High Five Friday - Middle of the pre-season edition
Anticipation for the 2013 season continues to build as testing unfolds
Published by Christine Blachford
We've had one of three pre-season tests now, and there's just one more launch and one more race seat left to be filled/completed. All the pieces are starting to come together ahead of the 2013 season, and in honour of that, it's time for our infrequent Friday F1 questionnaire to make a return - your chance to take on five questions that ponder areas of the sport that have been hitting headlines of late. Ninety minutes and five questions later, we will all be much wiser, I think!
Goooood evening
Hello hello
Evening chaps. I suppose an hour's build up is a bit much, but never mind. Gives me time to perfect my questions.
I've got the F1Show on as it's being shown on SS1 as well :) Max is giving a good performance, and so is the lack of GT.
Marussia are definitely enjoying him being on TV! twitter.com/Marus…016136192/photo/1
Points please for Max
I'll see what I can do :)
Is all I ask :)
Gives us all a chance to settle in :)
Gosh I'm getting far too escited at seeing the events page having the first sessions of the season.
That's good! Although you have to keep that excitement up for a few more weeks yet!
Gives us time to think of our answers too
I can do that :)
In fact, what better way to get excited than with a handy handbook of 2013 handy goodness?
#freeplug
♥
oh wow. i assumed mosley. #luckyescape
That's some strange teamwear. Reminds me of TK Maxx.
...which would actually be appropriate.
Imagine if his team-mate was Tony Kanaan.
:)
a missed opportunity!
am way more tempted by the prospect of sky if they have dropped georgie.
who was on the f1 show?
Just ted?
Ooooh i see on the photo, nat! yay!
i can see martin and the other girl in that marussia piccy.
wish we could give ted points for being so smoooooooth
http://t.co/DgZJHAWm
Heheheh!
ted's pregnant.
slightly poor timing, server might go down at 9pm. sorry, v.late notice from the hosting company.
if it does, do hang in there for the final questions.
Tut tut.
have they been taking notes from media temple?
poor show really. one day we'll be able to run several ;)
#shudder
One day, pinky...
blast from the past. Except a really rubbish blast that everyone runs away from
:) :)
Media temple knock knock joke:
Knock Knock
Who's th-oh never mind I can see you now, the door went down
heeh
Ted, Nats, Max, JohnnyH, MartinB
No way was she ever there on merit.
probs seemed like a good idea at the time. she didn't attempt to improve or show any interest all year though.
ooh, is nascar back this weekend?
You'd've thought she would've tried to actually learn the sport so she sounded less stilted in her delivery (or is that her usual 'style')? Let's hope the rumours are true.
Yes www.nascar.com/en…t-cup-series.html
Are you a NASCAR fan now?
so Ant, tell me how this TV works
i try to follow montoya until he inevitably crashes.
proper gone: www1.skysports.co…y-sports/our-team
It shows us the interesting bits that I've decided to highlight, by waving my hand at these controls here. All you need to do is not get in the way.
This weekend is also the NBA all star game which means it is also the slam dunk competition. It is on at stupid o'clock Saturday night/Sunday morning though
No more NASCAR chatter now, it's F1 time!
So happy johnny is still there. he's so much fun :)
*cue Thunder struck by ACDC*
I miss Crofty's 5 Live buildup
cider on the desk, britney on the telly, f1 on the screen.
#sorted
Q1: With complaints about the track surface in Jerez, and the knowledge that Barcelona is overdone, what tracks do you think F1 should (or you would like them to) test at?
Montreal would be a really good test track surely as it's fast and is a good opportunity to test the tyre wear too
Also silverstone because I'm greedy and want a cheap opportunity to watch F1 cars :)
You can't beat a tenner to watch F1 cars for a day!
Plus it'd be really quiet and who knows where you could end up? It'd be amazing and I know a lot of people that'd go along to it,
Rainbow Road
♥ ♥
Montreal would be good... although, they have track surface troubles too, don't they?
+1
Oh yeah.
What they need is the blue peter team to come and help sort it out with sticky back plastic and empty cornflake boxes.
Good as a summer test track but not so good at this time of year.
