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Post by Wß on Jan 22, 2016 18:53:35 GMT
I'm not sure how much they're going to get out of the testing on Monday since it's going to be in the 50s. I'd have thought you'd want to test somewhere that approximated more relavant temperatures but I guess for full wets it's not nearly as critical from a temperature standpoint. We've seen clear examples of inters getting completely out of whack when they lose temp.
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Post by Wß on Jan 26, 2016 19:43:44 GMT
Looks like the temperature predictions where right on... why bother, but I guess some testing is better than none testing. If they don't tack on a day during warmer temps in the Barcelona tests then this is a complete waste.
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Post by Wß on Jan 28, 2016 20:23:06 GMT
Seriously... Bernie has lost it, this guy needs to be put to pasture or better yet, have his nurse make sure he doesn't skip his meds. I'd gladly give up Lewis' fourth WDC to see Toto do a little of this.
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Post by Wß on Jan 30, 2016 14:44:32 GMT
Rose colored glasses or silver lining?
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Post by racechick on Mar 2, 2016 17:07:39 GMT
Lewis said he was excited today after pounding round on mediums to get the soft tyres on. But despite setting fastest time of the day there was some disappointment. He says they aren't yet in the ball park on the sift tyres and that these tyres are not as good as last years soft tyres. He wishes he had last years tyres. Not as good? Last years were crap. I really wish Michelin had this contract instead of 'appease Bernie yellow belly Pirelli' with their fragile unfit for racing on tyres. I was hoping for something better this year. A few laps of hard racing without the tyres going off or exploding. Looks like I'm going to be disappointed. beta.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/123054/hamilton-work-to-be-done-on-softs
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Post by dogued on Mar 4, 2016 23:09:57 GMT
Not as good? Last years were crap. I really wish Michelin had this contract instead of 'appease Bernie yellow belly Pirelli' with their fragile unfit for racing on tyres. I was hoping for something better this year. A few laps of hard racing without the tyres going off or exploding. Looks like I'm going to be disappointed. Michelin wouldn't be much better. When a supplier is hamstrung from the start with restricted testing abilities, the product will never be as good as it can be. Let's not forget that previous suppliers used to be able to throw lap after lap after lap of testing at their compounds any time they wanted. Pirelli should be allowed to use any car any time they want.
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Post by racechick on Mar 5, 2016 8:09:40 GMT
Not as good? Last years were crap. I really wish Michelin had this contract instead of 'appease Bernie yellow belly Pirelli' with their fragile unfit for racing on tyres. I was hoping for something better this year. A few laps of hard racing without the tyres going off or exploding. Looks like I'm going to be disappointed. Michelin wouldn't be much better. When a supplier is hamstrung from the start with restricted testing abilities, the product will never be as good as it can be. Let's not forget that previous suppliers used to be able to throw lap after lap after lap of testing at their compounds any time they wanted. Pirelli should be allowed to use any car any time they want. I can sympathise entirely with the lack of testing situation and agree that they should be allowed to test a component like a tyre thoroughly. If the tyre is not up to scratch due lack of testing then the blame cannot be laid at Pirelli's door. But that's not the issue I have with Pirelli. The issue I have Pirelli is the way they caved in to Bernie's request to produce fragile tyres 'to spice up the racing'. It's false and it prevents genuine racing. Michelin said if they got the contact they wouldn't produce fragile tyres that randomly 'fall off the cliff'. They wanted bigger tyres and tyres that could be raced on properly. Presumably that's why they didn't get the contact. I seem to remember there was also a money incentive for Bernie to go with Pirelli. But isn't that always the driving force with Bernie......money.
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Post by Wß on Mar 5, 2016 11:58:00 GMT
I think a lot of it is hindsight RC, it's been a F1asco from the beginning.
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Post by dogued on Mar 10, 2016 2:07:15 GMT
One of the main sticking points with Michelin's plan was their proposed change to tyre size would require serious work and money from teams in chassis redesign. Suspension components are based around the amount of give the the sidewall, changing the diameter of that would require complete overhaul of the suspension system. Pressure was probably put on FOM/FIA by the team owners to try and maintain specs as close to current as possible to reduce further costs.
At the end of the day, Pirelli are in a position that nobody in their right mind would want to be in: If they produce longer lasting tyres, they risk losing their contract. If they produce the current tyres, fans and drivers ridicule them over how quickly they go off. I have no doubt they could produce a tyre that were fragile enough to give the FIA what they want, but hardy enough to push to the limit for the duration of the stint, if they were just given the permission and resources to do what they need to do with testing.
All this postulating over canopy or halo devices, and the most BASIC safety component of an F1 car, the tyre, is given restricted testing while being asked to "degrade" quickly. Oh wait, forgot it was F1 for a moment, makes perfect sense!
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Post by Wß on Mar 10, 2016 2:22:12 GMT
It's like dating a psychotic person and thinking everything is perfectly normal. How it got here, I've no explanation for. Testing in Barcelona this year happened with tire pressures a few pounds higher, go figure.
