Belgian GP 2011 - Spa-Francorchamps

[godlameroso]

Short attention span people, did we forget who dominated in silverstone? Particularly in sector 2? In any event I like this 3 horse race.

[jamsbong]

Ferrari has been strong when Alonso is in the seat. Personally, I think Alonso is punching the Ferrari above its weight.
Mclaren has been under-rated in terms of race pace. Audience tend to get blown away by RedBull's Quali pace and automatically assumes they would do the same in the race. IMO, the Mclaren driver should have treasure their race pace and convert them into more points.
I also think that Hamilton is not focused at all. He is such a fast talented driver, yet he just make so many crucial mistakes. He should not be complaining about Pirelli, instead use his brains (if he has any) to make it work.

[HampusA]

Never count out Ferrari, last year RBR was really dominant but still Alonso went into the last race leading the championship,
The gap is big sure but the season is far from over.

[raymondu999]

Yes, but we have to remember that Vettel and Webber aren't doing nearly as good a job as they did last year of hashing things up. Even Webber who is being dominated in terms of standings is doing a better job than he is last year, having more points than he had last year.

[HampusA]

hashing things up? what does that mean? Sorry i´m from sweden so i don´t know everything regarding the english language

[ajdavison2]

Means 'making a mess of'

[HampusA]

Ahaa, yea i agree. RBR is doing a much better job of collecting points.
But we have reliability and other stuff to consider.

I don´t think we will see RBR´s on the front row this time.

1. Hamilton
2. Alonso
3. Vettel

Q results,

[wesley123]

It is too soon to say. We have a 4week gap and everyone is coming with new parts, including Red Bull, they pretty much have to, because currently it looks like it that Vettels points advantage will disappear into nothing, good for us but not good for Red Bull. On the other hand, McLaren will do the same and will probably run the new short chord wing.

as I read Tubs arent homologated anymore, can we expect teams to see cars with changed tubs?

[beelsebob]

It is too soon to say. We have a 4week gap and everyone is coming with new parts

We effectively have a 2 week gap actually, but you're right, people will turn up with new bits, and there's certainly more thinking time.

including Red Bull, they pretty much have to, because currently it looks like it that Vettels points advantage will disappear into nothing

I'm very much not convinced by that - even if things stay exactly as they are, or if McLaren became even stronger, I would expect Vettel to still have a 50pt lead at the end of the season.

On the other hand, McLaren will do the same and will probably run the new short chord wing.

I'd personally bet that McLaren will continue to out-do RBR on development pace, simply because they have the least understood car on the grid.

[raymondu999]

That's curious. Wouldn't a car that's not understood be difficult to develop? Or do you mean least understood in terms of it's a new "alien" design with unique side pods that has a lot of potential still needing to be unlocked?

[Javert]

as I read Tubs arent homologated anymore, can we expect teams to see cars with changed tubs?

It's difficult to change a tub mid-season without tests
Maybe Lotus-Renault if they choose to bin FEE

[Donuts]

That's curious. Wouldn't a car that's not understood be difficult to develop? Or do you mean least understood in terms of it's a new "alien" design with unique side pods that has a lot of potential still needing to be unlocked?

I was wondering the same... does it mean that when they finally understand it, it will turn out they can't do anything more with the design or that they have a lot of peformance left in the design? LRGP e.g. seems to understand that they can't extract anything more from their FEE design. Dead end. Who knows if they same fate awaits McLaren.

[beelsebob]

That's curious. Wouldn't a car that's not understood be difficult to develop? Or do you mean least understood in terms of it's a new "alien" design with unique side pods that has a lot of potential still needing to be unlocked?

I was wondering the same... does it mean that when they finally understand it, it will turn out they can't do anything more with the design or that they have a lot of peformance left in the design? LRGP e.g. seems to understand that they can't extract anything more from their FEE design. Dead end. Who knows if they same fate awaits McLaren.

No, it means that as they understand it more they'll understand what it does well and what it does badly, and be able to tweak it to change the things it does badly into things it does well. It's obvious that they can do more with the design, because there are faster cars out there in the right circumstances – the question becomes "how do you modify this design to catch and/or beat that design is the question", and it can only be answered when they know why their current version doesn't beat that other design.

[raymondu999]

At the risk of feeding further off-topic banter, I think it needs to be noted that not all cars are born equal, and there is a limit to how much pace can be unlocked from a car through upgrades. I'm not saying the McLaren is one of those. But that was almost certainly the case with the -25 last year, just as soon as it hit its sweet spot the development sort of just stopped dead-on save for a few good upgrades. But for example I doubt the HRT, given even, say.. 25 years of upgrading with upgrades/updates to the wings/diffusers/whatnot, could compete with the -26 or the RB7

[beelsebob]

At the risk of feeding further off-topic banter, I think it needs to be noted that not all cars are born equal, and there is a limit to how much pace can be unlocked from a car through upgrades. I'm not saying the McLaren is one of those. But that was almost certainly the case with the -25 last year, just as soon as it hit its sweet spot the development sort of just stopped dead-on save for a few good upgrades. But for example I doubt the HRT, given even, say.. 25 years of upgrading with upgrades/updates to the wings/diffusers/whatnot, could compete with the -26 or the RB7

Clearly a falsehood. Yes, some upgrades will end up being big ones... But... Clearly there is a better design out there, the RBR is lapping faster than you. Maybe you need to get your design out of a local minima... but it absolutely 100% *is* possible to get better performance out of changing your design.