I wasn't sure about Albon after the first race but he is alongside Kyvatt who mightn't set the world on fire every weekend but is still a solid enough driver. The last few races Albon has looked very solid. The big question for me is over Gasly? Is Gasly just poor over one lap or is max just getting so much more out of the car in both race and qualifying? He's done well recovering but I do wonder if he should be in those positions to begin with? Also what are your thoughts on Stroll this season? Perez is smoking him but tbh I don't think Stroll is necessarily under performing. I'm still struggling to rank the midfield and my view of the teams has been way out this year.
Albon strikes me as another Max Chilton - consistent, but not exciting. Will pick up a lot of places as others crash out and break down. Gasly is definitely struggling, but I suspect he'll be a bit like Leclerc last season in that it'll take him a few races to get properly familiar. Stroll has been trash - hasn't he gone out in Q1 every race so far? I'm sure I heard one of the commentators say he's on a streak of 9 consecutive Q1 exits?!
Stroll is the new beige, not really looked at his performances but hes just fading into the background. Gasly just doesnt seem to have got to grips with the car, I think we should him improve but its a case of how long with RBR give him before they dump him back to TR or just out of F1.
Stroll has been poor in qualifying but generally picks up places during the race. I agree tho with the new beige, as the only time I notice he's banging on the door of the top 10 is when I see Perez and go looking for his name. I dont know if Stroll is representative of the car performance and Perez is dragging everything out of it or Perez is performing well and Stroll is underperforming the car. The opposite has been Haas who have been qualifting best of the rest and dropping backwards. Grosjean hasnt scored a point yet despite impressive qualifying performances Also a nice article for this forum of how Ferrari saved AMD
Perez reminds me a lot of Massa, he is definitely in the top half of the grid in terms of ability, but maybe not quite on the level of a title winner. He's one of those drivers that seems to get the theoretical maximum out of whatever car he's driving. Certainly him and Hulkenberg would be winning races if they were in one of the top three teams. Stroll just isn't very fast, Massa found about a second a lap over Stroll at most races, in four races this year Perez has between 0.5 and 0.75 on Stroll. That's better than I thought it would be, Perez hasn't actually lapped Stroll in a race yet, I expected it to happen at least once by the end of race 5, so Sergio's only got one more chance in Spain.
So to recap, resurfacing caused issues with standing water so to solve the issue they are going to carry kut the same action? What could possibly go wrong? Eitherway someone is going to complain Just noticed the managing Director is Stuart Pringle, surely there is a joke about once you pop you can't stop to be had here.
Honestly its a scary surface even on a pushbike, we did a TT there end of last year in the rain, they "red flagged it" due to people crashing out because of the standing water.
The important part about last year's resurfacing was that the contractors botched it. The F1 drivers said the track was in worse condition than the year before, in WEC a number of the LMP1/LMP2 cars suffered damage to their floors and suspension from smacking the bumps and in Moto GP the riders refused to race because the track's drainage system had been destroyed and water wasn't clearing (and the horrific crash on the Saturday that left Tito Rabat with a broken Femur, Tib and Fib properly put the willies up them). Moto GP gave Silverstone an ultimatum to fix the issues or lose the race, looks like they're taking option A.
That makes a lot more sense. Im guessing over time natural wear amd settling didnt solve the problem then?
Have they stopped resurfacing tracks with Delugrip? I know it's been used for decades, but the mechanical properties don't change. I'm willing to be they moved to a single-value PSV aggregate with some kind of 1mm negative texture stone-mastic bollocks.
The issue appears to be that the people re-surfacing did not properly remove the old surface and didn't do many (or any) repairs to the concrete underneath. So the new surface still had the ripples that tracks get from cars over time, only more so since the new tarmac was on top of that. They also clogged up all the drains with rubble so water didn't clear from the track. It affected the GP bikes especially badly since the water was sitting in the dips between the ripples and the bikes were aquaplaning and bouncing at the same time. Having said that on Sunday morning of the Moto GP they almost crashed the safety car too, it shot off the end of Stowe when they were trying to figure out how much grip was available, so it wasn't much better for cars. TLDR - Buy cheap, buy twice.
Not really cheaping out, they were probably forced to do it for other considerations - producing sufficient quantities of some sizes of high PSV aggregates has proven increasing difficult over the last twenty years. 14mm was the preferred size but it is produced in relatively small amounts compared to 10mm and 6mm when processed, so the boffins started to redesign paving materials to take advantage of smaller aggregates; then when 10mm became a problem, they redesigned again. The consequence of that is that it reduces the texture depth of the finished surface and that is what delivers high friction in damp/wet conditions - 14mm produced a 1.4-1.6mm macro-texture, whereas 10mm yielded 1.2mm and 6mm gives about 1mm. Not a huge issue on public roads, but clearly a problem on tracks. In dry running, the micro texture of the aggregates has a greater effect and combines with the macro to increase grip. A Delugrip design which uses a mix of high and a lower PSV, so the aggregates wear at different rates would probably still work but would need longer to polish up the surface and wear in.
I'll be at Silverstone for an EV event in 4 weeks time. I'll let you know if I see any resurfacing going on.
Part of wants to ask how/why you have an in-depth knowledge of "road surfaces"; the other part is just sitting here going "its just tarmac right?!"
This, I'm just sat hear reading it an not having a clue whats going on. All I know was it was a very dark surface OK when it was damp but the amount of standing water that was there and importantly not draining away was pretty ridiculous. I know some roads locally that have been recently resurfaced that drained far far better.
My degree was in the hugely popular and terribly exciting subject of Quarry & Road Surface Engineering. I hasten to add that I didn't finish it - I was offered a job during summer work placement - but I spent twenty years in the industry.
Quarry. and Road Surface. Engineering?! Wow. How the heck do you end up doing that as a degree? Is it some sort of hellspawn offspring of geology, chemistry and civil engineering?
