News from Barcelona:
- Perez passed his test so he's back
- FIA will forbid engine "party mode" - essentially there will be one mode for qualy and same for race, no more boosting it for Q3. That looks directly aimed at Mercedes... Ferrari laughed out loud, it's not gonna make a difference for them, there's no party at Ferrari ;-) This could start (Well, stop) as soon as the belgian GP.

I wonder how they are going to police that?

they use a common CPU supplied by mac
the FIA can see the settings in real time to know the modes used

So the FIA has the same access to engine parameters and control as the teams do?

Grojean 5th fastest in FP2 where did that come from ??? Magnuson back in 16th . Vettel only 12th with the new chassis while his teammate was 6th I think . The black cars still in a different zip code 😁

Maybe low fuel ? He's not a **** driver actually, has shown speed before.. In terms of where did that come from, may I present Maldonado winning in Spain? That was the mother of "where did that come from" ;-)

F1 2020 Thread
 

Wow, watching the free practice 1 in Spain and listing to the announcers. They mentioned on average the brake pedal required 120 Kilo or 264 pounds of force to stop at the right pace. All done with the front of the foot so leg, ankle and toes.

Try that next time you are at the gym.

And not just once, but corner after corner for the weekend. Wow.

5G under braking, that's a lot of stopping force

Was told just lifting off the gas in an F1 car it brakes harder than any road car because of aero drag alone

This may have already been posted but it’s a good story of a normal person driving a modern F1 car including the brake for needed:

https://youtu.be/BE7mgfwd6M8

The really tricky part about braking in an F1 car, or any car with substantial down force, is that you have to progressively release pedal pressure as the speed goes down. It’s not simply a case of standing on the pedal, like in a street car.

Sounds to me like breaking for a fairly slow corner from full song is at best a 2 second affair. You'd do good to brake near 100% and modulate towards the end of the 2 second period. More like relieving the pressure on your kidney for a few milliseconds before you crush same kidney while accelerating away from the corner.

And that's lying down. I try to think of where the blood in my brain would be during all of this. Clearly this is not for anyone short of the ability to fly fighter jets. Race car drivers do their gymnastics on a relatively flat plane compared to the multi directional forces of high performance flight. They just don't have to strain their groin to push a brake pedal.

I think piloting an F1 car would be much more difficult than flying a fighter jet.

The thing about downforce is that it’s relative to the square of the speed. That means the release of pressure on the brakes is not linear and, as you rightly pointed out, it’s compressed into a really small timeframe.

Today's qualifying was not very exciting but it is what it is . What happened to Grojean's pace ? I hope qualifying at Indy later today is better .

It would be interesting to get a pilot and driver together to compare experience. I realize it would be much easier to put an F1 driver in an FA 18 Hornet's co pilot seat than it would be to do the opposite. One thing for sure is the commonality of G-forces. Interesting also is the fact that although an F1 car creates tremendous downforce, the driver feels none of it. Only acceleration in 2 axis (with the occasional elevation change and subsequent forces). The fighter pilot doesn't get too much lateral force, his 2 axis are fore and aft and up and down.

I think they's each be a bit disorientated at first.

My ESPN did not record Qualifying this morning?
so here are the highlights.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t8t4lbw6pBE" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Well, at least Max and Bottas weren’t lapped...

Not really a spoiler is it?

Anyone tuning into this thread on raceday without watching the race is begging for a spoiler, yes?

My post was more of a comment on the sharp end of F1 than a complaint about spoilers.

I doubt that an F1 driver would be braking for as long as 2 seconds into a corner. That's a loooong time in an F1 car

You need to brake earlier on a teams pit scooter than a F1 car doing 4x the speed for the Aryton Senna Chicane at the Jerez Circuit :eek: ;)

That was 12 yrs ago, scooter technology won't have kept up with F1 brake techology so that difference is probably more today :D

F1 2020 Thread
 

Fighter pilots have to wear a G-suit just to survive and stay awake during the maneuvers. F1 guys are no doubt tough, and very skilled but fighter pilots can torture a passenger and do it at 700+ mph and 60,000 feet vertical. And the craft is not some cheap 5 or 7 million dollar car, the top fighters planes cost that much to fly for a mission.

It's being reported that all 10 teams have agreed to sign the new contract for 2021-2025 . So does that mean Haas is staying in the game ? Or is that a placeholder and the team could be sold ? I would like to see them stay , get a good sponsor on board and get more competitive . Wouldn't hurt to hire two new drivers also .

The Williams F1 team has been sold to US investment firm Dorilton Capital .

