We could see cars move around in the field significantly as the season progresses as teams design new things and learn the impact of engineering decisions on their car through practice.

In previous years the cars who were competitive in race 1 would and be expected to remain competitive all year. But this year, teams will move significantly as they learn car set up, as they develop upgrades. The engine rules and budget cap may influence that extent but I still think teams are far from truly unlocking their cars.

The Mercedes’ engine point is fascinating. But I don’t think we will know if it’s really a true engine performance issue until later this season. Can only speculate.
 
No aerodynamicist or engineer in any F1 team will have any real experience of ground effect in practice before now. Unless they're in their 70s.

McLaren are probably on the phone to Gordon Murray to get him back in the team.

To be fair, there may not be any left in F1 but there's a few more recent racing series using ground effect like Group C.
 
The more tech and barriers the FIA introduce each year the more sterile it becomes for the front, mid and rear portions during the race. It would almost be better to return to no tech, a huge engine, no safety devices, and a big petrol tank behind the driver and let's see who can brake last and hardest.
That’s called MotoGP my friend and it’s quality of racing shits on F1
 
No aerodynamicist or engineer in any F1 team will have any real experience of ground effect in practice before now. Unless they're in their 70s.
Not really true.

Both Rory Byrne (Ferrari Consultant - Goat car designer), Adrian Newey and I’m sure there is a few others have been around ground affect cars since they were junior engineers.

Adrian has also been involved with developing ground affect cars for video games (which might seem silly but it’s effectively what the cad models are until they get turned into real life examples).

Plus all these guys have been attempting to simulate it for years as much as they can under the regs with the underfloor of the car. Obviously that’s been very difficult but they know their stuff. I would say their understanding now of how it works far exceeds that from the early 80’s.
 
I wouldn't be opposed to a change where F1 supply the engines to all cars. Each team still has to be responsible for their own aero, car design etc so we can see innovations in design but no more 'this team has a better engine so the next 20 races are completely pointless' scenarios. We'd see the actual best drivers, and those capitalizing on small advantages rather than just running away with it because they had loads of money. Will never happen, mind.
 
I wouldn't be opposed to a change where F1 supply the engines to all cars. Each team still has to be responsible for their own aero, car design etc so we can see innovations in design but no more 'this team has a better engine so the next 20 races are completely pointless' scenarios. We'd see the actual best drivers, and those capitalizing on small advantages rather than just running away with it because they had loads of money. Will never happen, mind.
Not sure I could see merc or ferrari putting somebody else's engine in their car
 
I wouldn't be opposed to a change where F1 supply the engines to all cars. Each team still has to be responsible for their own aero, car design etc so we can see innovations in design but no more 'this team has a better engine so the next 20 races are completely pointless' scenarios. We'd see the actual best drivers, and those capitalizing on small advantages rather than just running away with it because they had loads of money. Will never happen, mind.

Just watch Formula 2, that will give you what you're after in terms of driver ability being the difference.
 
Just watch Formula 2, that will give you what you're after in terms of driver ability being the difference.
Exactly, I dont get why people want to change what F1 is, when there is usually at least one series that has the exact rules they want.
 
Not sure I could see merc or ferrari putting somebody else's engine in their car

Me either, as I said it will never happen but it would at least address the issue that people complain about.

Exactly, I dont get why people want to change what F1 is, when there is usually at least one series that has the exact rules they want.

That's not a very good argument for anything. There are many reasons why changes are made to all kinds of sports including introducing aspects that exist in other sports, usually because it improves the sport in some regard. But either way I didn't say I wanted to change it, I said I wouldn't be opposed to it if it happened.
 
I wouldn't be opposed to a change where F1 supply the engines to all cars. Each team still has to be responsible for their own aero, car design etc so we can see innovations in design but no more 'this team has a better engine so the next 20 races are completely pointless' scenarios. We'd see the actual best drivers, and those capitalizing on small advantages rather than just running away with it because they had loads of money. Will never happen, mind.

There is a cost cap now.
 
I remember him bitching about the massive budgets of the Mercs and Ferraris in the past. :rolleyes:
The budget probably helps Ferrari as they actually have to work on getting the car right instead of blowing it on all sorts of stupid shit after all they did spend nearly double what RB and the mercs did
 
The budget probably helps Ferrari as they actually have to work on getting the car right instead of blowing it on all sorts of stupid shit after all they did spend nearly double what RB and the mercs did

True. Did they equalise the TV money too where Ferrari was getting a disproportionate share of the earnings?
 
