The 2020 F1 Season
- Thread starter Tony Lockhart
- Start date
cutting42
Arrived at B4 Hacker Ergo
I assumed he meant in terms of the race format/circuit length etc. but thanks
Yeah I know, sorry, I should have done a winky or something
Hi Canonman, no I do not know Stuart Harris. I know a lot of people who work or who have worked in F1, but Williams tends to have people working there for a very long time and I would be less likely to know them.
What are these rather large speakers?
canonman
pfm Member
Hi Ian
I will pm you re Stuart. The speakers are TDL Monitor 4 way transmission line speakers bu in need of a huge amount of work. 47 kg each.
Project is an understatement!
It requires some very good people and a very good culture to make the Ferrari of old work or the Merc of today work. Aldo Costa was well respected at Ferrari and at Merc, and is one of the core group that you would want in a big team like Ferrari. But they would need many more people to create the right culture to win.
The Merc team was built by Ross Brawn and Bob Bell and a few others who knew how to build a very good culture. Toto joined in quite late but took it and continued the process. He effectively got rid of Ross (it was really the Merc board that got rid of Ross by bringing Toto in) and Bob, but by then the culture had been built, over quite a few years. Toto showed that he does make mistakes, by bringing in Paddy and getting rid of Ross and Bob. Now Paddy has been replaced by James Allison and nothing changes. If James Allison were to be replaced by a lamp post then it would continue to work very well at Merc because the structure and the culture have continued down that path.
But Merc does have the challenge of a big downsize to deal with and so that will give their management a lot to think about.
Incidentally Ferrari are partly responsible for the Merc car being so strong this year. Merc were very worried by the Ferrari performance of the past few years and decided that they had to push as hard as possible in all areas for 2020, so they did that on the powerplant and the chassis. And the result is a car that is way beyond the competition. The powerplant is so good that Williams have joined the championship and Racing Point (of course their chassis copy is a significant part of their performance gain) are up there fighting for podiums.
Stuart Frazer
pfm Member
To me, given the performance drop from Ferrari this season, it seems their engine must have contravened the regulations last year. Should their results still stand?
That does sound like a big project indeed.
The FIA could not prove that they didn't.
I cannot comment any further than that!
Stuart Frazer
pfm Member
It stinks to me. I thought the other teams were demanding an explanation and not accepting a whitewash?
If this was anyone else, they would have been fined massively, results deleted and more.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
I just let these things go. It’s not important. Even if you’re in F1, why get upset? It’s only a game.
Stuart Frazer
pfm Member
To me, it skews the results - as it stands. Ferrari got 3 wins that they most probably should not have in 2019. Then there is all their 2019 placings which should also be disqualified and they should also lose their prize monies. But it's Ferrari....so it's a whitewash and brushed under the carpet.
BTW, I think Ferrari made the right decision with Seb. He is a selfish liability in the car and certainly not a team player. He has proved this at RBR and Ferrari and is now getting a taste of his own medicine. I really like him out of the car though.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
As I said, I can just let it go. I know and appreciate all that, but it just doesn't affect me. And it affects me even less in the current situation. I'd love to have got into F1 when I left the RAF in 1990 (I was servicing fly by wire actuators from Tornados) but I chose a different path. Perhaps I'd care more if I'd tried hard to join a team.
I am sure that it stinks to many other people.
When teams enter F1 there are a set of unwritten rules, which people learn about before they join or soon after. Ron called it the Piranha club.
By demanding an explanation they are trying to show that they have gained more power over the years, but the FIA will not give them what they have demanded / requested.
By a strange coincidence I joined McLaren in 1990 after working on mathematical models and then flight testing of the Tornado IDS Terrain Following Radar.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
We had a Tornado return after a low level sortie across the Fens. There was damage to the top of the fin, as if there’d been an impact. Very strange. Then the pilot told us he’d been using his train following radar, and went under a railway bridge.
Sorry. I’ll get my breakfast.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
Eyebroughty
JohnC
manicatel
pfm Member
Tony,
My dear old dad bless him used to work for Nagretti Zambra who made valves etc for gasses amongst other things.
He told me the Tornado had a tail fin fuel tank which once drained was filled with pressurised O2 during peacetime but inert gas ( nitrogen or helium maybe?) during hostile missions to avoid combustion of fuel remnants..... except when they were fully pressurised with the inert gas, the system leaked like a sieve. This was probably during the Falklands war build up era, so close to your spannering time on them... Any truth to it? He did like to spin a few far fetched stories back in the day. Just wondering..............
My dear old dad bless him used to work for Nagretti Zambra who made valves etc for gasses amongst other things.
He told me the Tornado had a tail fin fuel tank which once drained was filled with pressurised O2 during peacetime but inert gas ( nitrogen or helium maybe?) during hostile missions to avoid combustion of fuel remnants..... except when they were fully pressurised with the inert gas, the system leaked like a sieve. This was probably during the Falklands war build up era, so close to your spannering time on them... Any truth to it? He did like to spin a few far fetched stories back in the day. Just wondering..............
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
Aah, the fin fuel tank inert system. Yep, he was close. The idea was to have it permanently pressurised from a nitrogen bottle, but the nitrogen just leaked out, which in peacetime was just not worth the hassle. No oxygen used at all, that’d be expensive and dangerous.
From memory we managed to keep it working on Saudi Tornados, but I’m getting fuzzy on that era.
The Apaches I’m on now have a nitrogen inerting unit that removes just enough oxygen, using zeolite, to keep the remaining gas in the tank below the explosive level.