It always seemed so much more exotic when teams went off to South Africa or Rio for 6 weeks of testing
Although they should definitely recreate the F1 Race Stars tracks and test on them. Testing through a rollercoaster in Ferrari World would be great
Mangy Cours
portimao looks like a missed oppertunity, f1 has already tested there, but surely better than jerez:
en.wikipedia.org/…rnational_Circuit
or aragon:
en.wikipedia.org/…l_Motor_de_Aragon
Or a circuit that has been carved out on a (very) frozen lake, somewhere artic-wards. Would love to see them on ice-tyres :)
Some imposter imposted me and spelt the track wrong ;-)
Top Gear did a Silverstone in the snow, I think?
I am happy for teams to straight line test on my street, even if it does have potholes and is only 100m long.
However, I offer tea and toast. So swings and roundabouts.
disclaimer: teams may also encounter swings and roundabouts,
I think you're right (vague recollection), I've seen them also do cars on frozen lakes, just not F1 cars.
:)
Been done loads of times
www.youtube.com/w…tch?v=Lb3HSs8TJ8w
www.youtube.com/w…tch?v=PZJe7ua0hno
heidfeld did for reasons i can't recall.
would love to see some of the current drivers try and complete a lap on that kind of surface.
if we could bring back straight-line testing, i'd love to see/hear f1 cars running each way through a tunnel.
Question 2: Force India have reportedly given Adrian Sutil a seat fitting (or feet sitting as I seem to always say), could he be in for a return, or are they just riling up Ferrari?
Not if Jarno Trulli's photography lessons have anything to do with it...
I don't mind if he'd return. In fact I think I'd prefer it to Bianchi getting a drive.
i'm not sure i agree with a formula 1 season that includes adrian sutil, but not timo nor heikki.
I'd agree... Making Bianchi's backers front the money before time runs out - ultimatum.
agreed but i'm a bit sick of experienced drivers getting the boot for young pay drivers. I can understand if they're like Trulli at the end of their career but Timo, Heikki and arguably Sutil too have plenty to offer in F1 yet. Even algeursauri has more to offer and unanswered questions in F1 too.
But yeah, no timo and heikki is just crazy. Christine's curse seems to extend to winners of Christine's Rankings... uh oh, hide Jenson!!!
Force India obviously rate him so they could be considering him. I imagine they would prefer to give Bianchi the drive. I would expect that they are either trying to push Bianchi's backers to cough up more money or encourage Sutil's to
I'm not having another curse. I can't take the guilt!
with sahara having their assets frozen and mallya making martine mccutcheon look wealthy, will the person who starts the season in the second seat still be there at the end?
could be a musical chair for rich people.
But maybe that won't be an end-of-career type of bad luck this time, perhaps getting-beated-by-a-younger-teammate instead.
Well if they want to prove to everyone they have the financial stability to survive, this is their moment.
...this is their perfect moment...
#sosorry
:)
sutil's a wierd one though really. He's never really been really poor, but he's never been really amazing either. Hes always felt like a 'making up the field numbers' type of driver.
has he done any racing since leaving f1?
... he would fit right in at Force India then!
Not that I know of. Maybe Pat would know something
i would however prefer sutil over karthikeyan. i don't know much about bianchi, except that his name sounds like a nice cocktail.
Question 3: Another team leaving things late is Williams, who will be the last to launch next Tuesday. Will this affect them adversely in the coming season, or might they continue their forward progress in 2013?
Narain in a FI, made to be?
Mallya won't have it!
their new website is lovely... erm... if that helps?
williams are determined to make me dislike them over the last two winters of dropping awesome people.
I think the delayed launch isn't the problem for 2013; i think the progress they made under toto wolff will come to a halt
plus it looks like the windows 8 - http://williamsf1.com/
They're done some tyre work with the old and known chassis (albeit on a useless circuit for it) and experimented with a new nose and exhaust system (albeit on the wrong car), so all in all, poor show.
sounds like the first test was an expensive waste of time :(
I don't think launching late will affect them. McLaren launched so late in 1988 that they only ran the new car at the last pre-season test day. They won 15 out of 16 races
two words: adrian newey
I would bet a lot of money Williams don't do that.
But it seems that development is soooooo critical these days.
lucky they still have him then, phew!
#1995comments
Nothing to do with Adrian Newey. He was still at Leyton House
this year yup. next year, if a team comes up with something revolutionary, that might work in terms of keeping ideas secret. this year they gots nothin.
