I have the luxury of not feeling particularly attached to any of the drivers or teams. I just sit back and enjoy every race for what it is. A marvelous contest between the most talented race drivers in the world. Todays race was fantastic!

Would you like to make the argument that the McLaren is as good or better than the Ferrari? How many points did Shumaker & Alonso miss the championship by in their first seasons?

Great race to watch - just like any of the wet ones.

When are the organisers going to switch on to the idea that races where the traction is lowest make for the best viewing - if all the years races were that exciting I'd never miss one.

Maybe halve the size of the wings on the cars for dry races.

Tim

not to spoil the race for those who haven't watched it but i'm VERY happy for who came in 3rd :)

Its coming Tim, first they took away TC and next they are taking away a lot of wing area.

Mule, Shumi and Alonso did not have the luxury of joining a front running team and getting to benefit from a two times champion setting up their car.

Shumacker developed a mid pack team with his input ...

Never mind..

Your right Hambone is the best thing since sliced bread and your nit alone both you and Hambone think so.

Wow.

Hamilton had what? A 70-second lead on second place and had lapped all but two cars? I don't know if it is possible to dominate much more decisively in an F1 race.

He went from 4th to 2nd on the start of the race alone.

Great race.

Thanks to Fox for showing the entire race - what fun!

Great race!

Amazing race!

Probably the best of the season, in front of a capacity crowd (did they say 93,000?) and Bernie's going to take the race away from Silverstone?

That's Nuts.

Good thing Hamilton won or Varsha and Steve-o might have broke down in tears. Like how one of the announcers said Massa's chances at the championship were "over" after this race. It's a three way tie for Christ's sake. Hamilton had a great drive today, no arguing that. Bet Ferrari would like Ross Brawn back to plan their strategy, could Ferrari make any more stupid pit moves? Wished it would have rained harder to watch Rubens run down Hamilton like he was. At least we don't have to listen to all the Mclaren whiners about FIA plots and Ferrari favoritism. Ron Dennis makes Sir Frank look like the life of the party.

I didn't get the impression that the commentators were suggesting tht Massa's championship hopes were over, just that he'd seen that he'd taken care of his hope of scoring any points towards his championship challenge today.

I couldn't believe what was going on in the pits. It was clearly demonstrated that the tire change didn't impose any time penalty as you could change the tires and still be waiting for the fuel to fill. So why on earth would Ferrari and Renault opt to keep a worn set of inters on? There seemed to be nothing to gain if it continued to dry, as the worn tires would be worn out quicker, and everything to lose if it got wetter as the new tires would work better at shifting the standing water. I couldn't see any sense in this move.

I was also surprised at the race strategy most teams were using. Why did almost every team stay on intermediates, when the rain was clearly coming down and million-dollar F1 cars were spinning off the track three to a lap? Look at how many drivers ended their race in the gravel, when they could have been merrily zipping along on full wets. Another 10 min of rain and #3 would have been #1, and wouldn't that have been something!

I think part of the reason they kept the intermediates on was they were aready up to heat and they felt it would be harder in the conditions to get new ones up to the same levels given there was so little grip to move the blocks around to generate the heat needed to get the grip (vicious circle)

Tim

What about the tire (sorry, tyre for you) warmers? Fox had an infrared camera for one of the pitstops. Not as good as a pyrometer, but the IR image seemed to suggest that there was pretty similar temp between the "old" tires coming off, and the pre-warmed ones going on. I couldn't tell the difference, by my eye. Count me as one of those who didn't entirely understand the "benefit" of double-stinting the intermediate tires.

Great drives by Hamilton and Barichello. I love the rain.

I think we're partially fooled by the camera views we're given (as are the announcers--I don't believe they're at the track). Peter Windsor is present, however, and he commented that while all the announcers were incredulous that teams were continuing to use the intermediates, he would look up at the sky over the garages and see blue sky. So if you're a team strategist, and the weather info you have (presumably from an airplane or helicopter flying around the track in real-time) says that the rain should end shortly, and you look up and see blue sky, it might not sound so logical to go to full wets.

Still, it was pretty amazing to see Barichello in the dog-slow Honda run laps 13 seconds faster than anyone else for a bit. Eventually, he, too switched to the intermediates, though.

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=35349

Domenicali -
If the rain had stopped and the track had started to show a dry line, Kimi and Fernando would have been in very good shape and would have been turning faster laps.

They both took a gamble and instead of it being a brilliant one where we would have been praising them today it backfired on them and we are shaking our heads.

I think its a fine line between the two, look at Barichello, he took a gamble with full wets on what might have been a drying track and it paid off, his move was 180° from the other two and it turned out to be the best move of the race.

They made a comment during the race that it's not so much Bernie taking the race away as it is the car owners. We never really find out what the teams get paid per race, but apparently the British Driver's Club or whatever it's called doesn't want to pay the teams what they normally get. Of course Bernie takes more than his share of the track money so he's probably pushing the teams to say that.

A few nudges in the correct direction...

Tyre choice...

Made on the basis of observers (real weather men and women) and weather radar positioned downwind of the track...

So its an informed estimate of how long the rain will/ won't last. Renault inexplicably got it wrong as they are a local team...possibly the closest..although Honda are next closest probably. Renault and Ferrari predicted the rain would finish very soon after their stop and felt a worn inter was a better choice on the drying track than a new inter which would have required another stop...They predicted incorrectly and paid the price..which was allowing Hamilton to win.

Over here the McLaren team were being lambasted for not going to full wets when Rubens was catching Hamilton hand over fist.. and yet they did make a valid choice....LH kept it on the track and at a good pace...so kudos to him and he finished first...again his skill, nobody else. The result justified the risk they took.

