===== 2010 F1 Season Thread =====

There are two types of rain tires - an internediate type for lighter rain and a full rain tire for the downpours. These have groves like your car tires. The tires plus the down force produced by the car itself enables some degree of racing. However make no doubt about it - the speeds are greatly reduced.

There was rain in the afternoon session today, and they mentioned heavy rain was forecast for Sunday afternoon.
 
Should McLaren have brought in Hamilton based on a couple of laps from Schumacher while leaving Button out? He was PO'd, so I rewound to when they brought him in. Interesting. Its turning out that tire wear is far less in both races than thought.
 
Good race, I guess due to the scrambling of the field the rain caused. Maybe McLaren was hedging their bets by bringing one car in early and one later for a different tire strategy, don't know. Hamilton was really mad and stated it on the team radio for all to hear-he shouldn't have done that. Then he tried to pass near the end and got spun out. Can't have been a very happy day for him.
Again, Vettel and the Red Bull were the clearly superior combination to beat, and again fell to reliability problems. This could be a really tight race for the championship later on, with at least three marques competitive.
The Bridgestone tires seem to be surprisingly durable, even to the teams themselves. Maybe they hit upon the right combination-I have read it is really a black art (race tire design).
 
I agree with Alonso. Hamilton is getting all of the press, but Massa ended up matching Hamilton. Alonso went 54 laps with no clutch. Unbelievable.
 
Now that was a great, entertaining race. Scrambling the starting grid due to heavy rain in qualifying made for a thrilling charge from the back of the grid by Hamilton, and lots of other passing by the big names starting way back. No problems with the Red Bulls this week. They only lost the first two events due to mechanical problems. Are they unbeatable or will other teams catch up?
Yeah, Alonso was really impressive. Not sure if that was really a clutch problem, but there was some kind of gearbox trouble. I don't think they use the clutch except starting out from a stop. Aren't the transmission like a motorcycle, where you can just click them into the next gear real easily without using the clutch?
 
It was the clutch and it was dropping into neutral every time he downshifted. Then he had to rev-match to get it back into gear with every downshift. Amazing he even got it half way through the race. The car sounded awful and he had no engine brake effect at all, so he kept going wide on the turns and getting on the throttle late. I don't know how he was able to turn those lap times. Stayed on Massa's gearbox almost the whole race and was all over Button until the whole thing let go.
 
We will need to wait until the first race in Europe (Spain 07-09 May) to see how the teams respond. All will debut new aero packages plus those with outboard mirrors will have to move them in for that race.

The question I have is what are they going to do with the inequalities of the engines? Mercedes is clearly superior to all others which will lead the non-Mercedes teams to start yelling for permission to upgrade their engines to the Mercedes standard.
 
I tried to read up on how the clutches work in F1, and it is basically like a motorcycle. You know how you use your foot to raise or lower the gears-they are called dog clutches? Nobody uses the clutch everytime they shift a motorcycle.
The F1 car has a clutch button on the steering wheel, but they only engage it entering and leaving the pits. On the other side of the wheel the two paddleshifters are clicked, one for up the other for downshifting. But the paddleshifter apparently sends both a pneumatic and electrical control to the transmission, so either this wasn't working, or maybe the signal got crossed with the clutch, it really wasn't clear.
So it may be a matter of semantics, but there was clearly a period of time between shifts where the engine would rev up without engaging the transmission, whether it was clutch or controls of the shifting. There is a computer control to keep the engine from revving way up during shifting, even though it normally happens in a few milliseconds.
If you google F1 transmission, there are some interesting videos about the control system, and there's one about last year's Red Bull clutch on the same page.
Like the "bad spark plug" in the Red Bull, we may never know the exact problem.
 
Great race today...lots of great passing in variable conditions by most of the drivers out there today.

Amazing that Hamilton goes his second week in a row with only a slap on the wrist after driving like an #######. It was interesting they found it necessary to wait 10-15 laps, then announce they'd wait til after the race to look into that pit lane battle between him and Vettel. Why not just handle it in-race, the way they did with Alonso's bad start?

Alonso was also pretty amazing after that, btw, coming from 15th up to finish 4th and challenge for 3rd. He had almost timed that start perfectly. I think he wins if he's about 1/100th slower there.

