Motors The Official bit-tech F1 2013 Thread

^^ I hope so.

I'd love to see McLaren sort their reliability issues and do well this year, and to be honest, I don't care who wins WDC, as long as its not Fingers. I actually don't hate Alonso anymore, and think he thoroughly deserve to win 2012, more so than Vettel.

I hope this season is like the first 6 or so races of last season, with multiple winners and where consistently finishing in a good position is the key, not necessarily winning.

TL;DR - Not Vettel plz. kthnkzbai.

 

Stoned's got a point actually. If you look at Brawn, almost every winning team he's in he actually had Rory Byrne right behind him (Benetton and Ferrari).

That said, I don't think it's his fault, the Mercedes cars have had a revolving door of designers, this in of itself is a problem just because there's a lack of design consistency. To me it isn't Brawn that's the problem but the fact that management seems to inexplicably change designers every year.

It's kind of the problem with many midfield and lower end teams too. They have a chassis that is worked on one year and dumped the next. Long term chassis improvements is what gets results, not annual changes. Look at Williams, they actually did alright this year. Even though their 2011 year was abysmal.

 

I'm hoping that as the merc had fundamental issues with the design based around double drs that the lack of updates to the car last year means they were actually concentrating on this years car.

As above I want the season to have multiple winners not a run away leader.

 

Id love to see multiple winners

What I expect is vettal to walk to another title. No real changes to the cars lack of drs in quali will hurt others.

 

Lack of DRS in quali should actually help Ferrari a lot. A key issue they suffered was getting the rear wing to reattach to the air flow after closing the DRS, which caused a lack of rear grip under breaking after DRS use.

If DRS is no longer used at every opportunity, the issue is reduced for Ferrari.

 

I think that will hurt Red Bull most, the last couple of years a big part of their qualifying (and Vettel's interminable get pole-lead race-win sprees) has been that they could get the car round corners with the DRS open when the other teams couldn't.

If that's gone this year, they're suddenly giving up 10-15kph at the corner exits. Of course Newey will have already thought of that, I think the FIA should change the rules, Adrian Newey has a rolling contract with them, every two years they decide which teams gets him by tombola.

 

Lack of DRS in quali will hurt RBR.
We saw one thing emerge last year: Running at the front, in clean air, makes your tyres last forever. I don't expect that to change.
RBR has GREAT downforce out of corners, and looking at qualifying footage, the RB8 seemed to run entire laps with the DRS open. Of course it didn't but I can't help but get the impression that they had better natural downforce in corners.

The expected loss per lap introduced by this change is between 1 and 2 seconds, depending on team, car, etc. (I think it was James Allen that commented on that, but I could well be wrong).
That means that cars are closer to race pace in qualifying, and differences are less. That will make it harder to get to the front of the grid than before, which in turn makes gambling on tyres a bit harder for the leaders.
This change should benefit most teams, actually. The exceptions here being RBR and possibly McLaren.

I seriously doubt that any team is going to walk to a victory this season. The rules didn't change much, meaning the cars will be roughly the same, with some of the gaps between teams reduced.

Backmarkers will come closer to the midfield, and performance gains will be harder to get.

The one team that I feel MAY have something up their sleeve is Lotus. The online launch thing seems to me to be a way to prevent people having a good poke around... We'll see the car later today...

 

I'm suck with the no-DRS issue in Quali...

I think that teams should either qualify in full race trim (i.e. go back to refueling where teams could under fuel to get up the grid) and then have race DRS activiation, OR, have the fastest lap possible, where you fuel the cars for the in/timed/out laps plus the FIA required sample, can have any tyre and use DRS whenever you want..

TL;DR: bring back refueling and let teams chose race set-up for quali.

 

I still think its a pretty wierd change this no DRS thing. They are still allowing drs in the activation zones so its not entirely void.

What we might see is 2 different car setups. 1 for tracks where DRS actually has a benifit. And one where it is totally removed from the car.

They do this for passive DRS so id imagine it would not be difficult to get this to work for normal drs.

Backmarkers have been trying to catch up for 3 years and are further away if anything.

Redbull in race trim is still the quickest car on the grid ( under vettel) on most circuts followed by the Mclaren under lewis on other tracks. ( based on last years data)

The race sim laps of the big 5 were within 0.3 seconds of each other last season. qualifying could be really about who does the perfect lap.

 

It comes down to driver skill then?

But should it? Or should it come down to an overall mix of driver, car, and tactics?

 

I always think of Quali as the time for the driver to really show what he can do under the pressure of one perfect lap, them the race is all about car, team and driver coming together.

I think safty is one of the key reasons DRS use is being limited. People felt it was beginning to get a bit brinkmanship like with when to us it. Although nothing major has happened yet, it could be really nasty if someone misjudges DRS on a high speed corner and loses the back end.

Also, who is looking foward to seeing the new Lotus, will they use a modesty panel? will everyone? (redbull used the step for driver cooling last year)

 

It has to be for safety.. We saw a few times last season some drivers trying to open the DRS early while coming out of corners, and losing the back end under power, but that was part of the risk/reward nature of the system. Yes, you can push your luck opening it a bit early and gaining a few extra hundredths of a second, or you can bin in into the gravel traps.

I know that drivers safety is always a huge concern, but if there isn't any risk, there is little point in doing it.

Also, I miss the gravel... having these gargantuan run-offs are all well and good and keep more cars in the race, but they encourage drivers to take risks in maneuvers which they are never going to pull off in a million years, and then doesn't penalise them.

 

I agree. At the very least it should be made of a compound that wrecks the tires either by abrasion or by cooling them.

 

Not going to happen, between 1994 and 2009 it's been more luck than judgement that nobody died in a fuelling accident. Even in the last race fuel was getting sprayed across the pits (and setting light to Kimi), had one of the various ripped off fuel hoses ever hit somebody that wouldn't have been pretty either.

Glad it's gone!

 

Quite agree, if Kimi's visor had been unsealed he could have lost an eye. Refuling was just metaly dangerous and pre luck stoped it cauing a far worse accident. Combine KERS with fuel and you have a real recipe for disaster.

 

Is the Lotus website working for anyone. Not been able to access all day.

Scratch that, its on Sky Sports News at 1930

 

The lotus car launch online is here

 

Still got a stepped nose, its not a stunner...

Very sharp engine cover, almost a return to the shark fins. Wounder if they will keep the drivers name on the cover, or if a sponcer will replace that?

Williams say they have a smooth nose, and Ferrari are roumered to have one, wonder if step will be the norm of the Lotus will be the odd one out