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Post by LRW on Mar 10, 2016 13:57:55 GMT
I had a LOT of sympathy for Pirelli, and the shit situation they are in.
That sympathy disappeared when they renewed their contract in Oct last year.
Now they deserve all the flack they get.
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Post by Wß on Mar 10, 2016 14:13:41 GMT
I had a LOT of sympathy for Pirelli, and the shit situation they are in. That sympathy disappeared when they renewed their contract in Oct last year. Now they deserve all the flack they get. Battered spouse syndrome. I agree, get the concessions and clear direction and full accountability for said requests from F1, FOM and CVC and continue, otherwise leave and allow room for the next provider to come in. Anyone that sees a WEC race and how they can make a tire perform would shake their head in disbelief at what F1 has been forced into during the Pirelli era.
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Post by racechick on Mar 10, 2016 15:32:08 GMT
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Post by Wß on Apr 30, 2016 21:01:12 GMT
So Pirelli thinks that some teams are cheating with the tire pressure and have found a workaround to the tire pressure test at the start of the race. Hmmm... which team has a history of really bending the rules to the point of obvious wing flapping and has all of the sudden gained a tremendous amount of race pace? I really hope not.
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Post by Wß on Jun 1, 2016 19:54:09 GMT
Yeah, tires. Interesting bit about the full wets and the testing they did last year leading to some of the changes that made the one stop strategy in Monaco work.
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Post by Wß on Jul 5, 2016 19:27:32 GMT
So the storm in a teacup about heating up the suspension elements on the grid to artificially increase tire pressures and not only did the FIA mandate tire pressures now be taken before the wheels are put on and Pirelli mandated a minimum PSI that was four lbs higher. Did you guys see what an impact that had on Sunday's race?
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Post by Hammer on Jul 6, 2016 7:25:01 GMT
Maybe Ferrari accidentally misplaced the heating element and it ended up overheating their rear tyres instead.
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Post by Wß on Jul 6, 2016 9:37:04 GMT
This entire situation reminds me of a parent arguing with an unruly teen.
Parents: We're going to raise the minimum tire pressure limits because we think you've been abusing them.
Kid: But guys, it's hard to make the rubber last with those kinds of pressures, I'm just going to work around the rule and think of a way to lower them.
Parents: Son we realize that you've not respected our decision to have higher tire pressures so we're going to monitor you differently in order to dismiss the way you've been circumventing our rules ...and as a punishment we're going to raise the tire pressures even more! But if we find that you can't get around this new process well then we'll consider lowering the pressure.
It's insanity.
It's what the sport has always been about, pushing the rules until they're banned or allowed so the practice becomes commonplace. I mean seriously what was the difference between something like this and what Red Bull was doing with their flappy front wings, basically dragging them on the ground on the long straights until the testing caught up to them a year or more later.
A couple of points though Mercedes is not the only team reportedly doing this as there's example after example of the divets and potentially hollow spokes etc, this bubbled up recently but it's been going on since October of last year. Mercedes are simply using the best implementation because they apparently coupled it with some intricate machining in the inside drum of the wheels themselves that create fins. These fins may help absorb and then dissipate the heat. From what I read years ago it's my understanding that wheels are homologated for the season to it's possible that Mercedes were the only team that found that advantage and now other teams would be unable to copy that until next season.
But here's the point, if the rumor is that this is giving Mercedes .1 tenth advantage, that's great but it's only on the first set of tires, it's useless after that. Additionally since other teams are using the same technique, they're getting what? .05 hundreds? (pure conjecture here but it's how things work in F1 so I'm comfortable with that statement) now you're looking at very minuscule gains over a race distance. I mean it's even a bit comedic when you consider the fact that Mercedes and particularly Hamilton has had such poor starts they've effectively more than thrown away tenfold any advantage gained by this.
All is well and good, take the temperature before the wheel goes on, a simple enough step. But to further increase the minimum pressure is a bit of a tit for tat and frankly it's very possible that the draconian increase in minimum pressure may have contributed to the suspension failures we saw saw this weekend.
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Post by RyRy on Jul 6, 2016 17:55:05 GMT
FIA has tried numerous times to reel in Mercedes' domination which is rather entertaining, firstly I'm surprised that it was Mercedes doing the tyre pressure sneakyness but it's not like they were trying to hide it and even with stricter rules over and over with regards to tyre pressures or higher pressures Mercedes have kept the same gap between the races when the new restrictions come into play.
Mercedes were comfortably faster than any of the other teams at Baku, comfortably faster at Austria and will more than likely be comfortably faster at Silverstone.
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Post by Wß on Jul 6, 2016 20:36:15 GMT
Documented teams that were doing a similar thing included Red Bull, Ferrari, Force India and perhaps others. There's no specific mention of the "other" very costly very high dollar trick being employed that was nixed at the beginning of the year. I think the beef here was solely around the best case implementation of Mercedes when compared to the other solutions.
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