Lewis Hamilton has won the second Grand Prix of 2014 by dominating the Malaysian Grand Prix. His Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg ran the entire race in second place, fending off Sebastian Vettel who completes the podium.
myurr wrote:
That point you're ignoring is that people point to Red Bull's straight line speed as being indicative of Renault's power deficit, but Torro Rosso are as fast as Mercedes in a straight line and Red Bull have always preferred downforce over straight line speed. Vettel got no worse a launch than Alonso, and Ferrari have historically had a fast starting car, so perhaps the Ferrari engine is an absolute dog as well?
More often than not the Mercedes were matching Red Bull in S2 which was supposed to play to Red Bulls strengths and be pretty neutral in regards to engine power. That is despite Red Bull clearly running more drag and therefore downforce. That Mercedes is a damn fine chassis with a very very good aero package. I have no doubt they'd be right up there with Red Bull even with engine parity.
as people mentioned before, max power output is not the only thing that will affect the top speed, if you have nice and steady power delivery at the corner exit, it will compliment good chassis and will make the car drive ok, but if you have erratic power output during exit, driver will not have the confidence to go on the gas as early and as hard as mercedes factory drivers can, and thus make the car look slow even if it was in low downforce/drag setup
my guess is that RB, being low on IC engine hp, may be running sort of a compromise between low downforce/drag aero and their "normal" setup (that would be fastest during S2), making the car look "average", this gives the car some speed on the straight, to have the ability to maybe do an overtake or defend easier, but compromises the their usual strengths - cornering and doesn't take full advantage of the downforce they might have, so they might as well have the best aero and chassis, but they simply cannot utilize it to the full extent because the low engine power and PU power delivery smoothness doesn't allow it yet - so, yes, the PU is very important
lets wait for them to stop complain about low power of the renault engine and then see what they will complain about next, my guess - they won't, the car will begin to fly
That's the thing, it's all speculation based on personal intuition rather than anything hard and fast. I believe that they'll catch Mercedes but that they'll not have any significant aero advantage, whereas others believe differently and resort to saying it's so blindingly obvious they don't have to justify their opinion. There is nothing more than subjective evidence to go on at the moment so it's all speculation and opinion.
The traction limit when accelerating in a straight line at the race start seems to be somewhere between 140 and 150km/h for the Ferrari when you look at this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7BdZ84dupY ). But we don't know to what extent the MGUK was used at this point or if Ferrari has a special engine map for the start.
Dear FIA, if you read this, please pm me for a redesign of the Technical Regulations to avoid finger nose shapes for 2016! :-)
iotar__ wrote:Magn-Raik was run of the mill incident, I remember dozen of those in 2012-2013 with no reaction at all ...
I share your opinion, find it strange that this hasn't been discussed on the forum, or I missed it. Raik is moaning in every press that mag 'destroyed' their race. I saw it differently.
iotar__ wrote:Magn-Raik was run of the mill incident, I remember dozen of those in 2012-2013 with no reaction at all ...
I share your opinion, find it strange that this hasn't been discussed on the forum, or I missed it. Raik is moaning in every press that mag 'destroyed' their race. I saw it differently.
You "see it" different than the very person who got punished for the accident, and fully took the blame for it. Maybe you arent seeing it that well? Just a thought.
Blanchimont wrote:The traction limit when accelerating in a straight line at the race start seems to be somewhere between 140 and 150km/h for the Ferrari when you look at this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7BdZ84dupY ). But we don't know to what extent the MGUK was used at this point or if Ferrari has a special engine map for the start.
There is a particular noise when he is in 2nd gear in the 140-150kph range. Interestingly, he stopped using second gear for the most of the track.
But how many other drivers could drive the way Alonso does, if you just looked at Fernandos hands you couldn't tell if he was driving an F1 car or sawing a bit of wood. He has an extremely high ability to cope with a car which is on the ragged edge.
Blanchimont wrote:The traction limit when accelerating in a straight line at the race start seems to be somewhere between 140 and 150km/h for the Ferrari when you look at this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7BdZ84dupY ). But we don't know to what extent the MGUK was used at this point or if Ferrari has a special engine map for the start.
There is a particular noise when he is in 2nd gear in the 140-150kph range. Interestingly, he stopped using second gear for the most of the track.
I think there is not much in this sound...MGU-K sets in too strong at 100kph and causes heavy wheelspin as Alonso is already on full throttle. It is the same case like Magnussen in Australia when he lost the rear.
