2019 Bahrain Grand Prix - Sakhir, March 29 - 31

[mzso]

Also the Honda engine is suspect in my opinion. I don't think it's versatile. Redbull should have stuck with the Renault.

So true. The Renault Pu failed in two different ways just this race and a third way on the first GP.

[matt_s]

Another important point which needs to be considered is that RBR told that their plan would be to use 5 PUs this season in order to give Honda more room for development. If yes, Honda might be used in a higher mode in races compared to the rest of the field which would make power comparisons more difficult.

I was als thinking that Merc are being very cautious with mode usage right up until Q3. Seems like they're trying to keep PU stress down to an absolute minimum at this early point in the season.

[LM10]

Merc has high downforce compared to Ferrari, so is more affected by windy conditions which would have made their downforce move about and worn out their tyres faster. This would have made the mediums a better fit than the softs for Merc. They really shouldn't have done the second soft tyre stint.

On a less windy day, Merc would have performed even better.

This doesn't really make sense to me. By my understanding/logics a car with less downforce should have even more trouble staying stable and not sliding around in windy conditions.

On a less windy day, every car would have performed better. All of them were having difficulties.

More downforce = more sensitive to how the wind is. If the wind is gusty and blowing in different directions every now and again, then the balance and flow of the air over the car is disturbed and not consistent, which means the downforce goes up and down all over the place, which means the car slides and moves around. Think of it in the opposite sense - an airplane is 100% dependent on lift to fly. Turbulent airflow and air pockets cause the plane to drop and rise and behave unpredictably. Now compare that to something that is less dependent on air for lift and more dependent on power, such as a missile. The missile doesn't really care how the wind is, as long as there is enough power to push it through. Crude example I know but hopefully you can see how a less downforce car will not be as unpredictable in the winds we saw because the wings aren't sensitive enough to efficiently work the air.

Aero guys correct me if I'm wrong please.

Your crude example, as you named it, might have been passable to a degree, if the F1 cars would be powering their way through a straight line. But as we know, they don't, all of them need to take corners. And my understanding is that a car which already is on the backfoot in the corners due to less downforce, will have even more difficulties in windy conditions.

The Ferrari might have had less downforce than Mercedes in Bahrain, but it still was a highly aero sensitive F1 car. I don't know to which extend the Mercedes had more downforce, but bearing in mind that the Ferrari lost 1 tenth of a second over the combination of all 15 corners, gives the feeling that the difference was not that big.

I might be wrong, though, and it will be nice, if an aero guy can enlighten us.

[mzso]

This track shows, how the other stupid circuits on the calendar are taking the joy of watching F1 away. Circuits like Melbourne, Monaco, Singapore, Hungary and even Spain, simply aren't good enough to be on the calendar anymore with their current shape for these new generation cars.

Actually Monaco, Singapore, Hungary and Barcelona always sucked. And there's nothing "even" about Spain because that was the worst even when typically you got good racing. Monaco at least often provided enough crashes and upsets to be entertaining. Also most of the typical Tilke tracks are garbage as well, even if they're not old.

The F1 cars aren't going to go back to the old days of little to nothing wake affecting the following car, providing better slip stream effect for overtakes. In those days, the cars barely had such high traction and speeds, which would make the small straights look really long and aided overtakes via slipstream and NO wake. Current cars are just too quick for these small straights on some of the circuits mentioned above.

"Slipstream and NO wake" makes zero sense. Slipstream is the wake. And faster cars just have a bigger wake. The problem is turbulence and vortices.
And the 2021 rules will fix precisely this. Since the cars will only loose 5% downforce (Ross Brawn claim) when following closely, they will be close even at the start of the straight and it will be much easier to slipstream and overtake. It'll probably be easier to follow than any time in the past 3 decades or more. Since this is the only time they they seriously considered the effect on the following car in designing the formula.
And you'd have to go back pretty far where downforce was little enough to have so little effect.

[mzso]

Well for 2019 maybe, but they are preparing the future.
Marko is a liar, a story teller

But Honda is more honest. They have made great reliability progress, and performance as well, but there is still a long way to go, even compared to Renault in pure power.

Renault seems to be progressing on power, but losing in reliability. Each year is the same story: They don't get enough power gain and are reliable OR they get power and aren't reliable.

I can understand that RB was tired of this situation and prefered to maybe have a transition year with Honda

And I guess Toto is honor bound to give good PR to Honda by claiming that they're only about 10HP off...

[Sierra117]

This doesn't really make sense to me. By my understanding/logics a car with less downforce should have even more trouble staying stable and not sliding around in windy conditions.

