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Raikkonen his own man 14:21
Lotus could use longer wheelbase at Monza but no passive DRS 14:21
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Raikkonen his own man
Think of Raikkonen and you think of someone who has few words but sticks to the point.. It appears this trait of Raikkonen followed him during his two year spell in WRC as well.
WRC leader, Sebastien Ogier, said while they were teammates Raikkonen never said much, always surrounded himself with friends to ‘shield’ him from everyone else and always left mandatory events as soon as they finished. This seem to have ruffled the feathers of the Frenchman
Ogier would have liked him to be more open and ask for advice as he felt he had more experience and could help the Fin. “I had no problem with it [Raikkonen being quiet] however I noticed that he never asked for any advice. Yes, I am much younger but in terms of Rally I had more experience but he has put no value in it and always disappeared right after the mandatory sessions with the crew.”
No problem eh? Sounds like it did gripe Ogier but as we know, Raikkonen ‘know what he is doing’. You would not expect him to ask for advice would you? Should he have gone to Red Bull it would have been interesting to see how Horner (man of 10,000 words) and Raikkonen would have got on 🙂
Lotus could use longer wheelbase at Monza but no passive DRS
As reported by TJ13 Lotus did not take their longer wheelbase to Spa although it was planned for a debut there. According to Alan Permane there is a high likelihood that Lotus will use their longer wheelbase in Monza but it still needs some evaluation.
“This is [longer wheelbase] definitely something that we’re looking at closely based on the lessons learned this season and it could be that a configuration with a longer wheelbase will be used at Monza…”
Lotus will also being a Monza specific rear wing but won’t run passive DRS due to it not giving much additional advantage. “Monza is just such a circuit on which passive DRS would offer no great advantage because the rear wing is already extremely flat therefore the difference is not so large by taking it off. For the same reason the effect of the DRS is also not as significant as elsewhere.”
One has to wonder why it is taking so long to introduce this longer wheelbase. TJ13 readers will recall Permane saying they have no big new developments coming for the rest of the season yet we are now seeing them working on the longer wheelbase which is pretty big. Is Lotus trying to show Raikkonen they can keep on developing throughout the season?
“One has to wonder why it is taking so long to introduce this longer wheelbase.”
Autosport answered that question several days ago. It took longer than anticipated to get the new chassis crash tested and component reliability proofing.
That’s autosport’s answer to the question. That doesn’t mean there isn’t more to answer or a different answer.
You’re trying too hard, cav.
As it was Gerard Lopez that gave Autosport the reason, I’m assuming that Lopez might just know what the reason for the delay was.
And he couldn’t have had any PR-related reasons for doing so?
But why did it take longer and Permane said they have no more major developments coming and then Lotus said they have this longer wheelbase?
Add to this, what about next year’s car then. Is there struggling with the new wheelbase putting pressure on building next year’s car and if so, will they be competitive next year?
Maybe the delay is that the longer wheel base corresponds almost directly to next year and they need to ensure that introducing it, will not harm Kimi’s feel for the car to a degree that it hurts his chances in the final fly away races as once it’s in its gotta stay in, as I should think things are already being assembled together for the bulk freight movement to the more distant venues. Therefore they need to make sure they have enough stock to ship the longer chassis out to all races, if it doesn’t work they would be half screwed because if some stuff is already on a container ship its going to be hard to get the old spec out in time to get there.
Surely its all sent air freight.
Would having the longer wheelbase car have helped them at Spa? That said I’m surprised no other teams have done this… is it related to a balance shift from the reintroduction of 2012 tyres? Or to be more effective on the tyres?
Happy birthday to Luca di Montezemolo
And the “Order of the Brown Nose” goes to…….
Jean Todt? 😉
Can we all stuff the cav bashing now? He might be your average rabid Ferrari fan but he’s entitled to his opinion as everyone of us. Argue with facts, not personal insults, please…
That’s good, coming from you…! 😉