[sgiitk]

Originally Posted by arun_kun

Yes, Ferrari and Vettel pushed the life of the tyre to limits. But, there is no reason for Pirelli tyre to disintegrate like that. Yes, there can be performance drop as we have seen with Kimi in 2012 China, but no excuse for such a structural failure. It would been right to blame Ferrari if they dropped out of points because of tyres falling off the cliff. But this is squarely on Pirelli.

Vettel has every right to be furious.

Remember a similar thing happened with Hamilton ages ago. He was winning the race but the tyres let go. When you go beyond the normal limits you are taking your chances.

[anachronix]

Originally Posted by sgiitk

Remember a similar thing happened with Hamilton ages ago. He was winning the race but the tyres let go. When you go beyond the normal limits you are taking your chances.

It was not just Rosberg & Vettel, there were more cars with cuts found on their rear tires. Hembery thinks its wear, but Vettel's laptimes were consistent until the moment the tire gave up. There are awful lot of examples of how the lap times drop off significantly when the Pirelli rubber wears out.

If Hembery is telling the truth about Pirelli, laptimes of Vettel proves he is a super-human F1 driver else Hembery is just talking rubbish!

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/pi...ekend/?v=2&s=1

[gtonsing]

I know I have made this statement and I know what the response is going to be but I need to say this: SFI was running second during the initial stages of the race. Other teams/drivers also do that every now and then and when they do, they are able to stick to those positions. Why not Perez? Why not SFI? Just keeps losing place. Was it experience, car, strategy?

[RoadSurfer]

Originally Posted by gtonsing

I know I have made this statement and I know what the response is going to be but I need to say this: SFI was running second during the initial stages of the race. Other teams/drivers also do that every now and then and when they do, they are able to stick to those positions. Why not Perez? Why not SFI? Just keeps losing place. Was it experience, car, strategy?

It was high degradation of soft tyres & low downforce setup. Perez himself has said about this after the race. You can check below link.
http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/...ian-grand-prix

[jfxavier]

Originally Posted by anachronix

There is more I guess...

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/124...an-they-fix-it

The fastest lap ALO did was the 1st full lap after last pitstop and he made

(S1/Speed S2/Speed S3/Speed Full LAP)
L35 32.627/296 50.779/191 30.286/208 1:53.692
L36 33.118/291 52.340/186 30.885/210 1:56.343

He was nowhere near any other car, ruling out slipstream as a factor. The Mercs were closing in behind to lap him and he was blue flagged on L37 and lapped by HAM just before the chicane. He stabilised on 1:56 or higher after that. 1L fresher tyres doesn't justify 2.7s.

Now, on the McLaren Honda issue of ERS.
The starts that McLarens are doing suggests a small/light and probably axial blower for the T/C.
The exhaust sound that the Honda engine makes might be due to the use of waste gate opening instead of MGU-H slowing down the T/C.
At full power, the turbine is meant to produce more power from the exhaust than the compressor needs which is supposed to be controlled by limiting the revs of the turbo by loading it with the MGU-H, which doesn't seem to be happening.
The lack of bhp for McLaren seems to be more due to the ERS than the ICE.
Who knows, maybe after the big Ron buys back the McL shares they will find the lost speed magically.

[Fullrevs]

Bar the first two positions, the race was quite exciting. I pretty much watch F1 this year for third and lower positions.

Lewis pretty much stomped his authority again. Rosberg was fiddly and managed 2nd place thanks to the car. Vettel drove a supreme race in my opinion. Took a lot of courage to try and finish the race with one stop and it was heart breaking that his tyre exploded on the penultimate lap. It was expected though. I was a bit surprised he crossed lap 42 itself.

I am really getting impressed with Max Verstappen. That kid really has grit and determination and loads of speed. I think with some age and training, he really is a force to reckon with in the future.

Depressing to see Fernando and Button look like backmarkers. This is most certainly taking their careers to the finish. I doubt Alonso will be on any top teams radar anymore. SAD!!

[anachronix]

Forgetting something very important I guess! There were only 3 cars that did a 3-Stopper, it was Nando, Button & Max. Now the Mclaren did not have a car that could get into Q2 which means they have 2 sets of fresh soft tires they could use for the race. When you have nothing to lose, with low fuel and fresh set of softs any driver would want to give it a go!

Even then from the fastest sector times you shared, look where the Mclaren is in S1 where its all about power!

Their chassis weakness was evident in Hungary (look how close RedBull and Ferrari got to the Mercdes in Q), power deficit more clear in Belgium (Top 5 positions in Q were held by Mercedes cars).

Even if Honda fixes the power deficit, I am afraid Mclaren have again failed to build a good chassis and they could hardly fight.

One more weird thing observed in the race which Brundle kept mentioning was the way the Mclaren was charging down the Kemmel straight, some place where you would expect your car to make power than be slowing down to charge.