On a less windy day, every car would have performed better. All of them were having difficulties.

More downforce = more sensitive to how the wind is. If the wind is gusty and blowing in different directions every now and again, then the balance and flow of the air over the car is disturbed and not consistent, which means the downforce goes up and down all over the place, which means the car slides and moves around. Think of it in the opposite sense - an airplane is 100% dependent on lift to fly. Turbulent airflow and air pockets cause the plane to drop and rise and behave unpredictably. Now compare that to something that is less dependent on air for lift and more dependent on power, such as a missile. The missile doesn't really care how the wind is, as long as there is enough power to push it through. Crude example I know but hopefully you can see how a less downforce car will not be as unpredictable in the winds we saw because the wings aren't sensitive enough to efficiently work the air.

Aero guys correct me if I'm wrong please.

Your crude example, as you named it, might have been passable to a degree, if the F1 cars would be powering their way through a straight line. But as we know, they don't, all of them need to take corners. And my understanding is that a car which already is on the backfoot in the corners due to less downforce, will have even more difficulties in windy conditions.

The Ferrari might have had less downforce than Mercedes in Bahrain, but it still was a highly aero sensitive F1 car. I don't know to which extend the Mercedes had more downforce, but bearing in mind that the Ferrari lost 1 tenth of a second over the combination of all 15 corners, gives the feeling that the difference was not that big.

I might be wrong, though, and it will be nice, if an aero guy can enlighten us.

You cannot use my simple example to then extrapolate a super complicated scenario such as cornering where you have power, traction and tyres, wings, rake, driving styles and throttle mappings working together to influence how the car behaves under such turbulent winds. My example was simply addressing that having less downforce is better in a situation where wind is changing directions and speed a lot because then you are only dependent on variables that you can control (the physical and mechanical aforementioned).

And even then, I would argue that a missile can go every which way but would hardly be affected since there aren't huge wings on it. But I'll wait now for Vanja or someone with industrial aero experience to at least confirm my trajectory (pun intended) before I get pwned lulz.

[NL_Fer]

10hp down sounds great. But not that great if MGU-K deployment is 10s less than Merc/Forza

[iotar__]

- Leclerc, Vettel and Ferrari fans should be glad after this race. Pace wise they were as dominant as it gets in modern F1. Q gap to Merc was IMO misleading, there was no danger of them getting outqualified with ~90% (or whatever margin for error) laps and they knew it. Leclerc also knew that Vettel had one lap.

- Also RB is nowhere, there's one constant in the universe their BS hype not matching reality. You can blame tracks a bit or blame partly qualifying on the engine but not the race pace.

[BwajSF]

More downforce = more sensitive to how the wind is. If the wind is gusty and blowing in different directions every now and again, then the balance and flow of the air over the car is disturbed and not consistent, which means the downforce goes up and down all over the place, which means the car slides and moves around. Think of it in the opposite sense - an airplane is 100% dependent on lift to fly. Turbulent airflow and air pockets cause the plane to drop and rise and behave unpredictably. Now compare that to something that is less dependent on air for lift and more dependent on power, such as a missile. The missile doesn't really care how the wind is, as long as there is enough power to push it through. Crude example I know but hopefully you can see how a less downforce car will not be as unpredictable in the winds we saw because the wings aren't sensitive enough to efficiently work the air.

Aero guys correct me if I'm wrong please.

Your crude example, as you named it, might have been passable to a degree, if the F1 cars would be powering their way through a straight line. But as we know, they don't, all of them need to take corners. And my understanding is that a car which already is on the backfoot in the corners due to less downforce, will have even more difficulties in windy conditions.

The Ferrari might have had less downforce than Mercedes in Bahrain, but it still was a highly aero sensitive F1 car. I don't know to which extend the Mercedes had more downforce, but bearing in mind that the Ferrari lost 1 tenth of a second over the combination of all 15 corners, gives the feeling that the difference was not that big.

I might be wrong, though, and it will be nice, if an aero guy can enlighten us.

You cannot use my simple example to then extrapolate a super complicated scenario such as cornering where you have power, traction and tyres, wings, rake, driving styles and throttle mappings working together to influence how the car behaves under such turbulent winds. My example was simply addressing that having less downforce is better in a situation where wind is changing directions and speed a lot because then you are only dependent on variables that you can control (the physical and mechanical aforementioned).

And even then, I would argue that a missile can go every which way but would hardly be affected since there aren't huge wings on it. But I'll wait now for Vanja or someone with industrial aero experience to at least confirm my trajectory (pun intended) before I get pwned lulz.