There's nothing that gets a better return on your money than auto racing. Heck, I know several people that have used auto racing to generate a large sum of money, of course they started with a much larger sum of money, but...details...

Actually, most F1 team principals have managed to get fairly rich running F1 teams, so I guess you can make (yourself) some money in racing.

Frank Williams didn't have a pot to piss in when he started but I'd say he's wealthy now.

You see this a lot, a good driver in a not so good car. And then there's the salary, or in many cases how much sponsorship money the driver brings to the team. IDT a simple driver change will put Haas any higher on the grid. Better to split the money, and I don't even suggest evenly, between drivers and engineers. That's the core of the effort and if there isn't complete synergy you might as well get in the car yourself and see what you can do. That's about the size of the situation when the driver/engineer relationship isn't completely productive.

Other aspects of the team are obviously mechanical and race strategy, as well as top performance in the pits and in the factory. Mechanical issues and the race itself and be unpredictable (to a point) compared to car design and driver function as a pair.

However, my completely uneducated opinion is that Grosjean may be past his prime. He was fast when he first started in F1. He has driven for 3 teams if you include his brief F1 ride with his F2 team Renault in 2009. He's been with Haas since the days of of the Lotus team bouncing back and forth under the names Lotus and Renault. 4 years with 2020 being his 5th at Hass, his contract is ending this year.

We shall see what happens with Grosjean and indeed, Haas. The thing is, whenever Grosjean has dropped back into a feeder series he has been very successful. So, is it the driver, the car or the engineering? The choices faced are like which reliever to select in the top of the 6th with the beginning of the batting order on deck and 2 men on, with one out.

That takes exceptional experience. Hass just isn't exceptional in any way.

Williams? Well, if they are sold, the best thing to do at this time, IMHO, is rid the place of anyone named Williams and move the main principals up one notch if they are worthy. Wholesale house cleaning would be recipe for terminating the team. Starting with an entirely regrouped organization hasn't shown well in history.

Turkey is in...

After Imola November 1st, we now get Turkey from Nov 13 to 15 pending approval by the FIA (which should not be an issue)

Then 3 persian gulf races - 2 races in Bahreïn, Nov 29 and Dec 6.
Final race at Yas Marina December 13.

Not too bad for a Covid Season, and post Spa this w/e no more party mode...(watch, somehow mercedes will be even faster! ;-)

ANYmore discussion about the williams sale from the learned folks here? seems to me the price paid was rock bottom..a measly 176 mil. for full f1 team with all the development/fab. stuff included? i thought even mid pack teams had yearly operating budgets much more than that. seems like fire sale to me... but what do i know.... oh have the once mighty have fallen.. msaybe another good example of how the idiots are never let go, but instead, promoted...

Some teams have been sold for just a dollar.

So we won't be seeing their equipment on racingjunk.com?

Interesting article. So who really owns Williams now? Don Nichols?

https://www.yahoo.com/autos/williams-f1-sale-raises-questions-193500337.html

https://www.grandprix247.com/2020/08/24/who-are-new-williams-owners-dorilton-capital/

Was told on good authority if they hadn't sold the team would not have made it to the end of the season

Glen,
The G forces which most affect fighter pilots are experienced through a vertical plain. The pitch up of the nose (either in a climb or to turn hard) sees the blood supply try to remain on its original path and head to the legs. The G suit tries its best to overcome this. The effects may be felt for a few seconds at a time for perhaps five minutes of combat.
F1 drivers biggest problem is the lateral G forces experienced for perhaps 20 to 30% of a lap over a period of between one and a half to two hours. Imagine lying on your side and having sixty or eighty pounds hanging from your head for a half hour. Might be fatiguing.

Best
Les

Wow, that is scary. I wonder if/how executive personnel may change as a result of the acquisition. I have no insight into Williams, but it appears to me that Claire was not a bad team principal.

No doubt at all, the neck strain of a F1 driver is off the carts and those guys are tough athletes. But they are driving at the peak of car evolution. I remember one designer was playing with designing a car on a computer with unlimited budget, and all the bells and whistles modern technology had created, and no rules to restrict him. So active aero, active suspension, traction control, ABS and as much power as possible to make. They figured it would be so fast as to make it deadly or at least harmful to the driver.

I guess the other difference in F1 drivers and fighter pilots is no one ever is trying their best to kill you with air to air missilies, bullets, and surface to air missiles.

I have never been impressed with Claire. It's often been rumored that the team would have done better had her brother run it but who knows?

I recall reading an article that said the same thing.