That's why Red Bull performed so poorly in Singapore. Because of the bumpy track, all teams were required to increase their ride heights and this affected RB disproportionally since they usually are able to run such a low car.
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2023 Formula 1 Season thread
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As for Daniel, it should be noted that when Lawson took over, the Alpha Tauri had received a raft of updates that significantly improved the car's performance compared to earlier in the season. Daniel also has his own unique style that he likes to drive (and that really did not mesh with how the McLaren drove) and he and Alpha Tauri have been working to adjust the car and Daniel's driving style to mesh better.
Red Bull put Daniel in that car because of his marketability and he is going to keep that drive (be it at Alpha or Red Bull) because of that marketability. Lawson going to Red Bull is just going to destroy him as it did Gasly and Albon because of the overwhelming pressure. So the best option for Red Bull, Alpha Tauri, Daniel and Liam is Daniel goes to Red Bull and Liam goes to Alpha.
Red Bull put Daniel in that car because of his marketability and he is going to keep that drive (be it at Alpha or Red Bull) because of that marketability. Lawson going to Red Bull is just going to destroy him as it did Gasly and Albon because of the overwhelming pressure. So the best option for Red Bull, Alpha Tauri, Daniel and Liam is Daniel goes to Red Bull and Liam goes to Alpha.
Lawson did step into a car he’d never driven before though, not even test miles and did a decent job. At this point I’d take the gamble with the cheaper, younger talent than one that has been struggling mentally and fighting to find his groove again. I like Ricciardo as a bloke, but he’s been given a lifeline due to being a likeable and popular character rather than deserving of a third chance. Many talented drivers have had brief stints in F1 due to not performing in shorter periods of time and shown their skills in other categories instead.
COTA is very bumpy as well though. I'd say the RB19 did well given the Regen Issues. Still feel the Sprint Rules are not helpful toward competition at all. I guess Mercedes should have set a higher ride height and finished further back in both races. Parc Ferme should go into effect AFTER the Sprint.
The setup you're referring to is rake, where the front of the car is lower than the rear of the car.
The RB19 is low rake, although the RB18 had a pretty aggressive rake for a ground effect car. The RB18 sealed the sides of the floor by creating vortices in the turning vanes in front of the sidepod. This provided a barrier to the airflow under the car, not allowing it to escape. The higher rake means that the airflow that goes under the front of the car has to fill a greater area as it travels backwards along the car, thus creating downforce as it does it. Higher speed, less air than atmospheric pressure is great for downforce.
The upside to this is the car is designed for a naturally high ride height, so copes with bumps well. The drawback of that is that the you need the vortices to create that barrier. If you lose them, or are less effective, the air will escape out the side of the floor. This makes the car less predictable. This also helped the porpoising issue that the teams had to work through. Audi used a similar technique on their R18 LMP1 when the car suffered from this.
The RB19 runs a less aggressive rake, relying less on the aerodynamic sealing of the floor. This makes the car more predictable. However, the down side is the car needs to be raised to cope with the bumps - which we saw at Singapore and Austin. The raising of the car makes the floor less effective than it was before.
He did do a great job and I wonder if that was in part because having no experience with the car, he was able to adapt to it's peculiarities better than Daniel has (or Yuki, for that matter, even though he has had years to do so) since he had no "baggage" with him and just adapted to what he was feeling in the simulator and test sessions.
I honestly am not sure that Daniel "lost his groove", but just that the McLaren was (and still remains to some extent) a very difficult car to drive. It is a very "knife edge" car and handles almost opposite to what Daniel was used to in the Red Bull and what his driving style evolved into while there. He tried to just manhandle the McLaren to his driving style, which never worked, nor does it seem that he was able to come to terms with adjusting his style to suit the car.
Norris is still finding the car difficult to drive to maximum effect today even with years in the seat and it is more the chassis updates this year helping to tame some of that "edginess" that has contributed to he and Piastri being able to get more out of the car in the races since the major updates introduced at Austria.
I expect that Daniel is still "learning" how the Alpha Tauri handles and how he can tailor his driving style and the engineers can tailor the chassis setup to try and find a happy medium.
I just don't think Daniel has been given enough time to show what he can do. He has only had three races and a sprint and he's either outqualified or been close to Yuki in all of those. You can argue if anyone should be tossed, it should be Yuki, but he brings in so much Honda money and both RBR and AT need Honda's full technical support though the 2025 season that his seat is untouchable.
I cringe everytime I hear him.
What I find more worrying, is that of the 4 cars checked for excessive wear, there was a 50% failure, 2 out of 4..
This means one of 2 things...