Ferrari, who were catching LH's McLaren with a certain degree of ease prior to the first stop took a higher risk strategy as the results show. Based on prior startegy 'mistakes' made by McLaren and Ferrari neither team has a monopoly on getting right or wrong.

Ferrari/McLaren.
They have both been hampered massively in developing this year's car. McLaren have lost the best development driver currently racing as FA has gone back to Renault and Ferrari are suffering from both MS's and Ross Brawn's absence in the day to day team.

Of the two, I think Ferrari are maintaining their relative strength better than McLaren as the BMWs and Renaults are bring pressure to bear in the second and third rows...(Ignore the Red Bull front row of Silverstone...). Should FA stay at Renault then they will be back in the frame next year. Whiner, prima donna or not FA is a very talented driver... having beaten the MS/ Ross Brawn combo twice...that is not just luck.

The BMW team will be challenging harder next year provided they have a better driver squad..as both drivers are good but Robert K is inexperienced and Heidfeld has had enough years in F1 to demonstrate any out of the ordinary ability.

Tyre temp..

Surface temp is not the same as the overall carcass temp...the carcass temp provides the real performance of the tyre..or so I'm told.


Silverstone/ Donnington.

Bernie makes the call as he holds the rights to host an F1 race. Teams are not part of that side of things. So far Donington has the contract to hold the UK GP race.. but it will be full of clauses they have to meet in order to do so.. currently the track is not up to the necessary standard and will take some major work to bring it to the right level. The track infrastructure is even further behind... the pits and spectator areas need to be completely remade. Hopefully the people behind this can deliver...but they will be very hard pressed to do so within the time frame... 2011 is far more likely. However the real game being played is to try to pressure Silverstone to get the funding into place to develop the place and pay the higher price....

Those two announcers are so biased in favor of hambone it's embarrassing. I'm surprised they don't get on their knees under the table during the post race interviews. Maybe they do ....

If Ferrari had gone to full wets or at least installed new intermediates instead of staying on worn out inters it would have been hammy in second place.

For those with Alzheimer's or ADD, kimi had caught up to hambone and was lapping faster until they both pitted. Hammy got new intermediate tires, kimi stayed on the old ones which were worn down. After that pit Kimi started lapping 5 seconds slower than hambone. the "total dominance" didn't happen until Ferrari threw away the race and handicapped their driver by betting on a dry track that never materialized.

Take a look at what Rubens did with a bad car, that was a real drive. From near the back to podium in the rain passing other cars left and right.

I thought Bernie nixed use of Silverstone for good.

I don’t know if I’m buying in to the explanation that getting the tires up to temperature might have been a problem. I was looking at that thermal imaging camera view too and thought that the tires going on looked the same as the tires coming off. Of course I guess that there are a few factors that might make sense to the tire warming idea.

1) If the tires on the car had cooled significantly on the slow run into the pits then maybe the tires coming off the car were already cooled.
2) Also if the tires going on were going to cool down on the slow run out of the pits then that could make the situation worse.
3) I suppose it is also possible that the temperature range on the thermal camera was at its limit and anything above a certain temperature looked white. In this case the tires going on and the tires going off could have been at significantly different temperatures but above the range that showed white on the thermal image.

I’m not so sure about 1 and 2 as I wouldn’t think that there would be much chance of the tire temperature dropping significantly over such a short time/distance. We’re probably only talking about 10 – 20 seconds at the most. Anyone know how much heat you could lose from a tire over that time and distance? I don’t really know how thermal imaging cameras work either, but I would think that the teams have a good idea how hot a tire needs to be and would set their tire warmers to match the temperature of the tires coming off the car in this situation.

I can think of a couple of things that MAY explain Ferrari and Renault’s decision;

A) At the point of the first round of stops (20 or so laps into the race) it seemed unclear what the weather was going to do. If they could make a quick stop by not changing tires and short filling the fuel then they may have gained a small advantage and continued to run for a while until the weather forecast was more reliable. At that point they could have planned to switch to dry tires/full wets/fresh inters, whichever suited the forecast for the remaining laps and filled the car for the end of the race.

B) The other possible way I see that worn tires could have been an advantage is that the worn tread would offer more grip and probably a more stable temperature because the tread blocks in between the grooves wouldn’t shift around as much under heavy loading. If it had been dry or drying then maybe we would have seen the worn tires running quicker. Maybe this could have been used in conjunction with the short fill so that a quick pit stop would gain time which would be further helped by a light car running on tires with more grip.


Here’s the problem, in my opinion, with both of these possibilities.
Kimi and Fernando both made their first stop around lap 20 – 21 which was about 1/3rd race distance. Based on Hamilton running on inters in China last year I seem to recall his tires were completely shot after half a race distance, and that was with traction control limiting wheel spin. These guys were running without traction control but on what may be a less demanding circuit (From a tire wear point of view). Assuming a similar rate of wear Kimi and Fernando might have managed to run another 10-12 laps in drying condition until their tires were shot. For reference Fernando & Kimi stopped again on lap 30 – 31, although the heavy rain at that point was probably a major factor to their lack of grip. However, I suspect that had it not been raining their tires would have been on the point of being useless anyway.

So in order for either of these strategies to have worked the teams should only have put in enough fuel for the laps remaining on those tires, say 10 laps, at which point they would have to have made another stop anyway. But looking at the time that the first stop took they appeared to put in fuel for the next full stint which would probably have been 20 laps to take the car to 2/3 distance and I can see no way that the tires would have been able to last out that long.