The Tyres are the real talking points and majorly affected by the aero and wind disturbances.
The Cars with more downforce i.e. more aero pushing the tyres down on the tarmac will have better temps in tyres and have better grip and eventually less susceptible to the wind and its effects compared to the cars with lesser downforce and hence less grip comparatively and hence with wind causing more of instability in the car and more sliding causing the tyres to overheat and performance loss.

If you observe closely off the two Ferraris Vettel had lesser downforce compared to Leclerc and hence he had a very hard time driving the car. Both Leclerc and Hamilton with higher downforce had a much stable car after the first stint and no complains of car not handling well.

An explanation without falling too much into the technical details.

[NathanOlder]

Seems Ricciardo's issue was due to a safety issue with "electrocution" fears. Definitely would not want to be driving a car with such issues.

Wife asked a great question regarding safety car finishes - why isn't there extra time laps like futbol/soccer? Fo every lap under safety car, the race is extended. Finishing with a safety car was disappointing even for her.

Because you start with a set amount of fuel, extra fuel costs performance, you have to finish with a certain amount of fuel for testing, which I honestly forget what it is these days, 1 litre or something, meaning you can't just add on laps to any kind of motorsport without fuel problem.

In terms of electrocution, that isn't why Ricciardo's race ended, he said that's why he didn't put his steering wheel back on the car because the car wasn't grounded when he got out of it. The race ended because the electrics simply cut out, , when there is a problem with the electrics sometimes the car can become unsafe to touch. The car became unsafe because of the failure, they didn't stop because the car became unsafe.

That isn't a reason to NOT extend the race by the number of laps under safety car. Then cars would need to be topped off or take a risk at running out during or after the safety car. It's not the fans problem or fault that a team underfuels their car. The point she is making is that the spirit of the race was ruined by the fact that the race ended under non racing conditions. It doesn't matter to her how or why someone's car stopped, but that the racing didn't continue after the cars and stewards were tucked away safely. Mind you she comes from a Major League Baseball fan mindset where extra innings and rain delays are no problem waiting around for. Maybe Formula 1 can learn a thing or two from the MLB, seeing how much money it makes?

No no no, never take anything from American sport and try and apply it to F1.
F1 is an International Sport, we dont want to turn it in to a National sport like the American games.

There's no refueling in F1, so you couldnt "top off" a car as you put it. Its not the Sports problem when the Fans know this can and will happen at times, before the fans buy tickets or pay subscriptions.

[NathanOlder]

That fan base is nothing compared to the Tifosi.
Just watch them go totally mental about their new wunderkind as the week unfolds.

Yeah, plus Leclerc has Monaco and France behind him. Italy France Monaco vs Holland/Belgium. Only 1 winner there.

Holland??? I come from the Netherlands
Holland is only a small part from the Netherlands

Hamilton is English, but most people call him British. So I'm allowed to call it Holland still

[marvin78]

Yeah, plus Leclerc has Monaco and France behind him. Italy France Monaco vs Holland/Belgium. Only 1 winner there.

Holland??? I come from the Netherlands
Holland is only a small part from the Netherlands

Hamilton is English, but most people call him British. So I'm allowed to call it Holland still

You would be right, if Hamilton was Scottish and they would call him English

[Mach]

Hopefully Renault and Ferrari figure out how to resolve their PU issues without compromising performance...same thing for Honda and Mercedes.
It's bad enough knowing Mercedes/Hamilton already are clear favorites for 2019 WCC & WDC.
This years PU constraints will eventually ruin the show for fans with teams not going flat out due to...
+ saving fuel
+ saving tyres
+ and now saving PUs

Host race promotion Executives and their respective country's leaders must be pulling their hair out wondering if all the performance savings strategies will adversely affect ticket and sponsorship sales.

[Starscreamer]

Yeah, plus Leclerc has Monaco and France behind him. Italy France Monaco vs Holland/Belgium. Only 1 winner there.

Holland??? I come from the Netherlands
Holland is only a small part from the Netherlands

Hamilton is English, but most people call him British. So I'm allowed to call it Holland still

Max is born in Belgium but he is more from Limburg (South Netherlands) then Holland (West Netherlands)

[mzso]

- Also RB is nowhere, there's one constant in the universe their BS hype not matching reality. You can blame tracks a bit or blame partly qualifying on the engine but not the race pace.

You mean by BS hype, that they openly admitted that they're not where they want to be chassis-wise?
They hyped up Honda, which so-far didn't disappoint.