1: The cars in question were never in compliance with the rules when the race started or
2: The track itself resulted in the cars becoming non compliant...
So it is the duty of the 2 teams, Mercedes/Ferrari to appeal, in order to test the idea of which of 1 or 2 is indeed correct, one cannot assume that it was set up that caused the problem, nor can one assume it was the track...
One can only really become more confident with repeated testing of all 20 cars, and the wood planks, and if all cars were in compliance or out of compliance, given that Ferrari were within less than 1% out of compliance, would indicate that set up might not be the cause in chief of the problem of excessive wooden plank wear...
If you have a high failure rate, there is a system in place, it should almost be mandatory that teams that are D/Qed appeal such, and that they pay a deposit, and if found to be in compliance, this money is refunded back...
By not appealing the DQ, teams either accept that they made a mistake in set up, or they accept that cheating is now acceptable risk, what about a 3rd party appealing? All 10 teams should have the right to appeal any DQ. How do you know if your car is at risk if not confirmed? The system for checking ground effect compliance is a wooden plank/s that are removed from the car and replaced, so how can the FIA not confirm all planks are legal?? This should not take more than 1 or 2 days at most..
Questions remain over is the RB of Max in or out of compliance? The sport should be transparent enough with this sort of system, is the car on the grid legal? Why not test all planks??
After all, the points awarded for each event only become legal at the end of the season, in which there is enough time for appeal processes to occur.. Mercedes failed to use this process in 2021, which is a shame, of course RB cannot appeal a win, but for some bizarre reasons, Mercedes failed to appeal, and now questions will forever tarnish the sport..
Love or hate the man, Massa is doing the sport a favour, he is standing up for justice and asking a fair question, "Is what happened that year fair?" You may or may not agree with his timing, or his motives, that is a your problem, he is asking and taking the steps to confirm once and for all, in a fair way, who is the rightful champion?
Everyone and their dog harps on about theft occurring in or around the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix of 2021.. Max is not the rightful champion, Mercedes/Toto/Lewis chose not to appeal, as is their right, so they confirmed Max is the rightful champion...
That does not make it right, if there is some issue that makes it in dispute, then use the process to confirm, Mercedes/Ferrari have chosen not to appeal the DQ, and this is wrong, how can the engineers know or trust now their own decisions...
This now leads to ambiguity in design, did we do something wrong, or was the track damaged? How can anyone answer that question?? The only way is through testing of all planks, if every team had at least 1 plank fail, then you can argue track is the issue, not set up.. but if only 2 cars, 2 teams.. setup the problem?? Not sure..
Appealing is not about emotion, it is about getting to the truth, which is it, set up or track ???
This means one of 2 things...
1: The cars in question were never in compliance with the rules when the race started or
2: The track itself resulted in the cars becoming non compliant...
So it is the duty of the 2 teams, Mercedes/Ferrari to appeal, in order to test the idea of which of 1 or 2 is indeed correct, one cannot assume that it was set up that caused the problem, nor can one assume it was the track...
One can only really become more confident with repeated testing of all 20 cars, and the wood planks, and if all cars were in compliance or out of compliance, given that Ferrari were within less than 1% out of compliance, would indicate that set up might not be the cause in chief of the problem of excessive wooden plank wear...
If you have a high failure rate, there is a system in place, it should almost be mandatory that teams that are D/Qed appeal such, and that they pay a deposit, and if found to be in compliance, this money is refunded back...
By not appealing the DQ, teams either accept that they made a mistake in set up, or they accept that cheating is now acceptable risk, what about a 3rd party appealing? All 10 teams should have the right to appeal any DQ. How do you know if your car is at risk if not confirmed? The system for checking ground effect compliance is a wooden plank/s that are removed from the car and replaced, so how can the FIA not confirm all planks are legal?? This should not take more than 1 or 2 days at most..
Questions remain over is the RB of Max in or out of compliance? The sport should be transparent enough with this sort of system, is the car on the grid legal? Why not test all planks??
After all, the points awarded for each event only become legal at the end of the season, in which there is enough time for appeal processes to occur.. Mercedes failed to use this process in 2021, which is a shame, of course RB cannot appeal a win, but for some bizarre reasons, Mercedes failed to appeal, and now questions will forever tarnish the sport..
Love or hate the man, Massa is doing the sport a favour, he is standing up for justice and asking a fair question, "Is what happened that year fair?" You may or may not agree with his timing, or his motives, that is a your problem, he is asking and taking the steps to confirm once and for all, in a fair way, who is the rightful champion?
