Turkish GP 2011 - Istanbul

[FrukostScones]

another "cable guy" pic

[Lorenzo_Bandini]

Ferrari have a great race pace but on lap pace is HORRIBLE.

[djos]

How funny would it be if Webber drove past doing the "crazy finger"!!!

[Just_a_fan]

The on board of Vettel's crash showed 7.2g for the impact against the barriers. No idea how accurate that might be but it's the same readout that gives the cornering g reading.

With that kind of rapid deceleration you would expect instantaneous forces much higher than 7g, I think that probably hits the limit of what the sensor can detect.

That assumes impact between solid items. The suspension was smashed which will have dissipated energy and reduced the peak decceleration.

[beelsebob]

One thing I'm noticing is that the McLaren's seem to be the only team to not gain a line of degradation slightly to the left of middle on the front-left tyre.

[forty-two]

Something to do with being so stiffly sprung this weekend perhaps?

[Just_a_fan]

One thing I'm noticing is that the McLaren's seem to be the only team to not gain a line of degradation slightly to the left of middle on the front-left tyre.

It did occur during the run through T8 during P2 today. I was watching Button and noticed it. I think it's just the line at which the tyre was leaving the track surface (owing to camber etc.) and thus where the pick up was concentrating. It disappeared quite quickly on all of the cars as they went away from T8.

[nacho]

Did anyone notice slow motion comparison of cars on bumps, Renault seemed very very good.

[beelsebob]

Did anyone notice slow motion comparison of cars on bumps, Renault seemed very very good.

Yes, but the very stiffly sprung cars seem to be the quick ones – the McLaren in particular was jumping all over on the bumps, but the Merc too, and the RBR a decent amount.

[Shaddock]

Did anyone notice slow motion comparison of cars on bumps, Renault seemed very very good.

Yes, but the very stiffly sprung cars seem to be the quick ones – the McLaren in particular was jumping all over on the bumps, but the Merc too, and the RBR a decent amount.

If you go soft to absorb the bumps in turn 12 then you compromise the rest of the lap as you will need to raise the ride height to stop bottoming out. Stiffen things ups, and your quick on the 'flat bits' but will suffer over the bumps.

[beelsebob]

Did anyone notice slow motion comparison of cars on bumps, Renault seemed very very good.

Yes, but the very stiffly sprung cars seem to be the quick ones – the McLaren in particular was jumping all over on the bumps, but the Merc too, and the RBR a decent amount.

If you go soft to absorb the bumps in turn 12 then you compromise the rest of the lap as you will need to raise the ride height to stop bottoming out. Stiffen things ups, and your quick on the 'flat bits' but will suffer over the bumps.

That would be my logic too – except that if you compare the Merc times to the McLaren ones – Merc are 0.1 quicker through sector 1, McLaren 0.2 quicker through sector 3* where all the bumps are, depspite being more stiffly sprung. I think it's more to do with the McLaren has a lot of mechanical grip thanks to the stiffness, and hence is super fast through the last 3 corners.

* ignoring sector 2 where the McLarens seem quick, but not quite as quick as the RBR – they're just having to make a *tiny* lift on the way into 8, the RBR don't seem to be. The Merc meanwhile seems like a real handful through there, but somehow not losing too much time.

[PlatinumZealot]

Crash kid is back in time for Turkey!!

[raymondu999]

Yeah... the whole situation smacks of Lewis in Suzuka 2010.

@beelsebob - conventional knowledge would mean going softer would give additional grip though, would it not?

[godlameroso]

Softer = more grip to a point, same as stiffer = more grip...to a point. I don't know about F1 cars, my street car has a stiff suspension especially for the street 14kg/mm front 12kg/mm rear in a 1160 kg car with everything in it, and I still get over 7cm of suspension travel before i'm smacking the bump stops.

Stiffer is better, as long as you have enough suspension movement otherwise you're just storing energy in that corner of the suspension. A lot of suspension tuning has to do with the balance caused by the way weight is distributed in a car. If almost all components of the car are engineered for minimum weight, and for maximizing the cog, then you can make the suspension stiffer because more weight is focused at the cog, and hence the corners store less energy during weight transfer. A soft rear end, relative to the front does not improve lateral grip, only longitudinal grip, at least as long as your car isn't FF. This helps in places like Monaco because you come out of a lot of slow corners, in Istanbul park, you never accelerate hard out of slow corners because slow corners are proceeded by slightly faster corners where the downforce can kick in. Case in point sector 3, Slow left hander, followed by slightly faster right hander, followed by slightly faster left hander and by the time you're on the exit you're already up to 140kph.

[atanatizante]

... Each team gets 3 sets of full wets and three sets of intermediates for the weekend?

Correction:
Under the current F1 rules, drivers are limited to four sets of intermediate tyres and three sets of wet tyres for the whole event.
Source: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/91149