Let me think about it
They seemed to get themselves back together under toto's leadership though. I just wonder how much of that will change now.
wikipedia disagrees: en.wikipedia.org/…ki/McLaren_MP4/13
Next year it's all about bold thinking and big gambles, with the ability to jump on board with what's quick - I looks forward to it :D
maybe he was at his friend Leighton's house.
actually, i have that wrong. as you were. another year of mclaren domination.
better: en.wikipedia.org/…iki/McLaren_MP4/4
Look what's just crossed my Twitter stream: http://t.co/uaY2NRdc
1988 not 1998. The drivers were Prost and Senna. The car was designed by Steve Nichols with a lot of assistance from Gordon Murray
wow! lewis with a giant jacques villeneuve impersonator!
f1 is nothing like 1988 now though. how can you compare, it's on a different level, technically.
Exactly. There are a lot more simulation tools so testing is a lot less important than it is now
f1 is all about the tyres. understanding, optimising, controlling. hard to do virtually.
turn it down to easy mode and turn on all the assists, easy peasy :)
Also pretty hard to simulate how everything works together, seeing as the equations used in CFD are not perfect representations of the airflow in reality. #maths
Just ask Virgin/Marussia.
But we have CFD and the like now. They didn't then.
:)
I was meaning it's still about track time, regardless of how far we've come
i can't believe they didn't have Excel then
The did, it was just called squared paper and a pencil.
That was more the case then though.
Not arguing that one :)
Question 5: Talking of launches, there have been a mix of stepped noses/non-stepped noses. What will Williams launch with, and who do you think will run what come race day?
if winning f1 is all about turning up at the last test and dominating the season... what the hell were mclaren doing in jerez??
i'm pretty sure that came after excel, I should know. I saw them in sale next to the floppy disks in wh smith
Haven't they been playing with a modesty panel nose in Jerez?
There was Excel but to use it you had to close down everything else. Of course that was true for everything then. Windows 3.1 was even worse than Vista
oooh good. williams have the best livery, the nose should be in keeping with the car.
It's not all about turning up at the last minute. That was just an example to show that missing some testing does no necessarily mean that their season will be bad
No, no, no, Sauber livery FTW.
go sauber!
unveeling!
really?? damn, i'm not sure.
The only guarantee is that the Williams won't make Christine recoil as much as the Caterham did.
it's a lovely green :(
it's brighter than an adrian newey lecture on aerodynamics
It wasn't so much the green as the disgusting shape.
heh
looked like tony has sat on it.
Weren't they the only turbo car left that season, so they had a massive advantage over everyoen else?
It really is a bit wonky
I have to head off to drive my brother home but this has been good fun :) Until next time awesome people!
No
Safe journey Lukeh
Byeee
Thanks Sir Lukeh.
forgot the second part to the question. i think only marussia will run a nice nose during the first race.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Sauber because then they really would be my dream team.
Lotus and Ferrari amongst others had turbos and the turbos were seriously restricted in 1988
They look to have a lower chassis design than other teams.
ahh true. there's isn't a modestry panel is it. them too then.
i haven't compared, but i was assuming it's the same one they've had for two and a half years.
mostly because they have no resources to make anything else.
I don't know where I got the idea that it was the only turbo left from.
I'd assume so as well, but the pics I've looked at suggest possibly this.
reminder that the server might die at some point. pls watch twitter for updates.
In case of emergency, read this comment: Byee
:) :)
Final one then, and feel free to keep discussing all and everything so far as well. Question 5: Alonso is due to start his testing duties next week. Is he being smart, or just lazy?
Before the season started a lot of people made Berger the favourite for the championship partly because McLaren were so late launching
He's been worked hard by Ferrari most of the winter, whereas Seb as disappeared, I think he's been smart to get some him-time, and let the car be shaken down by Felipe seems fine (on that circuit forsure).
if anyone would know that the jerez circuit was screwed, it would be him, right?
i reckon he had more than a little hint it wasn't worth the trouble.
Smart. Unless there are huge changes the first few days of testing is little more than a shakedown and finding a baseline set up. No point in Alonso hanging around while they debug the car. Better to let someone else do that then he can do the serious development work and get a lot more running
Any reason why they were so late?
interesting. are ferrari the only team to do so much off-season PR?
Yes. Unless you count 1 Lotus Twitter bod.
?