Maybe Ferrari has to work on that, as they had no real start values from Australia as their MGU-K did not set in there?
iotar__ wrote:Magn-Raik was run of the mill incident, I remember dozen of those in 2012-2013 with no reaction at all ...
I share your opinion, find it strange that this hasn't been discussed on the forum, or I missed it. Raik is moaning in every press that mag 'destroyed' their race. I saw it differently.
You "see it" different than the very person who got punished for the accident, and fully took the blame for it. Maybe you arent seeing it that well? Just a thought.
Indeed I do. I was also quite amazed that Kevin took the blame, suprisingly humble in my opinion. Kevin might have made a judgement error, but so did Kimi. Kimi made an error, corrected for it without judging correctly where Kevin might have been. If I remember correctly Kevin was what is considered alongside Kimi. That's a double error from Kimi. That's how I saw it, both drivers misjudging, normal racing incident, no big deal.
Even with the 24 second advantage to Vettel , the Mercs are surely hiding even more pace under their skin, and that impression comes from Lewis having to switch down the engine very early in the race, and also cruising much of the race because there was no one to compete with, whereas Rosberg based in my opinion made a mistake in the setup of the car rather than that being his pace.
SiLo wrote:Mercedes has a better engine yes, but I wouldn't say RB have a better chassis. You don't have that much pace in hand without cracking chassis as well!
Merc Clearly have the Best PU and a very good chassis, RedBull clearly have the Best Chassis and worst PU and the Chassis is what allows them to compete for podiums.
Yep, this.
By asserting RedBull's aero/chassis is the best, no one is saying that Merc's is not good. It's plain as day that Merc's is good, but I'm confident than RedBull's is better.
Hamilton stated the speed through the corners was the same for them and Red Bull. I'd say both have a very good chassis.
elMaestro wrote:Even with the 24 second advantage to Vettel , the Mercs are surely hiding even more pace under their skin, and that impression comes from Lewis having to switch down the engine very early in the race, and also cruising much of the race because there was no one to compete with, whereas Rosberg based in my opinion made a mistake in the setup of the car rather than that being his pace.
This.
It must be worrying for the other teams to know that Hamilton won by a pretty large margin over the next team (Vettel) yet was clearly not pushing for a huge amount of the race. They can spend so much time looking after the tyres when they have that much pace in hand.
Mark Hughes about Malaysia GP
It’s why aero grip equals good tyre temperature, which gives efficient harvesting, giving more electrical stored power, giving greater fuel savings, giving access to greater boost All of which is why the Mercedes W05 is currently the class of the field. Its fantastic packaging, derived from a key component innovation allows a currently unbeatable combination of downforce, low drag and horsepower.
Generally Vettel was around 0.5 seconds per lap off Hamilton’s race pace; though Hamilton’s fastest lap was 1.2s quicker, that came late in the race as Lewis enjoyed himself burning off the fuel he’d saved up to that point, a luxury not available to the Red Bull.
Through the fast, flowing middle sector the Red Bull was every bit as quick as the Mercedes despite its estimated 80bhp deficit and into the turn nine hairpin, for example, the RB10 was in a different league to anything else, Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo able to drive on a line reserved just for them, super-late turn-in and essentially making a ‘V’ of the corner, direction change completed way before the apex, enabling them to be on the power at a phase where the others – even the Merc drivers – were still trying to balance lateral load against how much throttle they could use.
SiLo wrote:It must be worrying for the other teams to know that Hamilton won by a pretty large margin over the next team (Vettel) yet was clearly not pushing for a huge amount of the race. They can spend so much time looking after the tyres when they have that much pace in hand.
It's the same as it's been for Vettel in the past where a healthy advantage ends up compounding itself. You can go a little bit easy where others are having to push, which then looks after the tyres and saves fuel, allowing you to go quicker for longer, giving you a bigger advantage.
He reckons that Merc and RBR the same speed through the corners with Merc then gaining down the straights. It's also worth pointing out that Renault themselves say that their hardware is fine and it's now down to software refinement between the systems. So that's power delivery rather than the amount of power available, although I'm sure absolute peak power will go up a little bit as they refine ERS-H.
So I'll say it again, the Renault engine now that it's up and running isn't anywhere near as bad as people have been making out and is roughly par with Ferrari's engine. Mercedes hold an advantage there but their chassis is every bit as fast as the Red Bull with the engine just giving them their current dominance ahead of them. Once Renault achieve parity RBR won't be running into the distance.
