Motors The Bit-Tech Formula 1 2014 Thread - Season Complete

It's not often i cheer on Alonso but he's doing a stellar job keeping Vettel behind him [so far]

 

Well, that was fun. Good on Lewis, wish he hadn't inherited such an important win, but it's good for the WDC fight so I'm not complaining.

Alonso and Bottas both had absolutely cracking races, but given the state of the Ferrari, I think I'd have to hand the "best drive" award to Alonso. Still, fantastic feeling seeing Williams back at the pointy end.

 

To be fair, Rosberg needs to have another 0 point race.

 

Kimi was lucky that Massa spun his car on purpose to stop him having a head on collision or Kimi would of been im major trouble.

British winner at the British GP never a bad thing the Reception he got on the last lap sounded electric. Nico getting his first DNF of the year has brought the Championship back closer than what it was.

Would of loved Button to get Podium this weekend just for what it would mean.

Was some nice battles going on.

 

Did that security bozo really have to drag Bottas (think it was Bottas) away from his team when he was celebrating with them after the race, I'd have nutted him with my crash helmet and blamed it on the adrenalin

 

Technically they have to keep the drivers separate from all other humans until the drivers have been on the scale to prevent any funny business (thats where the infamous line from every presenter about dropping a spanner in the overall comes from).
However enforcement has always been dodgy at best.

 

Super day for Lewis and Williams. Not too shabby for the McLarens either - a pity Jenson couldn't nick third. Ricciardo certainly got his money's worth out of the tyres.

I'm loathe to admit it but Alonso was sublime (when he kept it within the track limits) - he had a spectacular race, with some fantastic overtakes and a spell of excellent close racing with Vettel.

Great race.

 

Granted, I accept that, just don't think I've ever seen it so "vigorously" enforced

 

Alonso on fire, Button driving the nuts off the McLaren in the closing stages.
Bottas cleaning up the field, Lewis playing strategy... all in all, a brilliant race.

Lewis's first stint was near brilliant. Keeping in the clean air, dropping the gap in time for Nico's stops, then running deep and forcing Nico to wear his tyres faster. Then the unexpected pace on the hard tyre, AND the stop was made late enough that he might reasonably have calmed down a bit and run a one-stop race (though that would have meant him being very vulnerable at the end).
Even without a retirement, the race between Nico and Lewis looked to be happening.
The retirement obviously helped the WDC along massively, though. More pressure, more racing, and a chance that the double points at the end don't naturally determine the WDC.

Massa's reactions were super impressive. Too bad it wasn't quite enough to save his car.

For once, Pastor was in a crash that was genuinely not his fault.

As for Alonso vs Vettel.
Why did Alonso get black/white'd and not Seb?
Just in the bit where Vettel finally made the pass stick (and the interview with Chris Horner happened), Seb went off track twice. Once before he makes the pass, once just after. The first time you could hear Horner actually hold his breath about that.
Now before someone cries: yes, i dislike Seb, but It could in this case be reasonably argued that he gained an advantage from that.
I don't think it would have ended differently if he hadn't gone wide so often, I just find it weird that Alonso got warned about it, and Seb didn't.

 

I think that looks ok...

 

To be honest, i don't get the local branding. For example replacing Rexona with Sure, because they raced in UK. 300k viewers through the weekend locally, and how many millions globally who knows Rexona as Rexona, and not as Sure .

 

Liking the bigger wheels, wonder if it will get the go ahead.

 

Guessing it'll need a rejig of the suspension if they do go with the bigger wheels as isn't a large portion of a current f1 car suspension's ability to absorb shock in the tyre side-wall?

 

Yes, but when the top five teams bin the entire car every twenty four months, whilst the bottom five teams buy their suspension from the top five teams (and God only knows what Caterham do) that's not as much of an issue as team bosses like to pretend.

The fact that nobody but Pirelli is even discussing a future in F1 has probably helped move this along.

 

The bigger wheels are supposed to herald the re-introduction of active suspension, iirc.

 

The bigger wheels are obviously interesting to Pirelli, what with sports car relevance and all that jazz.

In pure theory, they should give better grip due to less rubber deforming.
The same argument (less rubber) would also make the current suspension setup not work, as was already stated.

 

Well it has the tiny engine with turbo and now low profile tyres, all it needs to set it off is chrome spinners, a matte vinyl wrap and a stupidly large exhaust to raise the volume. Burberry helmet anyone?

 

...

 

Pirelli mentioned they're interested in it, and their contract expires in 2016.
Hence the pitch for this for the 2017 season.
They did mention yesterday that they could have them reaceable by 2016

 

The big rims and active suspension has been doing the rounds for months.

I remember reading about it in Autosport back April (I think).