[jfxavier]

A variety of mid-season reviews are available online for an F1 fan.
Here's the link to the Formula1.com review.

http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-...on-report.html

Hope to see the views of the t-BHP members here in the forum.



For me the 2015 season can be summarised as below.

• Mercedes is going to win both championships comfortably.
• Lewis is going to be the WDC unless the manual starts in the second half of the season goes horribly wrong for him and exceptionally well for Nico.
• Ferrari have recovered massively and hopefully will challenge the Mercs more in the second half.
• Kimi seems to be destined to be left out of the 2016 Ferrari plans unless he ups his game significantly in the second half of the season.
• I dont expect Williams to challenge Ferrari regularly for being the 2nd best team. Maybe in some tracks which suits them.
• RedBull seems to be on an ascent and hopefully Renault will spice things up with some "Token" upgrades to the engine.
• The Force India, Lotus & STR battle will be interesting and hopefully will keep things spiced up during the second half.
• Somehow Sauber seems to be slipping further down the grid and I dont expect the slide to be reversed anytime soon.
• McLaren is a team that I am watching keenly, especially from a technical point of view and hopefully the token uses will give them the much needed push to move further up on the grid. Hopefully Honda will turn up with "good engine" in the second half of the season.
• As for the Marussias, hopefully they will keep up with the developments and attract more sponsors along the way. I hate to see teams going bankrupt.
• The teams will keep "few" tokens in hand till as late as possible in the season to avoid homologating the engine earlier than the rivals.

DRIVERS:

Lewis Hamilton:
Just as he was at the halfway stage of the 2014 season, Lewis is keeping his nose ahead of Rosberg so far this year, and his record of nine pole positions in ten races is hugely impressive. Title number three is his unless something terribly goes wrong.

Nico Rosberg:
Rosberg has been consistent if not anything else scoring nine podium finishes in the first ten races. However, he has lacked that killer pace to beat Hamilton regularly, and missed a huge opportunity to get back in the title hunt in Hungary. I dont expect him to beat Lewis this year to the WDC unless Hammy loses it big time.

Sebastian Vettel:
Vettel has a point to prove after his dominating wins with RedBull that it's not all about the car and he is doing that at his first year at Ferrari with just one mistake all year long (Bahrain). Reminds me of Schumi.

Kimi Raikkonen:
Kimi has fared better comparing to last year, scoring regular points and picking up his first podium finish since joining Ferrari. However, with less than half the points of Vettel in the same car, it’s been a poor first half of the year.
Looks like Kimi will retain his seat at Ferrari only of they cannot find a decent replacement.

Valtteri Bottas:
Bottas’ performances may have done enough to secure him a place on Ferrari’s shortlist for 2016, but the Finn has failed to truly outclass teammate Felipe Massa.

Felipe Massa:
Massa is proving that he still has plenty to offer in F1, keeping Bottas honest in 2015.

Daniel Ricciardo:
Ricciardo has led Red Bull’s charge with a string of good performances. He even had been in the mix to win in Hungary.

Daniil Kvyat:
Kvyat has proved to be more than a match for Ricciardo at times. Second place in Hungary was a deserved breakthrough after a solid first half of the year.

Nico Hulkenberg:
Nico has upped his game considerably after the LeMan's win. Expect even better results in the second half of the season.

Sergio Perez:
Perez has been lurking around the points for much of the season, but has lacked the edge that Hulkenberg has shown. The B-spec car might be helpful for him to catch up with his team mate.

Romain Grosjean:
23 points is a fair reflection of his form as he leads Lotus once again this season. Hopefully Pastor will not decide to go for his team mate from the next race onwards.
Pastor Maldonado:
With an improved car, Maldonado was expected to rediscover some of the form that he showed at Williams in 2012. Two seventh-place finishes have followed (more than he ever did last year), but compared to Grosjean, he has been very average. Racking up five penalties in Hungary is probably his most notable action thus far.