It was very cool seeing Will Buxton in the prerace show in China answering a question regarding the Ferrari f-duct that I posed to him in a thread he started on the SPEED TV F1 forum yesterday. When he was talking about whether or not the driver would control it, that was the direct result of an inquiry and a theory posed by me and another poster.
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Aren't those driver controlled ducts coming awfully close to breaking the rule about driver controlled aerodynamic devices?
That was another good race in China. This season may be the best in many years, as far as number of competitive cars. If Mercedes joins the queue, it will be really interesting, and they aren't that far back.
Is Schumaker going to return to the podium, or is he going to remain a step behind?
I don't think F1 wants too severe a penalty put on drivers for pit infractions, but we'll see. I didn't think it was that bad. He was forced over by the other car, who was that, into the blue no-drive safety area. I guess he could have dropped behind the other car a little earlier, didn't seem too severe an infraction. Jumping the start clearly gave Alonso an unfair advantage, and should have been penalized.
 
Schumi didn't weave 4 times; go uncontroled into pit lane; and race in the pit lane slow lane.

There is racing and Hamilton's uncontrolled aggression isn't racing. Every other driver on the agrees - and went to FOM/FIA with their compalints.
 
I don't get the outrage-the swerving back and forth was to try to break the draft of the following car, didn't endanger anyone. I didn't even know there was a rule against it, I thought it was normal in racing.
The rule in the pits is for safety, but he didn't endanger anyone. Seems like he broke the letter of the rules, but not the intent. It appears much more dangerous to push other cars to the outside of turns, which isn't against any rule.
Buy anyhow, enjoying the season so far, hope the close racing continues.
 
F1 isn't NASCAR. The rule says one blocking move - again, FIA agreed with the drivers that Hamilton made 3 to many moves (the reason for the weave doesn't enter into the picture).

Hanilton endangered Vettle on the pit in and all of the pitmen as he plowed forward in the pit slow lane.
 
It's one 'defensive move'. He may not have been blocking, but he was certainly defending. If drivers were allowed to weave like that every time someone was chasing them down a straight in F1, there would never be any passing on straights because they'd never be able to get alongside for fear of getting creamed.

It seems to me that one thing many of Hamilton's supporters seem to be missing in all of this is that if the stewards would have simply levied a quick and reasonable penalty on him (as they did with Alonso) then Lewis' detractors would rightly have nothing to say...and his supporters would have no reason to defend him. I mean...how many people do you hear railing right now about Alonso's bad start in China?

I'm not saying any of you fit this description, either.

As for the cars being pushed to the outside of the turns, you can't be pushed to the outside if you back out when you should. On the flip side, I can't remember the last time I saw someone pass on the outside, get in front, and then get pushed outside. In F1, once one car gets position in those situations, the car being overtaken gives way almost every time. If they don't and it leads to a problem, they're going to be looked at very closely.
 
So. Monaco.

Webber had another nice q3 run to edge out Kubica in the Renault, who I picked high in my fantasy pool for Monaco, since it's such a driver's track. I'll be surprised if Webber finishes there, frankly. That Red Bull's just super fast, but it comes at the expense of reliability. Even the races it finishes, it barely makes it to the end most of the time. Love what Renault and Kubica have done with that car this year. The car is greatly improved over last year, but he's probably the most underrated driver on the grid, imho.

Alonso has to start from pit lane after crashing out in practice 3 and damaging the chassis. It couldn't be repaired in time and rules prohibit running a backup car. Shame, too, because he was consistently fastest all weekend up to that point.

I really don't understand the thought behind some of these "cost-cutting" rules that rarely ending up saving anyone any money. But whatever.

It's gonna be interesting to see what kinda strategy Alonso uses today, and whether going out in an untested, untuned new car hampers him. Will he start on the prime time and go as deep as possible before pitting, or will he start on the soft option and pit after a few laps so as to get out of sync with everyone else's pit strategy and hope for a (fairly likely, imho) safety car.? I think probably the llatter. He has quite a few slow cars right in front of him that he can get a good run on early. Some are writing off his chances to finish in the points, but a top 10 finish wouldn't surprise me at all here. He will be possessed.

Vettel looked a bit less than amused at having been out-qualified by Webber yet again, and this time at what is known most as a driver's track. I can't find it now, but the photo I saw was pretty funny, with the top 3 of Webber, Kubica, and Vettel. They were all smiles, except Vettel, who looked flat out irritated.

Anyway, I missed qualifying yesterday because of work and I'm still stuck here.
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Don't get out of here 'til 7am. Damn dvr better work!
 
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