2015 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne

[dans79]

- Pat symonds : " On one lap, Ferrari engine is almost at the same level than Mercedes engine "

This is just complete bs, and Symonds trying to explain away why his team isn't clear of Ferrari.

If the Ferrari engine was just as good over one lap, they wouldn't be 1.4 seconds off the Merc one lap pace. their just isn't that much difference aerodynamically among the top teams. 3/4ths of a second maybe, but almost double that, no.

[Moose]

- Pat symonds : " On one lap, Ferrari engine is almost at the same level than Mercedes engine "

This is just complete bs, and Symonds trying to explain away why his team isn't clear of Ferrari.

If the Ferrari engine was just as good over one lap, they wouldn't be 1.4 seconds off the Merc one lap pace. their just isn't that much difference aerodynamically among the top teams. 3/4ths of a second maybe, but almost double that, no.

And yet, you're sat their staring at the 3rd from top team 1.3 seconds off Merc on one lap pace with an identical engine.

[mipade]

Maybe Symonds thinks the Ferrari engine has almost the same power over one lap with a fully charged ers. But lets wait and see if they can sustain this performance through the race. If I am not mistaken they had problems last year over one lap when the ers was not fully charged out of the box.

[SparkyAMG]

Talks of Lewis overcoming his qualifying woes are premature in my opinion.

He has a history or being able to adapt and get the best out of new conditions quickly, ie, a new car, new circuit etc, and as such has probably gotten used to the W06 that bit quicker.

Nico had a noticeably bad day, he wasn't comfortable in the car - or at least not as comfortable as Lewis - and therefore just couldn't keep up with a very very good pole lap.

I'm a massive Hamilton fan, but I'm not fickle enough to believe that's it. After 5 races last year Hamilton was 4-1 up in qualifying.He then got dominated 11-3 the rest of the year.

Whilst those stats are true they do not really give a true reflection of their respective pace. Just to give an example, between Monaco and Hungary, there was an issue for Lewis in every qualifying session:

Monaco: yellow flags (could have had pole)
Canada: poor final run for Lewis, with a couple of mistakes, (could have had pole)
Austria: ran wide and then spun (was clearly faster than Rosberg)
Silverstone: rain stopped (was clearly faster than Rosberg)
Germany: brake failure (could have had pole)
Hungary: fire (could have had pole)

If we give Lewis Austria and Silverstone and then halve the other four events, this leads to Lewis gaining 4 and Rosberg losing 4. This would lead to the overall season stats of being 11 - 8 to Lewis.

There were not many times when Lewis snatched pole off Rosberg, because Rosberg had an issue (and/or when he clearly looked faster).

If you want to be naive and really believe Rosberg is faster than Lewis then continue to do so. It's like JB said - if Lewis gets his setup right and is happy with the car then no one else may as well bother turning up. It's just last year, he had a lot of bad luck and made lots of little mistakes, pushing too hard, whilst Rosberg was consistent and careful, which worked well.

I'm not believing one or the other is quicker... They're both quick over one lap.

All I'm saying is that it would be silly to assume that Hamilton is going to be unbeatable in qualy this year based on the first qualy session of the season. I'd like him to be, but I won't get my hopes up.

[bdr529]

All I was doing was playing devils advocate in response to someone who outlined how poor Hamilton's qualifying record was against Rosberg last year.

Really because the quote below doesn't look like someone playing devil'a adovcate, but more like someone is upset that Rosberg had a better outcome in quilifying then Hamilton last year, why else would you include the quotes from JB + Lauda

If you want to be naive and really believe Rosberg is faster than Lewis then continue to do so. It's like JB said - if Lewis gets his setup right and is happy with the car then no one else may as well bother turning up. It's just last year, he had a lot of bad luck and made lots of little mistakes, pushing too hard, whilst Rosberg was consistent and careful, which worked well

[f1316]

- Pat symonds : " On one lap, Ferrari engine is almost at the same level than Mercedes engine "

This is just complete bs, and Symonds trying to explain away why his team isn't clear of Ferrari.

If the Ferrari engine was just as good over one lap, they wouldn't be 1.4 seconds off the Merc one lap pace. their just isn't that much difference aerodynamically among the top teams. 3/4ths of a second maybe, but almost double that, no.

And yet, you're sat their staring at the 3rd from top team 1.3 seconds off Merc on one lap pace with an identical engine.

Sure, but one could therefore infer that those running the Mercedes engine are not 'top' teams and that if red bull/Ferrari had equal engine they would be closer. Not saying it's my opinion just what the original point may have been.

Plus it's difficult to completely divorce the two - Ferrari engine might now be producing as much power but not be packaged to such a great aerodynamic effect. Again, just a possibility not a statement of fact.

[Juzh]

Maybe Symonds thinks the Ferrari engine has almost the same power over one lap with a fully charged ers. But lets wait and see if they can sustain this performance through the race. If I am not mistaken they had problems last year over one lap when the ers was not fully charged out of the box.

Ferrari was absolutely awful with their energy recovery last year. They had good top power, but couldn't sustain it for very long.

