mike1324a

This is an exellent way to think about it. After thinking about it more, it expains nearly everyone's pace. This season just requires too much compremise in the car design for any car to be truly optomized in any circuit. Other then the increase in fuel next year, id say the aero will be more optomized. However, this explains how BMW, Williams, Force India, Toyota, Renault and even Mclaren can be so on or off pace a week apart. It helps with Red Bull and Brawns domominance and then lack there of but I think lack of funding has caught up with them. It also explains ferrari relative mediocre performance everywhere. They went more middle of the road and thus have that kind of performance

PerSmitt

I think when he did that speed he crashed his car. The high trap speed was due to a missed brake point. Not skilled driving, rather the contrary.

Badoer is probably a very skilled driver. Better than most if not all on this forum

But he seriously sucks in an F1 crowd.

PerSmitt

The McLarens cannot be explained with the same theory. I urge you all when watching the qualifier (and race) to have the official live timing on a laptop. There you can see the sector times in detail for all drivers. Sector 2 is a technical part where the McLarens fail miserably. I am not joking when I say Hamilton was 1-1,5 seconds slower than the top drivers in that sector alone!

The reason for the McLaren being so slow there is because their car is not aerodynamically as good as some of the other cars. This is not by choice or by compromise but rather that McLaren focused so much on the 2008 car and made some poor development choices early on the 2009 car that they are simply lagging behind the others in development.

Then they have an excellent engine and a great KERS system which works as a band-aid helping on tracks like Valencia to make the car seem better than it is.

So as for the theory that only the sucky cars can be good on Spa I would like to point out that last year we had McLaren and Ferrari fighting for victory on this very same circuit. The same cars that were dominant on the other tracks too.

morkusyambo

I'm sorry, but I simply have to disagree with the theory that Mclaren and Ferrari are off the pace because of the 2008 title fight. Of course these teams love this theory because it makes them seem more a victim of last years success, rather than being out-engineered by Red Bull and Brawn the first half of this year. A more legitimate argument could be made that the drastic formula changes this year hurt the big dogs, but no more than any other team. Not trying to pick on PerSmitt, i'm just tired of the "success of 2008" theory being perpetuated.

Where PerSmitt got it right was where he mentioned "poor development choices early" on the part of Mclaren and Ferrari. Whose fault was that? The success of 2008, formula changes, the overtaking working group and the resulting gentlemens agreement within FOTA (FOTA is turning into a big joke by the way), lack of funding (yeah right), or were they simply outperfomed the first half of the season by the other teams?

I am not suprised that Mclaren, Ferrari, and Renault have started to get close to the front and even win a race. Everyone knew given their enormous budgets that would happen....For those that will say they must have the best engineers because they caught back up in spite of the lack of testing, consider how many new bits those three teams have been throwing at their cars, sometimes having them flown in during a race weekend. Is this great enginnering?(Mclaren self-admittedly redesigned their chassis, which I'm sure cost next-to-nothing). I say the ban on testing actually benefitted Mclaren, Ferrari, and Renault. It guaranteed their massive budgets would give them an advantage, if not the entire season(as mentioned allready) then at least eventually this year.

My explanation earlier about having to make compromises also explains Mclarens performance this season by the by. They "tried" to design a car that would be slightly better at slower/tighter courses. They obviously got it wrong and the car ended up skewed that direction so much, the only course it was competitive at early on was Monoco. Then they went ahead and redesigned their car (so much for keeping costs down) a few races ago, and brought their formula back towards a more balanced approach.

bse50

I don't agree yambo. Not too much at least.
The rules were curiously made with a close input from Mr. Brawn, guess why Brawn gps were so fast in the first half of the season
Then you have teams like redbull that didn't have a chance to win last year and early focused on the 2009 cars.
Ferrari and McLaren did develop a 2009 car during 2008 but had to divide their projects trying both to win and produce something for the next year. This is why after the first races they started catching up imho!

morkusyambo

Thats cool. We're all entitled to our opinions. If this were a NASCAR thread, I'd tell all of you to get $%^&*)

-Yambo

bse50

That's fair as well i guess.
The curious thing is that we have different medias filtering facts!

