Motors The Official bit-tech F1 2012 Thread - Post season

Holy crap, just over 16 minutes and I'm struggling to find something I don't agree with. Strange as it sounds the best channel for various motorsport right now is MotorsTV which is a free channel to SKy (and FreeSat I presume). You name it, chances are that it's on there. F3, Sports Cars, Endurance, Rally, Touring Cars. Yes it's usually a week or so after the event but they are making the effort and it shows. I bet their viewing figures are extremely high.

Brilliant talk by Steve there, saying what he thinks and how it is/was regardless of what the BBC may have said before publicly.

 

That was a very good talk by Steve, the amount of motorsport on terrestrial TV is frankly appalling, and is only going to get worse.

Very good news coming from Austin, with the circuit chiefs saying construction is back on track for completion in August. I'm particularly looking forward to that race.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97091

 

As am I. The undulations in the track really hark back to the 'proper' tracks like Spa. Some of the action under braking at the end of that long straight will be awesome, big stopping zone whilst going up hill

 

Agreed, great talk by Steve. I now have a new found respect for the man - good to see him talking so honestly about something that he clearly has a passion for - and a lifetime of experience in.

 

He definitely has a real passion for it. To my mind it would be very hard for anyone who isn't a petrol head to host 6 straight hours of touring car coverage if they weren't.

 

It's looking like our first view of a 2012 car will come next Thursday, as Caterham unveil their challenger...in F1 Racing magazine. Interesting strategy.

 

Yeah... I am quite excited, actually.
I have high hopes for Caterham (in my mind still "real-lotus") this year, after seing the way they clsoed the gap last year...

 

Look what turned up at the office today.

 

Haha, awesome. Is it an RB7 static or RB6?

 

It's an RB6 static

 

Still a cool bit of kit to be loitering around reception, heh. If only they didn't need to hide it behind barriers like that!

 

Maybe you could stand on the front wing and see how flexible it is?

Craig Scarborough has put up his technical preview for the coming season, including a nice sketch of a 2012 legal car. Who do you think will get closest to this?

 

HRT - they've got time to take his design and implement it.

 

2012, the year of the duckbill platypus.

 

I don't think the cars will be quite that extreme. So often last year teams introduced a new piece like a front wing with various added bits and pieces and they frequently didn't work. It seemed as if they were going along the lines of 'less is more'. Things could be shaken up with the new regs though so I guess it's all eyes on Caterham for what we have to come

Looking through those ideas in the technical preview the one which stood out to me was the possibility of blowing exhaust directly onto fin on the rear brake ducts. Downforce directly on the wheel? If someone makes that work it could make for some very interesting results.

Great article, thanks for the link It's set my brain off on a million and one stupid ideas which have probably been thought of and long binned by the real designers lol Still, passes the time.

 

Is there any word about if the F1 channel is free on its own with virgin media or do you have to get the entire sports package?

 

It seems to be tied in with Virgin's Sky Sports package, since they do their own HD package it's not tied in with that I'd imagine.

 

Surprised nobody had posted this while I've been out all day; multiple sources have confirmed that the FIA has banned Lotus' reactive ride height system. Seems a bit of an about face and I'm disappointed not to see how effective it would have been.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/formula_one/16664827.stm
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97127

Lotus have also announced that their car will be launched on their website on 5th February; added details to OP.

 

Hmmm. What are the odds that it was Ferrari who complained?

 

Virgin Media customers like myself need to subscribe to sky sports. I think its about £22 a month. Sky have decided to keep the HD version exclusive, so VM will only have standard definition.

Source: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/media/news/a360314/sky-sports-f1-coming-to-virgin-media.html