Max Verstappen:
Max has done much to debunk the myth that he wasn’t ready to race at this level by challenging the seasoned racers in the sport. Fourth in Hungary was an enormous achievement, marking Toro Rosso’s best finish since Vettel left at the end of 2008. But he needs to mature a lot and it sometimes shows on track as well. Keeps the entertainment quotient up.

Carlos Sainz Jr.:
Sainz has gone under the radar quite a bit this season due to the media focus on his younger teammate, but the Spaniard has been outstanding in his first ten grands prix. Sainz has out qualified and outraced Max Verstappen more often than not so far this year.

Felipe Nasr:
Nasr has wiped the floor with teammate Marcus Ericsson in this season so far.
A future star in the making.

Marcus Ericsson:
Ericsson may have scored his first points in F1 this year, but he has failed to set the world on fire. The Swede threw away a good chance for a top ten finish early on in Malaysia, and has done little else of note.

Fernando Alonso:
Alonso has been dragging the car around the tracks kicking and screaming, even literally pushing the car when it refuses to go on it's own power. Maybe an improvement in the Honda's engine will keep him in F1 as he has been vocal about the lack of "freedom" to develop the car in F1 and his temptation to look at other less restrictive forms of motor racing.

Jenson Button:
Button has lacked the panache that his teammate has displayed, losing on both occasions that the two McLaren have finished in the points.
Interesting to see where he ends up in 2016.

Roberto Merhi:
Merhi narrowly edges Stevens in the gradings because of his recent run of victories over his teammate despite having a weight disadvantage.
Cannot say for sure what will happen in the second half.

Will Stevens:
Stevens recent run of defeats to teammate Roberto Merhi despite being 12-15kg lighter than the Spaniard and having more F1 experience doesn't paint a rosy picture for him.

[jfxavier]

Here is the analysis from James Allen.

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2015/0...-championship/

CONCLUSIONS
So, following the trend lines through, what pointers can this assessment give for the second half of the season? Given the clear and relatively untroubled nature of their qualifying performances to date, it would be no surprise were Mercedes to continue to dominate qualifying throughout the season – should the sessions remain trouble-free. Only in the rain in Malaysia were Ferrari able to qualify within three tenths of Mercedes, and the Silver Arrows’ advantage in qualifying trim remains formidable.
Mercedes advantage over Ferrari is much larger than the gaps between any of the other teams (for example Vettel to Hamilton vs Bottas to Vettel) so there is probably more chance of Williams catching Ferrari and even more chance of Red Bull catching Williams.
To catch Mercedes in 10 Races Ferrari need to gain almost 0.1s/lap in addition to the normal development rate per event. If we assume the typical wind tunnel development targets of 1 point of downforce per week, or 2pts per event then Ferrari need to gain this plus an additional 3pts per event. So that’s 150% of Mercedes development rate. That seems impossible, based on incremental improvement with a team of a similar size. What is needed is large step changes in Power Unit development and innovation somewhere.
Williams and Red Bull have consistently been best of the rest behind Mercedes and Ferrari throughout the season, but their team average qualifying positions (7.05 and 8.30 respectively) indicate that they are very much at the mercy of fluctuating form depending on the characteristics of each circuit. Further back, Toro Rosso find themselves with a higher average qualifying position (10.30 – with both Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz sharing the same average qualifying position) than Force India and Lotus, yet behind both teams in the constructors’ standings – highlighting that the team have issues converting strong qualifying performances into consistent points finishes.
Force India made one very significant gain when they introduced their ‘B’ spec car and this affects their average development making it seem better than other teams. What has in fact happened is that they’ve rolled up a winter’s worth of development into the season average as well because they started the season with a car that was much further behind their wind tunnel programme than the other teams. With a normal budget and operation that wouldn’t have happened.
At the back of the field, Sauber have clearly struggled with development, and from having the fifth fastest car in qualifying trim at the start of the season now find themselves ahead of Manor alone in terms of pure qualifying performance. McLaren and Force India will likely see their progress plateau as they optimise their cars towards extracting the maximum from their respective packages. The trend lines project a difficult and lonely second half of the campaign for Manor though, with little sign of tangible progress relative to the performance of their rivals.

