2014 Abu Dhabi GP - Yas Marina

[Richard]

Heh guys, let me play out the end game for that line of conversation to save you the bother.

• I think driver X is better than Y
• No I think Z is better than W
• You idiot, my next neighbour's granny says Q wipes the floor with R
• You crazy fools I ain't believing that driver C don't own no one
• Yeah they all suck compared to Count Von Sauerkraut's epic 5 kph speed trap in 1872.

Regular viewers of the forum will know that driver comparison discussions on this technical forum inevitably end up with the highly prized padlock medallion. This unique award can only be earned by disciples of what we call "fanboi ying yang".

Now lets get back on topic....[/i]

[Phil]

You are right. This isn't the right place to talk about this. Could this stuff be moved to a more appropriate thread? I thought we already had one that discusses the "skillset" or "driving style" of each driver, but the only topics I could find doing a quick search are these:

Driving style and fuel use
Driver performance science
intra-team battles: why 2014 is a great year for F1

Then again, maybe we all had enough of these topics, but they still always seem to crop up, because, well, it's inevitable in sport that we follow for the sake of seeing them compete against one another. One thing I think is undisputable; most, if not every single driver that is in F1, can be considered to be among the best at what they do.

[turbof1]

The issue is that we've had too much of that in general. We aren't really supposed to be a fanbased forum, but more what our network name implies.

I don't know if I should say this in public, but I feel the urge to do so, so here you go: I personally, as a moderator but also very much as a member, would like to work on less driver-oriented content for our site next season. We always were working under the protocol of stringent car topics and a bit more lose in the race topics. With a lot of hard work we managed to get the right ethics across in the car topics, although I brace myself for the beginning of next season. I'd like to think the same methodology should be applied on race topics too. More technical/statistical orientated instead of just lose opinions.

[notsofast]

I suggest to leave the race topics as is, but lock them 24 hours after the end of the race. A discussion of something that happened in the past will inevitably evolve into unnecessary fanboy ying-yang.

[Moose]

I suggest to leave the race topics as is, but lock them 24 hours after the end of the race. A discussion of something that happened in the past will inevitably evolve into unnecessary fanboy ying-yang.

That sounds entirely counter productive. That would result in a thread that can only ever contain speculation. Not any real analysis.

[MercedesAMGSpy]

A race thread is a thread to discuss the race, you can't expect every post a technical analysis.

[turbof1]

A race thread is a thread to discuss the race, you can't expect every post a technical analysis.

No we can't. As you might guess it'll be a difficult balancing act. It'll take some thought, but the intent is turn it around because nowadays it shifted too much into one direction.

[SectorOne]

this might partly explained the good start,

Lewis Hamilton - Peter Bonnington
Sitting here it actually feels like more of a slope than usual. Shall I point left?

Jock Clear - Lewis Hamilton
Very slightly wouldn’t do any harm, yeah.

[Juzh]

this might partly explained the good start,

Lewis Hamilton - Peter Bonnington
Sitting here it actually feels like more of a slope than usual. Shall I point left?

Jock Clear - Lewis Hamilton
Very slightly wouldn’t do any harm, yeah.

Sky had a moment of clarity when they mentioned sun shining over left sided grid for some time before the start and warming up the tarmac quite a bit, whereas tarmac on the right side was dead cold in the shadow. I believe this could be a primary reason for hamilton's op start.

[Phil]

I wonder how much of a factor that "sunlight" would be some few minutes before disappearing behind the horizon. Given that an hour later daylight is almost completely gone, I would think that the sun rays an hour before would be quite diffuse and not all that much of a factor, especially across tarmac (which I guess would store the heat for much longer than the surrounding air inside the shade) seperated by only 3-4 meters...? To be fair, around the equator, the sun sets and rises quite a bit quicker than it does further up north, but I still wonder what kind of factor this could possibly play.

[Richard]

Bearing in mind the full width had been in full sun all day!

[Juzh]

It's what they said. Higher tarmac temps seem the most probable cause.

[Moose]

I wonder how much of a factor that "sunlight" would be some few minutes before disappearing behind the horizon. Given that an hour later daylight is almost completely gone, I would think that the sun rays an hour before would be quite diffuse and not all that much of a factor, especially across tarmac (which I guess would store the heat for much longer than the surrounding air inside the shade) seperated by only 3-4 meters...? To be fair, around the equator, the sun sets and rises quite a bit quicker than it does further up north, but I still wonder what kind of factor this could possibly play.

Bear in mind that there's a rather large grand stand there, which will mean that the sun will be fairly high in the sky at the point at which it "sets" on the grid there. Given that, and Abu Dhabi's relatively low attitude It's likely that you're looking at an angle of incidence around 30° to the ground. That's roughly the same as the UK gets in the height of summer, so while it won't be burning the track up, it certainly will have a pretty good warming affect.

That said, I think it's far from the sole cause of Hamilton's great getaway. He disappeared from everyone else on that side of the grid too, including the (usually very fast off the line) Williamses.

[Phil]

I have to admit, I'm operating on the assumption that the race was more or less completely dark 1 hour (lap ~34) into the race, so the sun an hour before would be still up, but IMO rather close to the horizon. I'm estimating the sun set around 30 minutes into the race. Even as the sun sets over the horizon, you still have ambient light for a while as the sky continuously gets darker. Just checking a replay of the race and I think at start time that the sun was close to setting. At that point, the sun rays would be quite diffuse. Also checking the race start, the start/finish straight is nearly completely in the shade by the grandstands, with only some of the grid positions behind in some of the sun light, although that looks like rather difuse light hitting it. If there's any sun light getting there, I don't think the sun at that point would hold enough energy to play a significant role. Just IMO of course.

Also, the northern hemisphere is currently nearing its winter season, so the sun angle is rather low.

EDIT: See this link: http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/un ... /abu-dhabi
While it's already a week since the GP, I think the sun set & rise times should be fairly representative.

[PlatinumZealot]

Track would still be hot after a whole day in sunlight.