Brought to you by TheJudge13 contributor Mattpt55
Ambient 26° Track 41° Humidity 70% Wind 1.5 m/s
Prelude
AS the race start approached, an ominous thick black cloud appeared on the horizon, threatening all manner of chaos and disarray, suggesting a wide variety of metaphors. EU investigation, the disintegration of the Red Bull and Renault partnership, even the impolitic remarks by FIA president Jean Todt this weekend. Je suis Paris and Nous sommes Paris but JT seems to have lost track of that particular fact in an effort to protect his precious road safety campaign publicity, much to his and the FIA’s discredit.
Summary
Well, well in an utterly shocking result, both McLaren-Honda’s actually finished the race. As a result of beating his teammate, Button was in position to be asked how he felt about the fact that this week’s grid featured both grid girls AND grid boys, brainchild apparently of Mrs. E herself. Way to go F1 journos!
Also on display yet again was the fairly tragic TV direction as the 10 laps Lewis was in DRS of Rosberg and challenging for the lead of the race featured almost not at all on the telly. It was so bad that SKY suggested if you had their coverage you could switch over to their app and watch the onboards. And it was quite a challenge by Lewis, but at the end of the day Nico had all the answers and Mercedes more strategy questions as once again the tightrope between being fair and controlling the outcome has come under the microscope.
Other entertainments include Massa’s tyre warmers mistaking his race tyres for a side of beef at a churrascaria, as they were measured at a temperature of 137°C, well over the FIA mandated limit. A visit to the stewards is still pending. Also apparent at the penultimate race is the shape of the WCC for the year: Mercedes, Ferrari, and a Williams seems to be the order of the year. Bottas hopped up 3 positions at the start and both Vettel and Raikkonen finished where they started, allowing Williams to confirm 3rd in the WCC and slightly further down the grid Hulkenberg pulled off a P6 that confirmed Force India for P5.
Lotus stayed ahead of Toro Rosso as Grosjean kept it ahead of Verstappen, but yet again young Max got the overtake of the race with his lap 32 overtake on Perez through T1-T2. Not the same for his teammate, as Sainz couldn’t make the start and after getting out the pits half a lap down, immediately ground to a halt making it more than half a dozen non-finishes for the rookie. Maldonado worked hard to stay out of the points again this weekend and if you had him down for contact in this race you should go collect your winnings.
Ferrari did mount a strategic challenge to Mercedes which flipped the whole race from a 2 stop to a 3 stop, but Mercedes was never really threatened. Unfortunately, the slight chance of a race at the end for P1 was ruined when Hamilton flat spotted his tyres with a big lockup getting past Grosjean, ending the race at the top on lap 57. Actually, that was pretty much where they could’ve stopped the whole race, as nothing of note, save Verstappen getting by Maldonado lap 68 happened from that point on. No doubt this race will be rated bring in extremis, but that flash in the middle is what all race fans are holding their breath for. Sadly, it doesn’t look at the moment like the regulation changes looming in 2017 will do much to change the lack of overtaking and difficulty following that currently plagues F1.
In the meantime, hats off to Nico Rosberg for a well run race that nailed first loser in the Driver’s championship (lightheartedness aside, still quite a thing to do) and good luck solving F1’s problems in the comments. Remember to play nice or Toto Wolff will force you to have endless meetings with your teammate about the new rules of engagement.
Congrats Renault! Really showing your stuff out there!
New PU ICE looks like it’s a beast.
Lol.
They probably should’ve sat it out of qualifying and sun bathed it next to Alonso.
Congratulations stewards. Really showed your stuff there with post race disqualification of Massa.
Not that too much less should be expected of a person from a country that tries to pretend motor racing does not exist, a woman looking for her 5 minutes of fame and a pretty easy to forget ex F1 driver….
Once again the difficulties of following another car makes passing much more difficult than it should be for a good show. Just regulate the size of the diffusers and the wake they produce. Problem solved.
They need to eliminate all the DRS crap and diffusers and put on skinny tires and smaller breaks if we want to see real men compete for a driver’s championship. They have been trying to regulate the design of the cars for 20 years to make it easier to pass and it has been a complete failure.
I’m surprised Hamilton didn’t have another hissy fit like he did post qualifying.
Screw the diffusers and DRS! They need to put on skinny tires and smaller brakes so we can see men with real balls compete for a driver’s title. Twenty years of regulating the design of the cars to create easier passing has done nothing for the sport.
I’m glad Hamilton didn’t have a hissy fit like he did after qualifying for the group photo. I guess he found out it wasn’t Nico who took him off the road in Monaco last week.
I’m for 6″ wide tires and a 6″ fully compressed ride height. And 6′ drivers. The 6-6-6 formula…oh NOOOOOOOO, the Sigh Of The BEAST!!!!!1`11111!!11!!!!!!
’66 was a very exciting year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUv3L9c-wSA
Another fan with no clue how formula 1 cars work.
Youll fit in nicely here. Welcome.
True; what few know is the size is regulated and the bad airflow behind F1 cars isn’t just due to the diffusers.
Has anybody seen the 1st race of Formula E? Prost had pretty much lost his rear wing and was as fast as before. From what I know those eDrives produce a heckuva lot of torque, so I’d say one doesn’t “need” so much rear aero as F1 to keep the wheels from spinning… Then the question of the conspiracy theorist may be: wouldn’t make sense when designing the aero of a car to make the rear air as turbulent as you can so that nobody can get close to you? I know I would if ever possible.
Bad/dirty airflow comes mainly from aeroparts like front/rear wing. The diffuser isn’t a real influence on this. If they want to eliminate this F1 should go back to ground effect and minimum wing (wings create drag and dirty air)
Should be possible but the drag will slow your own car as well, so they will probably drive around you 😉
In the UK, BBC showed some archive footage of the 1982 Austrian GP where de Angelis won from Rosberg by less than half a car length in wing cars looking very clean – not 50+ aero-appendages tacked on the front/side etc. So much a better look than the current 10 element front wing we have now. And they could follow each other.
That might be because their understanding of aero was relatively rudimentary back then, so the wings they did use weren’t as effective and didn’t create the same kind of wash new generations of wings do? I don’t know how much the teams would like having to effectively relegate years and years of work to the recycling bin because of a change in regs like that.
@sanne
Designers of current generation cars design them to be difficult to follow. They’ve been doing this for a while.
Did anyone see where Ericsson got to from the get go? Talked positive on the grid to Brundle then went rapidly backwards. Never rated comment from Sky so clearly they had no clue either….he’s a waste of space for Sauber.
Ericsson had an happy encounter with Pastor Maldonado and that guaranteed he did not come close to a points finishing position. Still agree with the waste of space comment though, unfortunately Monisha is so happy with his money that hse has already given him the seat for next year… at this rate Sauber is doomed to battle with Manor in 2016 (especially when you consider Dave Ryan is coming to Manor)
I missed seeing the grid boys; couldn’t not look at those Brazilian girls!
So anytime Red Bull says something about Renault that cannot be interpreted as “renault are the greatest thing in the history of F1” – we get 2-3 articles on TJ13 about how the “delusional’ red bull leadership should stop saying naughty things because renault is perfect.
Then renault deliver their first engine upgrade of 2015 in the 2nd to last race of the season – the new ICE unit is 20hp down on the old one. NOT. A. PEEP.
So, my question is: is TJ13 owned be Renault? I think a little transparency is due.
http://thejudge13.com/2015/11/13/f1-forensics-is-it-worth-it-for-rb-to-upgrade-kvyats-ice/ Possibly don’t skip all the articles. 😉
I guess the title threw me off 🙂