alfy28

bare with me ,using the phone ti type this message. but i agree with persm. i dont think teams like ferrari and mclarwn like to be embarrassed getting their wins mid season. its pretty evident that these two teams only concentrated with 08 car. especially with both ham and masa being so close to each other with points. where the other teams didnt have this battle to deal with. also before honda announced thay they where quiting. they told the japanese media that they are working on -the 2009 car. i personaly believe that mclaren and ferrari will be leading all of 2010. since the changes wont that much, like it was for 08 to 09. ps sorrh for the wall of text

bse50

SOMEBODY GIVE ME ALFY'S PHONE N! i want to wake him up telling him how hamilton just crashed rofl!!!

mike1324a

haha. first lap no less. Not his fault but he still crashed out. I love Spa. there are always great races

mike1324a

once again, a great race at spa. Kimi showing hes still got it and fisi too. I was amazed at the ferrari's ablity to just power around people with kers. You could really see it will at spa. His start was insane and the restart was good too.

bse50

Yes!
I loved this race anyway it showed up some good things.
Bye bye badoer!

morkusyambo

I would be sad if Massa ends up being the odd man out at Ferrari next year due to Alonso coming on board. But with his injuries and Kimi's return to form, I wouldn't be suprised if he gets demoted.

PerSmitt

I loved Sutils pass on Badoer too. Passing on the outside using the runoff area to pass.

That is supposed to be impossible! Badoer really was taking it slow.

Big grats to Kimi too who really has been stepping up his game since Massa left. He probably went like: We have no other good driver to do the job? Damn, back to work...

No but seriously, Kimi has shown time and time again some seriously talented racing. And then he has had form slumps too. But i suppose that is natural, I mean look at Button right now. I think it is championship nerves tickling Button.

And as for which cars are good on Spa or not. We will see next year when all teams have managed to explore the possibilities with the current regulations. Until then what we have here are just speculations and opinions. And since this is the inter-webs and the inter-webs are made of speculations and opinions this is serious business

morkusyambo

If Badoer is allowed to race at Monza, the italian press and fans should boycott the race

morkusyambo

Speaking of using the runoff area, how about Kimi at turn 1 !?! He basically used it to get a running start with KERS and picked up 2-3 spots on the downhill run.

I agree, this is serious stuff here

bse50

Yes, Badoer is scandalous.

I don't know what to think about Kimi's start, he had to go there not to hit somebody since he was forced outside but i don't remind if he entered in the spot he had gained or right in front of the guy he was passing in that turn.

Man you don't get through television what a hell of a turn that is. You go from a slight uphill to a downhill and in the inside kerb you can actually go with 3 wheels.

mike1324a

yeah, he had no where to go so he had a good excuse to go wide, but i think it was actually beneficial to him anyway.

bse50

Agreed that it was beneficial since his engine is one of the best in the championship even without kers but since it was not voluntary they couldn't penalize him imho.

Guys the problem is that bernie ecclestone is still alive and there's the possibility to lose SPA as a track...

PerSmitt

It is hair thin if it was beneficial or not. The rule of thumb is that running wide is always slower. But in this specific case it might have been equivalent. However I am skeptical to that it would actually be faster.

It was a very wise choice of Kimi to run there though. Alonso got his front left wheel mechanism destroyed in that chaos and there were trampled wings. Better to take the safe before sorry and run wide.

As for Sutils pass on the outside of Badoer, that was a much slower way than the optimal line. Still he was so much faster than Badoer he still just flew by.

alnielsen

iTrader: (4)

Good riddance to Kimi. He has just shown that it takes a lot of motivation to get the best out of him. In this case, he is loosing his seat at Ferrari. He wants to do his best so he can get a big salary with a hot team for next season. Once he gets his new contract, he will go back to his slacker ways.
Did I just channel the thoughts of Alfy on that one?

mike1324a

Well Alfy may be disappointed as there have been rumors of kimi being linked with heikki seat back at mclaren next yeah haha

alfy28

Grats to kimi and ferrari. now i cant pick on the team any more, since they are now 1 to 1 with mclaren . but i would love to see kimi back at mclaren. he still is one of my favs on the track, even though he is wearing red.

but i am nto sure if he would like to be with mclaren.

i would say more, but party to hard this passweekend that my brain is in zombie mode atm.

grats to the podium finishers.

alfy28

bse50

You're da man!
Today Ferrari said that hey're still thinking to keep Badoer...
Kimi must have passed to Dominicali some bad habits!