2012 Japanese GP - Suzuka

[raymondu999]

Yeesh guys. Some think it's Alonso, some think it's Raikkonen. That's life. Just accept that and move on.

[Nando]

Some news in, apparently Hamilton had a defect on his rear suspension.

"I know my car very well, so it's very rare that I get it wrong. And if I do it's only a little bit and I can still manage it.

"But this was the worst it has ever been set up, and I was really shocked that I had done that.

"I hoped it wasn't my fault, but fortunately the guys did a lot of analysis after the race and found our that we had a failure on part of the rear suspension, so that's comforting."

When quizzed on the exact nature of the problem, Hamilton added: "It's not a suspension failure, because I could still drive with it.

"There was just a part that helps the balance and when you set it up it should react in one way but it didn't do that.

"I'm happy that we found something, so it won't be a problem for this weekend."

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/103277

[GrizzleBoy]

Hmm, so when he made the statement about feeling a thud around lap 20 and the car started turning properly all of a sudden.

Probably means that same problem was also present in qualifying.

[raymondu999]

His pace was good second half of second stint, but to memory, wasn't it back to subpar in the last stint? What damper issue would clear itself before going back though?

Perhaps they have some trick suspension items? I remember around Canada they were talking of some antidive/antisquat in their suspension

[beelsebob]

So yet another mechanical issue costing Hamilton points... Based on the fact that he's usually faster than Button, without mechanical failure, you would expect he might have got 2nd or 3rd here, so it cost him ~5-8 points. That's 145-160 points lost to him this season now. Seems pretty constant, for every point he scores, something costs him a second.

[ParanoiD]

i did not buy the defect-suspension story. He got his pace back during the races and what made the defect suspension back to be functioning again. certain fuel load? certain level of tyre grip?

[ajdavison2]

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/ ... 13902.html

Explanation from Johnathon neale about what apparantley caused Hamilton's lack of pace.

[GrizzleBoy]

“At around lap 21 Lewis felt what he thought was a mechanical balance change with the car,” said Neale. “Fortunately that was probably an aerodynamic balance change as a result of debris somewhere - probably pick-up of rubber debris, either on the front wing or around the front floor somewhere.

“He ran four laps with a car that had a very forward balance, which made it very difficult to control, and then it cleared. So whatever was on the car let go and Lewis came on the radio and said it felt like the car had come to life and he could drive properly again.”

Not buying that for some reason.

What was the excuse for the suddenly inability to properly feel the car in order to set it up on saturday?

[Ral]

He had a part of the rear suspension failing on Friday, leading to different balance, leading to him and his engineer choosing a setup to compensate for that balance which left the car comparatively slow. The suspected bit of rubber happened independently of that.

Essentially what they're saying, is that he chose a sub-optimal setup due to a suspension issue which left an imbalance once the suspension was fixed before the race. He then had an aditional bit of misfortune in the race with debris somewhere on the car which then worked itself loose and once that had gone, he was back to the "normal" car but with the imbalance.

And he drove it around at the same pace as Button was driving his properly set up car, despite the setup. Although they didn't say that bit out loud

[turbof1]

I can't blame him now anymore for leaving McLaren. I mean Mercedes doesn't have the fastest car at the moment, but the crew barely made any mistakes this year.Yeah the car had some issues with the gearbox, but one should not forget it's the first year Mercedes are running carbon fibre gearboxes. They should be more reliable next year.
McLaren should have won this year with ease, in both the WDC as the WCC. Instead they throw it away at failed pitstops, wrong set ups and glitches they should have noticed. And those mistakes are very persistent! That's not what you expect from such a team. Not at all.

[raymondu999]

I'm sure if Ciro were between us he could give us a better link with more references about structure, mictrostructure, tribology and all that stuff. However, I was happy enough with that search result.

So I brought the question upon a certain esteemed colleague of ours, who shall remain nameless

Well, as I told you, wisdom points to say "I don't know" when you don't know. I have no idea.

Grip depends on surface roughness more than on the age of pavement, although age comes in a close second place. Age effect depends on hardness of aggregates (rocks). So, I have no idea.

There is a simple test to measure skid resistance of asphalt, unless we can find those test numbers (that you run as a matter of routine when resurfacing a race track) then that question is unanswerable.

Of course, you could find before/after pictures to answer "generally" (which means you are speculating and your answer is worth little). If you see the same texture, then more grip. If the texture is more closed (smaller stones), is anybodies guess. If the texture is more open (bigger pores/larger stones) then definitely, more grip.

Usually you are careful not to change texture as more grip means more tyre wear. Nowadays this is a balance that is bringing white hairs to many team tyre expert's heads.

A part of the larger grip of new asphalt comes from the asphaltenes/maltenes issue: asphaltenes are long polymers, maltenes are shorter. UV radiation (sun light) breaks asphaltenes in asphalt and convert them into maltenes. Asphaltenes are stickier, so older asphalt offers you less grip.

Dust also embeds itself into asphalt diminishing grip (if dust comes from clay, but you could have sand dust in dry/cold places that would increase grip).

However the largest effect on grip, after the breakup of asphalt through sunlight damage, comes from a smoother surface (this could be more important than anything else): the less bumps and jumps you have, the larger grip you have (and much better acceleration) because the suspension is not working. Have you seen how the wheels move on Korea's kerbs? That.