Everyone and their dog harps on about theft occurring in or around the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix of 2021.. Max is not the rightful champion, Mercedes/Toto/Lewis chose not to appeal, as is their right, so they confirmed Max is the rightful champion...
That does not make it right, if there is some issue that makes it in dispute, then use the process to confirm, Mercedes/Ferrari have chosen not to appeal the DQ, and this is wrong, how can the engineers know or trust now their own decisions...
This now leads to ambiguity in design, did we do something wrong, or was the track damaged? How can anyone answer that question?? The only way is through testing of all planks, if every team had at least 1 plank fail, then you can argue track is the issue, not set up.. but if only 2 cars, 2 teams.. setup the problem?? Not sure..
Appealing is not about emotion, it is about getting to the truth, which is it, set up or track ???
It doesn’t matter. The cars were in breach of the rules. If you are outside of the limits, you are outside.
Why were the cars non compliant with regulations?? The why is most important..
Because when the skid planks of LeClerc and Hamilton were measured after the race, they were out of tolerance. The plank is supposed to be 10mm when new with a +\- 0.2mm tolerance, but both cars measured just 9mm.
They were outside of the ruling and one could argue 1mm is a very small window, but rules are rules and every other car was compliant.
One can assume the engineers did not calculate the downforce effect correctly and how far the back of the car would go down. It may have been absolutely fine at other circuits but the COTA is notoriously bumpy. A simple but costly mistake.
One car per team is tested due to time constraints apparently. Had Russell been found to have an illegal skid plank, Lewis would have been able to keep his second place, but the FIA scrutineers chose Lewis to check at this race, same with carlos and Charles.
Time constraints? What? It takes 12 hours to check 1 square meter of wood? Please, this is the FIA, they can afford to hire a couple of PHD's to do the tests.. Nope, there is no excuse for not testing every plank on or before 12:00 on Wednesday..Why has Merc not lodged an appeal?
I think some people here think that the car setup was illegal, and the teams did something they knew was illegal. In reality the cars were setup in a legal way. It's not like they used suspension parameters which themselves were illegal.
The planks received excessive wear this weekend for multiple reasons. Firstly because they had an additional sprint race - so the cars did more mileage in race conditions than normal. But also because of additional bumps at COTA this year from the shifting ground underneath the tarmac. This caused the cars to ground out more (which is perfectly legal) and wear down the plank (this bit not being legal). We've seen a lot less plank wear issues in the past because the cars ride height hasn't been as low and the circuits have gotten smoother and flatter. Now the cars are doing more miles, at a lower ride height, and COTA was bumpier than expected. Mercedes and Ferrari got the maths wrong.
Remember that the whole point in the plank is to stop the active ride height at speed from being too low. That's why the car is legal when its sitting still and setup by the team, but then not legal come the end of the race.
Also, only 4 cars were checked for plank wear, but that's normal. You don't check everything on every car, otherwise you'd be there for literal days with teams of scrutineers. This is consistent with how almost every motorsport series works - a random selection of cars is taken, and a random selection of parameters are checked on each car. Very few series do more than this and I don't know of any that do a 100% field check.
The planks received excessive wear this weekend for multiple reasons. Firstly because they had an additional sprint race - so the cars did more mileage in race conditions than normal. But also because of additional bumps at COTA this year from the shifting ground underneath the tarmac. This caused the cars to ground out more (which is perfectly legal) and wear down the plank (this bit not being legal). We've seen a lot less plank wear issues in the past because the cars ride height hasn't been as low and the circuits have gotten smoother and flatter. Now the cars are doing more miles, at a lower ride height, and COTA was bumpier than expected. Mercedes and Ferrari got the maths wrong.
Remember that the whole point in the plank is to stop the active ride height at speed from being too low. That's why the car is legal when its sitting still and setup by the team, but then not legal come the end of the race.
Also, only 4 cars were checked for plank wear, but that's normal. You don't check everything on every car, otherwise you'd be there for literal days with teams of scrutineers. This is consistent with how almost every motorsport series works - a random selection of cars is taken, and a random selection of parameters are checked on each car. Very few series do more than this and I don't know of any that do a 100% field check.
It is in a way because a race winner could also have a car that contravenes the rules also, but the team of scrutineers are checking many things on cars across the grid and certain components are picked as a sample rather than a collective. There are only so many hours after a race before teams pack up and move on to the next race or back to the UK/Other parts of Europe. It was tough on Lewis and Charles, but is what it is I suppose.Yes, but this is arguably wrong
According to the F1 website it was only Max, Lewis, Lando and Charles that had their cars inspected. I read this as the podium and pole-sitter, but could be wrong in how the cars are selected. The rest of the grid were never checked. So Carlos may have had a non-compliant car too yet still inherited third.
