Sir Jackie Stewart really does hate Lewis. Mercedes do not care to punish him, Stewart is like Fine and race ban him. Why would you fine your biggest money maker, Mercedes are in the business to make money not pamper to Stewart's ramblings. This will run and run it seems, Monaco is next around those small streets they touch they are into the barriers.
Well, these popped up from Willam's in season testing, Two things to note, first the front wing struts coming off the old FIA camera mount points. Legit from what I can see they will allow the wings to take additional load with less flex. The rear wing is just bonkers, not 100% that the winglets on the outer are legal but they fit the 2017 spec closer with the width upgrade. Nice to see some out of the box ideas though!
It's a load of bollox - the two of them have raced against one and other for the last two years without tripping over each other and, when they do, the team is still comfortably in front of their nearest rival. Kudos to Merc for letting them race.
Following current F1 "Logic" Hamilton will be demoted to Manor and Pascal will take his place and win the next race.
Think Lewis would quit before he ever agreed to go to manor. Unlike Red Bull where the teams are the same owner ect. The manor team is seperate, imagine the breach of contract bill for Merc for Lewis. Could be 8 figures just on basic salary owed. Ferrari would then thank them for the driver as that's where he will surely go in such circumstances. If they did not let them race and they had a defacto number 1 they would be 1-2 every race with that number 1 winning the bulk of the races. The sport would basically be folding as we speak if they had done that. 2017 changes to make the car faster will help balance out the competition a bit but Merc still will have the best engine. Even if they are slightly behind Redbull on Chassis they will not be far away on them.
Eric Boullier reckons Honda between Merc and Ferrari in terms of power Link to Article The cars going faster isn't the problem tho. They could give them tires that allowed drivers to push. The problem is overtaking is difficult and drivers don't make mistakes. Verstappen was brilliant but let's face it, if he was wrestling a bathtub he mightn't of been so consistent. The extra speed might make things more difficult. The biggest problem is the rules being bounced around, cancelled then brought back in a comprised fashion making everything pointless
I think it's ridiculous that they still won't allow anyone else to use the Honda engine. Honda must have spent a phenomenal amount of money developing it and will want to recoup as much of that as possible. There's nothing to say they can't flog off slightly gimped engines to other teams, Mercedes have been doing it for 3 years now.
Who actually wants a Honda engine though? Bet Mclaren would kill for even a Renault power unit right now.
I think the phrase is over Frank's dead body. People seem to forget that Honda dumped Williams at the end of 1987 because in the wake of Sir Frank's car crash Honda's then heads (who's names are seemingly lost to history, wonder why) felt a cripple could not run a Formula 1 team successfully, then told him so. I bet Frank hasn't forgotten that. Beside, taking a Honda motor is and always will be an instant trip to the mid field. They haven't built a truly competitive engine since the eighties turbos.
Williams will never win a constructors championship without becoming a full works team, they won't get that from Honda.
It applies to RB as much as anyone else. I don't see them competing for either title right now. Being second (or third, fourth) in line puts you at a huge aero disadvantage. You have to design your chassis around the engine and factory teams can dictate shapes and sizes of mountings, cooling etc. They get a six/seven month head start every year too. Can't beat that, unless your name is Ross Brawn.
I was thinking in terms of them being the only team, at present, who are outperforming their suppliers' works team... but some of that is probably works-team inertia, kinda like how McLaren outperformed Mercedes for a few years and then they fell off the customer-team performance cliff But as you say, customer teams rarely outperform their supplier. '09 [Brawn beat McLaren] and '10 [Red Bull beat Renault] are the only times in recent memory at least where a customer team beat their suppliers' works team.
Brawns case was due to the diffuser more than anything. I guess its works teams are usually backed by bigger budgets than customer teams. Honda is the only supplier that isn't a works team tho McLaren might as well be even if they supplied another team