Livery looks good, but to similar to last year. Something weird going on with the nose hole. Otherwise it looks very clean of aerodynamic elements, which either means they are hiding them, or have just done away with them. Hopefully more pics soon.
Stroll spun, went thru a gravel trap and damaged the car after only 12 laps this morning. That's too bad. Whole day of testing for him and Williams gone.
I'm very excited for the upcoming season. I think the cars look great, although I'm not crazy about the shark fin. Torro Rosso uses that space well, and is the best looking car, in my opinion. The McLaren looks terrible, like the ugly sister to Renault. I'm a big Alonso and Honda fan, and it looks like they're going to have another terrible season. Button is looking like a bloody genius right now. Hopefully, Ferrari and Red Bull have closed the gap to Mercedes.
I think the T wing is great. It looks goofy, is totally conspicuous, and is a visual indicator of all the oddness that goes on in F1. It doesn't ruin the car, it just makes me giggle a little, knowing what it represents.
Yeah with engines from Mercedes being perpetually strong, Ferrari making progress, Renault having overhauled their design and it looking good so far, Honda could be at the back of the grid this year. Sauber is still using last year's Ferrari engine right? Maybe if they are lucky Honda can be faster than an engine that is a year old, if they can manage to finish any races with their terrible reliability.
This could really help shuffle up the field on the starts. Basically starts are fully manual with lots of room for error.
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These changes have been addressed to teams in FIA Technical Directives sent to F1 teams over the winter to inform them on what the FIA viewed as illegal driver aids.
The biggest change comes in how the paddle on the steering wheel now controls the clutch – because there has to be a linear torque control.
Beforehand, there was no linear demand. So, it was possible for an engineer to map the settings in a way that most of the movement on the steering wheel paddle would be in the clutch's 'sweet spot'.
As Kevin Magnussen explained: "You just had to release it between 10 percent and 80 percent.
"Somewhere in there was a flat map that would be set to the grip, the tyres and fuel loads. So the start was 100 percent up to the engineers before. But now it is completely down to us."
I hope it doesn't become too difficult. It sucks seeing guys work hard in qualifying, and lose it on the start due to some mechanical issue that makes it tough to get a decent start.
I don't like this at all. The engineers should be allowed to advise leading up to the start in terms of the optimal launch and then it's up to the driver to manage wheel spin.
Nobody wants to see a pileup 200m from the start.
__________________ It's only game. Why you heff to be mad?
I hope it doesn't become too difficult. It sucks seeing guys work hard in qualifying, and lose it on the start due to some mechanical issue that makes it tough to get a decent start.
I'm not sure if I'd call it a mechanical issue. I'd call it driver error. If they don't know how to work their own car and release the clutch to get a good start, I think that is their issue.
Also, some of the most exciting races happen because the fastest qualifying cars get pushed down the field. The Canadian Grand Prix is a prime example of that. And it weren't for Vettel's driver errors at the last chicane and Ferrari's terrible strategy, we could have seen the race of the year last year in Montreal.
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Originally Posted by DoubleK
I don't like this at all. The engineers should be allowed to advise leading up to the start in terms of the optimal launch and then it's up to the driver to manage wheel spin.
Nobody wants to see a pileup 200m from the start.
This doesn't have to do with the engineers advising, that was outlawed last year already. All this does is eliminate idiot proof clutches. The driver needs to have practiced their starts enough during practice and qualifying to know the proper bite point for the clutch.
It is highly unlikely this will cause pileups 200m from the start. More likely it'll just cause a slower getaway or some wheelspin.
I'm in favour of pretty much any rule that eliminates team control of the car during a race. I already think it is silly that a team of 200 engineers a half a world away analyzing data relay that info to the pit wall and then a race engineer coaches a driver to tell them specific details on every turn, proper braking, how much lift/coast etc for every corner on the whole track.
Once the lights go out it should pretty much all the driver except broad strategy. Unfortunately it is too hard to legislate what is talked about on the radio and the driver coaching is here to stay.
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I guess I meant that it could be caused by issues beyond their control. I agree, if it was predictable, and you could clutch out in the same way, and get the perfect start through practice it would be fine. But it seems like every start is different the way the mechanics of the system behave, which makes it unpredictable and sometimes beyond the drivers control as to how good a start they get. Sure, it's the drivers job to manage the randomness of it, but I'm not sure I like that idea.