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2014 Formula 1 Season Thread (part II)

The first safely car worked for Hamilton, after that it didn't much matter. In fact the first safety car worked for all but the first 4 ... and Button who made the wrong tyre choice.

Mercedes would have been better off pulling Rosberg in at least 2 laps earlier, rather than embarrassing themselves with that crap on the radio. They didn't make full use of Rosberg's last set because they only gave it 13 laps, so if he really was quicker, an extra 3 or 4 laps on them would have got him to the front.

If I was Hamilton I'd tell the team the only one I'd even consider listening to on the radio telling me to move over is Niki. Otherwise don't even bother.

Overall it was a pretty bad weekend for Mercedes; two cars at least 1/2sec a lap quicker than the field, they only finish 3rd and 4th and make themselves look stupid into the bargain.

Hamilton should swap with Vettel for next year - Red Bull are going to be back on top next season if they get anywhere near engine parity, and Hamilton and Ricciardo in the same team would be ... interesting.
 
merlin said:
Ian. Who made the call on not going with the option like Alonso did? Hamilton seemed to suggest in the post race that he felt it was a quicker proposition. Was it not a possibility because of wear rates seen on Friday regardless of the very different conditions experienced today?
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The call is based on a lot of analysis of the tyre performance which is fed into the strategy software. The wear rates do vary and the rain will have changed the tyre performance and may have changed performance differential (and the degradation over many laps) between the two tyres. So that was a tough call to make, without enough information.
 
Patrick Dixon said:
The first safely car worked for Hamilton, after that it didn't much matter. In fact the first safety car worked for all but the first 4 ... and Button who made the wrong tyre choice.
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The second safety car bunched the field up which helped Lewis.

Mercedes would have been better off pulling Rosberg in at least 2 laps earlier, rather than embarrassing themselves with that crap on the radio. They didn't make full use of Rosberg's last set because they only gave it 13 laps, so if he really was quicker, an extra 3 or 4 laps on them would have got him to the front.
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I agree that was a mistake and should not have happened.

Overall it was a pretty bad weekend for Mercedes; two cars at least 1/2sec a lap quicker than the field, they only finish 3rd and 4th and make themselves look stupid into the bargain.
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That it was but they are so far ahead in the drivers and constructors championship that they can get away with it.

Hamilton should swap with Vettel for next year - Red Bull are going to be back on top next season if they get anywhere near engine parity, and Hamilton and Ricciardo in the same team would be ... interesting.
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Hungary and Monaco are the tracks where the powerplant is least important. At this track Mercedes still had comfortably the fastest car. If powerplant parity existed at present then the RBR and Mercedes cars would be locked in a very close battle.

As to next year I think that you will be incorrect in your prediction for the following reasons:

1. Adrian Newey will work more and more on the Advanced Technology projects and as it is him who is the creative genius, it will have a big negative effect on the team's performance. RBR work in a way that is different to all other teams and this is down to Adrian.

2. They are losing / have lost some very senior aerodynamicists which will further weaken the car performance in the future.

3. The person in charge of delivering car performance left RBR to join Mercedes (started in June) and he will have done a lot to keep RBR delivering performance over the past 5 years. Without him the performance development process is very likely to become much less effective.

4. The loss of all of the above is likely to mean that they will have to completely re-organise how they deliver performance.
 
Thanks Ian.

A rather unsatisfactory weekend all round I guess.

Good to see Lauda backing Hamilton though - I thought the call was somewhat surprising given the superiority in the WCC.
 
I like seeing Ricciardo do well. He comes across as a daft aussi, but he's obviously become a reliable racer this year. Great stuff. He's none PC and for that he deserves all his success.
 
Very impressed with DR today, handled those last laps and two world champions with a great deal of maturity and skill.
 
IanW said:
Mercedes, although I am now on gardening leave.
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Does this mean that you are jumping ship?

Amazing to see Hamilton's fastest lap was set on 30 lap old options with a fairly heavy fuel load.

His last ten laps were ruined being stuck behind Alonso on the slower tyre. I'd say looking at the lap times that there was a serious lack of direction on the MB pit wall. Is the team missing Brawn?
 
Yes.

Ross was very good at keeping the team working well on the pitwall. So yes I would say that they are really missing him. Having made the most dominant car since the Williams in 92 is making it easier for the big bosses, but as today shows, it is very easy to do the wrong things.
 
Cav said:
Hamilton was lucky twice by virtue of the safety car - otherwise he would have been very low down.
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Quite. He drove well but finishing third was much more down to him gaining massively in the safety car and Nico losing even more massively than his good driving. I suppose one would not expect the british press/tv to make much of that fact though ;-)

He has had some bad luck recently but he and some others had a huge amount of good luck today. It happens from time to time.
 
F1eng said:
He has had some bad luck recently but he and some others had a huge amount of good luck today. It happens from time to time.
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My preferred version

He has had a huge amount bad luck recently but he and some others had some good luck today.
 
IanW said:
Yes.

Ross was very good at keeping the team working well on the pitwall. So yes I would say that they are really missing him. Having made the most dominant car since the Williams in 92 is making it easier for the big bosses, but as today shows, it is very easy to do the wrong things.
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Quite Ian,
it will be interesting to see if, or for how long, the new bosses can keep the ball in the air running a car they made zero contribution to making quick now that Ross isn't there (or Bob Bell).
 
F1eng said:
Quite Ian,
it will be interesting to see if, or for how long, the new bosses can keep the ball in the air running a car they made zero contribution to making quick now that Ross isn't there (or Bob Bell).
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Mistakes are certainly creeping in at the track.

I would put it that Ross Brawn and Bob Bell led the development of (as I have already stated, earlier in the thread) the car with the greatest performance advantage over its competitors, since the Williams in 92.

Mercedes have an extremely capable team of technical people that could keep the team winning for many years, but the new technical leadership could mess that up.
 
Let's just hope you aren't going back to Woking. One would think that a team that usually makes such bad strategy calls would be a opportunity, but McLaren seem destined to always be a strategy-free zone.

They are after all the team that send their drivers out on slicks when if they just got down from their ivory towers they'd see the rain falling.
 
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