[f1316]

Maybe Symonds thinks the Ferrari engine has almost the same power over one lap with a fully charged ers. But lets wait and see if they can sustain this performance through the race. If I am not mistaken they had problems last year over one lap when the ers was not fully charged out of the box.

Sounds like that is what he's saying but runs in practice looked very consistent and kimi's comments imply they expect better race pace: http://m.autosport.com/news/report.php/ ... cost-third

We shall see, I suppose.

[tranquility2k4]

All I was doing was playing devils advocate in response to someone who outlined how poor Hamilton's qualifying record was against Rosberg last year.

Really because the quote below doesn't look like someone playing devil'a adovcate, but more like someone is upset that Rosberg had a better outcome in quilifying then Hamilton last year, why else would you include the quotes from JB + Lauda

If you want to be naive and really believe Rosberg is faster than Lewis then continue to do so. It's like JB said - if Lewis gets his setup right and is happy with the car then no one else may as well bother turning up. It's just last year, he had a lot of bad luck and made lots of little mistakes, pushing too hard, whilst Rosberg was consistent and careful, which worked well

I've not said once that I think this 1 qualifying session has any kind of relation to the outcome of the rest of the season.

[tranquility2k4]

All I was doing was playing devils advocate in response to someone who outlined how poor Hamilton's qualifying record was against Rosberg last year.

Really because the quote below doesn't look like someone playing devil'a adovcate, but more like someone is upset that Rosberg had a better outcome in quilifying then Hamilton last year, why else would you include the quotes from JB + Lauda

If you want to be naive and really believe Rosberg is faster than Lewis then continue to do so. It's like JB said - if Lewis gets his setup right and is happy with the car then no one else may as well bother turning up. It's just last year, he had a lot of bad luck and made lots of little mistakes, pushing too hard, whilst Rosberg was consistent and careful, which worked well

It's a personal opinion, I feel someone would be naive to think Rosberg is faster than Hamilton purely on the overall head-to-head stats of qualifying sessions from 1 season where Hamilton clearly had a lot of bad luck during several sessions and also clearly underperformed during others - more so than in comparison to Rosberg.

Maybe some peoples' issue is that regularly when someone actually states a fairly well informed opinion on this forum - they're automatically accused of being a 'fanboy'. For all you know I don't support Hamilton - I just have an opinion on his speed relative to Rosberg. Why can I not state a preference on this matter without being accused of all this bs?

[dans79]

And yet, you're sat their staring at the 3rd from top team 1.3 seconds off Merc on one lap pace with an identical engine.

The same engine, doesn't mean the same radiators, oils, fuel, transmission ratios, or engine maps (probably the most important one). As is the case when any team is this dominant, its a complete package, engine, aero, chassis, tires, driving style etc. Basically they have run through every possible combination to arrive at what they believe is the optimum total package

[SparkyAMG]

All I was doing was playing devils advocate in response to someone who outlined how poor Hamilton's qualifying record was against Rosberg last year.

Really because the quote below doesn't look like someone playing devil'a adovcate, but more like someone is upset that Rosberg had a better outcome in quilifying then Hamilton last year, why else would you include the quotes from JB + Lauda

If you want to be naive and really believe Rosberg is faster than Lewis then continue to do so. It's like JB said - if Lewis gets his setup right and is happy with the car then no one else may as well bother turning up. It's just last year, he had a lot of bad luck and made lots of little mistakes, pushing too hard, whilst Rosberg was consistent and careful, which worked well

I've not said once that I think this 1 qualifying session has any kind of relation to the outcome of the rest of the season.

And nor did I say that I thought Rosberg was quicker, just pointed out how things played out last season in response to others - not you - who were claiming Hamilton had sorted out qualifying. I'd describe that as the opposite of naive personally.

I was playing Devil's Advocate if you will.

[tranquility2k4]

And nor did I say that I thought Rosberg was quicker, just pointed out how things played out last season in response to others - not you - who were claiming Hamilton had sorted out qualifying. I'd describe that as the opposite of naive personally.

I was playing Devil's Advocate if you will.

Sorry I realise my grammar was not brilliant when I stated about "if you want to be naive" - I wasn't referring to 'you' specifically, just meaning if someone wants to think that.

[SparkyAMG]

And nor did I say that I thought Rosberg was quicker, just pointed out how things played out last season in response to others - not you - who were claiming Hamilton had sorted out qualifying. I'd describe that as the opposite of naive personally.

I was playing Devil's Advocate if you will.

Sorry I realise my grammar was not brilliant when I stated about "if you want to be naive" - I wasn't referring to 'you' specifically, just meaning if someone wants to think that.

Fair enough

On a separate note, I hope Ferrari aren't experiencing the same 1 lap limitations with their ERS as last year. Testing and FP times suggest otherwise, but during qualy I don't think I saw them run consistently hot laps as opposed to the Mercs who ran a number of quick laps on the mediums in Q1.

I wouldn't want to see them slip away from Williams in the race and into Red Bull's grasp.

[Chuckjr]

WHAT??

Ferrari's race pace tests revealed near zero drop off--less than any in the field.