[ashwin.terminat]

Slightly OT,

The live F1 stream on StarSports.com will now be free for everyone for the rest of the season.

As for those who have already subscribed, they will get a full refund very soon.

[arunphilip]

Originally Posted by ashwin.terminat

The live F1 stream on StarSports.com will now be free for everyone for the rest of the season. As for those who have already subscribed, they will get a full refund very soon.

But it will no longer be live :( Bummer!

Originally Posted by ashwin.terminat

Maybe TV broadcasts aren't getting a good enough audience and this is to push live streaming folk back to the ol' tube?

Seems likely - although I don't see why . I'd disconnected my cable connection since the only thing I watch is F1, and was happy to move to online streaming. But I'd probably be in a minority of one.

I think it might be the other way around - there's not enough uptake of online streaming, so they want to capture that audience, and what better way to do so than make it free? Once they have enough of a captive audience, they might start raising prices on cable/DTH subscriptions (maybe for HD alone, to begin with). The reason they want to play the long game (of bringing people onto live streaming) is because it cuts the cable/DTH provider out of the loop, since that arrangement has some revenue sharing.

The reason to make online streaming time-delayed is just to ensure that people don't cut themselves off from cable/DTH in the short-term (particularly in a sports-crazy nation like ours).

[ashwin.terminat]

Originally Posted by arunphilip

But it will no longer be live :( Bummer!

Aah, yes.

In my excitement, I seem to have missed that bit. Maybe TV broadcasts aren't getting a good enough audience and this is to push live streaming folk back to the ol' tube?

[Hatari]

Looking to Spa, Honda claim they are targetting Ferrari, which is a huge step forward.
Yet other reports state the increase in power to be only 15bhp, not the predicted 50bhp.

Anyone have further clarity on this?

[jfxavier]

Originally Posted by Hatari

Looking to Spa, Honda claim they are targetting Ferrari, which is a huge step forward.
Yet other reports state the increase in power to be only 15bhp, not the predicted 50bhp.

Anyone have further clarity on this?

I think these reports are heavily lost in translation and Arai san seems to be the latest whipping boy for the F1 press and fans.
The Spa engine will be the last major change for this year's Honda PU. The remaining changes are expected to be minor.

Here's the link : http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/120337

"Spa is the final upgrade for this year, with ancillaries to follow in the following race," Arai told AUTOSPORT.

"Mk 3 [will be introduced] in Spa [and] we have already started development on next season's power unit.

"Mk 4 will be on the same level as Mercedes, that is the target; Mk 3 will be on a level similar to Ferrari, which is what we're aiming for. It's a big step."

However, what's making news is the following quote from the same article.

"[The car has] not so good mechanical grip, or aero, compared with Red Bull there is still a big gap," Arai added.

"We have checked the GPS data; the chassis and aero package needs time and fine-tuning, such as wing angle, ride heights, suspension settings.

"[Engine] unreliability has meant lots of parts were changed in winter testing and so things like flow-vis and taking data has been done during the season in FP1, due to the unreliability in the winter."

For many, the real news was the confirmation to the nature of problems Honda has been facing.

"From the start of the season we knew there was a cooling problem, so we turned the engine power down a lot," Arai told AUTOSPORT.

"We upgraded the power unit in Spain to 'Spec 2' and we have almost perfected the heat rejection.

"Due to the compact package, you have the very skinny [bodywork] and everything on the inside had many issues regarding heat rejection, which causes a lot of damage for the MGU-H, the MGU-K.

"Finally, in Hungary, we have no problems and we have a good package."