When 4 cars wooden planks are checked, and 2 cars from 2 teams fail, all planks from all cars should be inspected, this could be done within 2 days, the planks are not reused, they are scrapped, and replaced... More to the issue, the appeal of the DQ would confirm if the plank was 1- a setup failure, or 2-a track not in compliance with the regulations, to assume point 1-car set up failure, is incorrect.. How can the teams set up the car if they have no idea why the car failed inspection.. It failed, yes, but why?? The FIA cannot disqualify a car just cause it failed inspection, that is insanity.. It makes no sense, how can they justify, what if it was the track? 2 cars failed, when last did 2 cars, 2 teams fail the plank post race inspection? That is my point..The FIA had no right to DQ without rightful justification...
Maybe the rules have changed then, I haven't studied them for a long time to be honest but makes sense as they have acquired the most points, shown the best performance etc. It does seem to be a bit of a grey area when only certain cars are checked though I agree.
You're both right. They're allowed to select whatever cars they want. It doesn't have to be the top cars. But it does tend to only be 4-5.
Massa has a right to be aggrieved, but I can't see any way for that to be resolved to his satisfaction really. If Alonso was DQ'ed from that, then that's unfair on him because he had no idea what was going on with Piquet, and it simply hands more points to Hamilton. Declaring the race null and void is the only option that suits Massa, as it wipes out the points Hamilton won in that race, but then that's unfair on Hamilton because he did nothing wrong in that race either. It's crap, but that's just how it is. Hamilton got lucky. Sometimes you need that bit of luck. But ultimately, the drivers can only deal with the situation they're in. You can't just demand things changed just to suit you. I think Massa should been entitled to some form of compensation, but that's about it really. Perhaps he needs to sue Renault and Flavio Briatore. As for 2021; the only 'fair' outcome (in that it affects all drivers equally) would be to declare the AD GP results null and void. But then Max still wins the DWC because of more races won (9 to 8). Hamilton and his fans screaming about AD 2021 is just like Massa moaning about Singapore 2008. There's no point; life is sometimes crap, but you need to get over it.
As far as I am concerned, Massi, he left it too late to do anything, but he has rights, and he is exercising his rights, where I agree with it or not is no matter to anyone but me...
2021- Lewis lost the title in Baku, along with a duff driver in Bottas, had Lewis finished 6th or better, or or Bottas 2nd in Spain, Bahrain, Portugal, 3 races Lewis won, and Max finished 2nd in, either option, Lewis would have been World Drivers Champ, but no, his duff driving in Baku cost him, like his silly accident in China in 2007, cost him a title...
Form1 titles are won/lost as a result of a season of races, in 2007, Lewis was just that not as great as the winner, who cares who it was, so not important...Same as in 2021, Lewis for whatever reason, make a mistake and that cost him, Max was just 1% better over the whole season...
Maybe we should go back to counting only the top 12 events of each season, each driver nominates his best 12 results... So the idea Lewis was a victim of crime in Abu Dhabi is silly, there was no case opened at the local fuzz.. Toto had a wobble, forgot about his duff driver in the 2nd car in the garage, and about Lewis and his mistake in Baku.. Lewis blamed a button..really, like all half wit carpenters, blames the tool, the only faulty tool on that day was sitting in car marked 44...
2021- Lewis lost the title in Baku, along with a duff driver in Bottas, had Lewis finished 6th or better, or or Bottas 2nd in Spain, Bahrain, Portugal, 3 races Lewis won, and Max finished 2nd in, either option, Lewis would have been World Drivers Champ, but no, his duff driving in Baku cost him, like his silly accident in China in 2007, cost him a title...
Form1 titles are won/lost as a result of a season of races, in 2007, Lewis was just that not as great as the winner, who cares who it was, so not important...Same as in 2021, Lewis for whatever reason, make a mistake and that cost him, Max was just 1% better over the whole season...
Maybe we should go back to counting only the top 12 events of each season, each driver nominates his best 12 results... So the idea Lewis was a victim of crime in Abu Dhabi is silly, there was no case opened at the local fuzz.. Toto had a wobble, forgot about his duff driver in the 2nd car in the garage, and about Lewis and his mistake in Baku.. Lewis blamed a button..really, like all half wit carpenters, blames the tool, the only faulty tool on that day was sitting in car marked 44...
What if what if what if. Bottas isn't a 'duff' driver, btw. Pretty good journeyman/number 2. Mercedes had the best car, but Max's talent won over. Pointless looking at 'what ifs'; move on. It's done. Max won the title in 2021, and that's that.