The Lotus man has been sat on Twitter all off season, or at least it feels like he's been posting updates all the while.
*preemptive hug to christine in case the server vanishes*
biiiig fan of high five friday.
Hi5s to that!
I reckon, there's very much scope for guest high five hosts, themed questions, all sorts in the future.
I can't remember but it was probably related to the revolutionary design. The car was like a roller skate. Gordon Murray had tried the really low philosophy with the Brabham BT55. He had problem with it because the engine was a BMW straight 4 which suffered aalll sorts of problems because it had to be canted over to fit in the car. The McLaren had a Honda V6 which was lower anyway so it took all those problems away. Makes you wonder what would have happened if Brabham had Honda engines. Would Elio de Angelis still have been killed and would Derek Warwick have been world champion?
ahh, i closed me f1 lists. just started looking again. who does their account, s/he'll be knackered by season start.
YES!
Interesting. That could be fun
good volunteering
Hehehe!
final thought on alonso's lack of testing. what if it rains in barca for the next fortnight?
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the Circuit de Catalunya - doesn't scan, so I can't see it happening.
I don't understand the concept of going to Jerez knowing it would being a waste, nobody knew it would be until they turned up and a normally reliable circuit was breaking up. In any case, nobody pushes for laptime in the first test, it is all about systems tests and reliability mileage. Maybe some of the teams complaining were pushing too soon.
I think it would be interesting to go back over the last five or six seasons to compare launch dates (or whether the car first ran in test 1 or test 2 or 3) to championship positions - is there a correlation?
Bankrupt, sadly.
Nothing on my radar. he was damaged goods last year. I was surprised to hear his name connected with the FI seat.
:)
haven't checked the weather. the question was more hypothetical. would we all still think he's as smart as we currently do, if went and rained for a fortnight?
sounds like maths... and a guest post :)
Put it this way, he has so far had as much time in the car as FI's #2 driver, but you can bet plenty more hours in the sim (even though Pedro doesn't rate it as much as McL's).
Seeing as Jerez is most useful for shake-downs, ironing out techy bugs and mechanical work he's not lost much there. Then when you consider that little or no useful tyre-experience/data has been had/collected he's not lost out on much there either.
If the next 2 tests are washouts, then no driver on the grid will have gained any proper experience of the handling of their car on a faster, more aero reliant, racetrack.
I think they'll all be in a similar or the same boat, so getting a few more weeks of conditioning under his beat and getting his head in the right place to start the season a few weeks fresher than the competition could pay dividends come the last few weekends in November.
Not maths, web trawling..
I've got most launch dates but finding out which test they debuted the car is a bit harder.
Plotting # days between launch and first race vs driver championship finishing position might be interesting. But a little hard to control for driver skill and team budget - I wonder what will happen.
Excluding the 'new teams', since 2010 most teams have launched in the block between Jan 28th and Feb 10th. Just one exception - Mercedes last year on Feb 21st. Williams this year: Feb 19th.
Interestingly, Ferrari and McLaren launched much earlier in 2008: Jan 6th and 7th. That was the last time Ferrari won the Constructors'.
I don't know I can write a post out of it but I can send what I've collected so far.
It often takes me a couple of hours to put together even a simple post just to get the words out and after pulling together the days I didn't think it was worth that long, but if anyone is able to do it quick and wants to take the data please by my guest. :) Hopefully this link works:
https://docs.goog…/edit?usp=sharing
*more quickly
Well that was good timing wasn't it. The planned emergency maintenance happened straight after I got volunteered and before I could get my excuses in.
#stitchedup
http://t.co/h0ADFtO8 I've taken the data and plotted the 4 complete series; so you have days from launch to first race vs WCC points.
I've nondimensionalised the axes by dividing them by the days from 1st car launch to first race vs winning points tally for each year. This way all the series lie on top of eachother and allow us a better comparison.
I.e. The further right a point is the closer to the beginning of the launches it was vs the higher a point is the larger fraction of winning teams points it represents.
All in all, inconclusive year on year...
Good work. We seem to proven the teams all like launching at about the same time, even if that common week shuffles a bit every year! I still think if you launch significantly behind everyone else it is a disadvantage, unless you really do have something special up your sleeve and you are hiding it. We just don't have enough data points for teams that do that,
Getting it out there to iron out the reliability bugs is crucial.
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