Originally Posted by jfxavier

The fastest lap ALO did was...

[jfxavier]

Originally Posted by anachronix

One more weird thing observed in the race which Brundle kept mentioning was the way the Mclaren was charging down the Kemmel straight, some place where you would expect your car to make power than be slowing down to charge.

The flashing light behind the car doesn't necessarily mean that the ES is being charged, it just means that the MGU-K is not available to supply the additional power to PU, in McLaren's case probably due to the ES being depleted already.
It serves as a warning to the cars behind that the car ahead is not going to accelerate as quick as normally in the case where systems work OK. The same light flashes when the ES is being charged by MGU-K as well.

The ES/ MGU-K is not available at the start up to 100 mph and that's when the Hondas are charging up the grid, only to loose the places to others once they have their ERS available.

I believe that the output for all the ICE are probably quite close. For a turbocharged ICE which is limited by fuel flow rate, all manufacturers will get very similar outputs and the variable is the output from the MGU-K.

At Spa, the Mclarens lost all electrical energy after half a lap, having to spend the other half recharging the batteries. On the other hand, you have Mercedes and Ferrari which are able to use the MGU-H to harvest exhaust energy and use that to recharge the batteries and power the MGU-K on the long straights. Looks like at present with the temp. issues sorted out their only major design flaw is that they are not able to harvest enough from the MGU-H, that's probably rectifiable over winter, as Ferrari have shown last year.

[anachronix]

The rear LED flashes only when the engine is harvesting energy letting the car behind know it could be going slower or while entering the pits or they are racing in poor visibility conditions.

Its just bizarre that Honda PU is setup to harvest energy through the straight. Now that the ERS is not controlled by the drivers anymore like the KERS, its more to do with the way the PU is designed/setup.

Originally Posted by jfxavier

The flashing light...

[jfxavier]

Originally Posted by anachronix

The rear LED flashes only when the engine is harvesting energy letting the car behind know it could be going slower or while entering the pits or they are racing in poor visibility conditions.

The new warning light system introduced since 2014 by FIA include ERS status that alerts pursuing cars when fuel saving engine maps have been activated to indicate cars are not running at full performance to minimise the risk of drivers behind being caught out when the engines automatically cut throttle to help reduce fuel use.

Earlier in the 2014 season the FIA technical delegate Charlie Whiting explained the same in the press conference on the new regulations.

"If the torque management system on the car decides that it want to go into fuel save mode then a system kicks in.
If the torque management system on the car decides to go into a fuel-save mode, the rear light will flash for a second to warn any driver behind. The thresholds are configurable but currently set for a car above 95 per cent throttle for more than a second, travelling faster than 180kph, that experiences a torque reduction of 120kW or more.

The warning system has been created because these events are controlled by the electronics rather than by the driver. The warning light is there for situations not controlled by the driver.

http://www.fia.com/news/f1-race-dire...nical-briefing

Obviously the most common event for torque reduction is the ERS harvesting, but it could be anything that causes a 120kW reduction in the available power, such as the MGU-K cutting off due to depleted ES, which seems to be the cause of McLaren's permanently flashing red light.

[Raajiv]

On a lighter note.Only Maldonado could do this:

http://www.planetf1.com/driver/55667...self-inflicted

[jfxavier]

Look at the way the McLarens go through the field at the race start.
Once the ERS is active, they start falling back.
I guess if you are a McLaren fan, all is not lost.

https://vid.me/5gep

[jfxavier]

According to Omnicorse, Honda has rejected the proposal from Renault that the FIA seemed ready to accept and would have allowed the two manufacturers to develop the power unit during the 2016 season, to retrieve the technical gap that separates them from Mercedes and Ferrari .

The issue was discussed in the last Technical Working Group that in the next two weeks should formulate final proposals for 2016: the current rule binds the four manufacturers to approve the power unit by February 28 , blocking any development in the course of the season.

Strange as it may seem honda is behaving like they have something up their sleeve, or their pride is preventing them from taking any sort of favours from FIA. They are keeping all the F1 fans interested in the development game and the sport in general through one of the most lopsided seasons.

Source: http://www.omnicorse.it/magazine/637...er-lo-sviluppo

[Hatari]

More claims from Honda claiming they are 25BHp ahead of Renualt. Any one have speed trap data from Spa?
Honda were well behind Renault im sure.

I wonder if this claim refers to only the ICE.

[anachronix]

Seriously, not trying to mean any offence. Mclarens going through the field at the start and then fall back looks a bit like this Smart drag race

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1iJJZfB7i0

Originally Posted by jfxavier

Look at the way the McLarens go through the field at the race start.
Once the ERS is active, they start falling back.
I guess if you are a McLaren fan, all is not lost.

https://vid.me/5gep