A nice display of the porpoise effect.

skip to 3/4 of the video, you don’t need to understand it.

 
Me either, as I said it will never happen but it would at least address the issue that people complain about.



That's not a very good argument for anything. There are many reasons why changes are made to all kinds of sports including introducing aspects that exist in other sports, usually because it improves the sport in some regard. But either way I didn't say I wanted to change it, I said I wouldn't be opposed to it if it happened.
What you suggested (not opposed to) happening goes against the essence of F1 as an engineering / drivers competition though. So that's not just a "change".
 
On a sidenote, i like the fact that the tyre blankets are 20 degrees cooler this year. Hopefully fia stick to their plan to ban tyre blankets in next few years as that would then make the outlap of a stop perilous and really interesting.

Are the maufacturers going to change the compounds as some seem really hard to "switch on" and im not sure how good for rcing (or safe) it would be if somebody was dropping into traffic and being several seconds a lap slower for a couple of laps?

will probably go a long way to eliminating the undercut and may actually bring an ovecut into play for those with better tyre management

I think F2 hs no tyre covers but I suspect there is less energy put through the tyres in racing so they naturally operate at a lower temp?
 
I just cant believe how bad McLaren are. How are Haas and Alfa surpassing you!?
 
I just cant believe how bad McLaren are. How are Haas and Alfa surpassing you!?

I think mclaren suffered by having to compromise their Aero package to provide extra brake cooling or there was no way they could complete the GP... that sounds like it should be fixable in a better way fairly quickly (not sure if its realistic by the next GP?)

I do remember though that they had a slightly unusual suspension set up and when sked James Key said "either we have it really really right, or..."

so yeah will be interesting to see how big a jump the brakes being fixed gives them
 
Are the maufacturers going to change the compounds as some seem really hard to "switch on" and im not sure how good for rcing (or safe) it would be if somebody was dropping into traffic and being several seconds a lap slower for a couple of laps?

will probably go a long way to eliminating the undercut and may actually bring an ovecut into play for those with better tyre management

I think F2 hs no tyre covers but I suspect there is less energy put through the tyres in racing so they naturally operate at a lower temp?
The "Hard" used this weekend gone was at the extreme end of the scale and at bahrain just seemed too difficult to switch on into the right operating window. I think pirelli will switch down the scale for the next GP, and the Medium will become the Hard for that race.

Maybe after a few races they will revisit the compound for the full on Hard tyre if it literally is unusable?

Good point about the compounds and the lack of tyre blankets. Not sure how they would have a tyre that would heat up quickly from cold and then settle backdown again without overheating and blistering.
 
I think mclaren suffered by having to compromise their Aero package to provide extra brake cooling or there was no way they could complete the GP... that sounds like it should be fixable in a better way fairly quickly (not sure if its realistic by the next GP?)

I do remember though that they had a slightly unusual suspension set up and when sked James Key said "either we have it really really right, or..."

so yeah will be interesting to see how big a jump the brakes being fixed gives them
Lando told sky today that they are lacking overall downforce, front and rear. Could be like other teams they need time to unlock the potential of the car. The revised front brake assmebly that arrives in a few weeks time should definitely help.

There is an idea floating around that Mercedes have been running their works engine and advised their customers, to run a detuned engine map as they were being cautious about the e10 fuel towards the end of the gp, as it was a unknown. Totto was quoted as saying they will change the engine map for saudi arabia. So maybe that will help mclaren as well.

Though the high speed nature of the saudi track and their brake issues makes me think they will be bringing up the rear again.
 
Ferrari fixed the purpoising issue they had in testing along with several other teams reducing it's impact whilst being competitive, I clearly have no idea on the complexities but expect the Merc teams currently having problems to fix it by the European races which I think is the fourth race in.
 
Lando told sky today that they are lacking overall downforce, front and rear. Could be like other teams they need time to unlock the potential of the car. The revised front brake assmebly that arrives in a few weeks time should definitely help.

There is an idea floating around that Mercedes have been running their works engine and advised their customers, to run a detuned engine map as they were being cautious about the e10 fuel towards the end of the gp, as it was a unknown. Totto was quoted as saying they will change the engine map for saudi arabia. So maybe that will help mclaren as well.

Though the high speed nature of the saudi track and their brake issues makes me think they will be bringing up the rear again.
yes if they have to run the compromised brakes they will be at the back... if they dont they will be on fire (unless they can get new parts made and shipped in the next couple of days - which my gut feel is that's unlikely)