In this second preview edition of F1 Digest we take a look through the entry list, focusing on the teams and their new cars. How have they performed in testing? What features are on the new machines? Who has a strong lineup? All that and more will get you ready for the season to come.
The Teams
From the non-existant teams such as US F1 and Campos to those who are determined to challenge for another championship - Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes. In some teams, the drivers overshadow the cars, but we spend plenty of time discussing front wings, sidepods and shark fin engine covers.
There are new liveries to discuss, and how the teams managed their launches, plus the relationship between teammates - those who have new faces to get to know, and those who are continuing with their fellow driver from 2009.
We also take a quick look at the battle between Virgin Racing and Lotus, from testing, reliability issues, air stewardess outfits and launches. Everything is going to be different this year, and it's going to be great.
Whilst Mr C and I have settled for discussing the launches briefly in the podcast, and scoring them out of 10, new guest writer KerbRider has taken a more detailed look at the teams we've seen so far.
2010 has promised to be a great year for F1 since Sebby V took the chequered flag in Abu Dhabi. The off season has now ensured this will be the case.
A lot of people have gotten excited over the game of musical chairs the drivers like to play every few years. Some even more so because a certain driver, I like to call Voldemort, decided he wanted to play again.
Although all these changes have been great to see, and have whet my appetite for what is promising to be a great season, the real excitement for me is launch season.
I love the smell of Duco in the morning!
The reason I love launch season is because I'm a 'details' man. I will study photos of the new cars for hours on end to see their subtleties and nuances, and speculate as to why they did this, or that, and then formulate how I think a particular design philosophy might work.
Different strokes for different folk I guess.
I'll start with the fundamentals of design philosophy, and I'll thank Mr Codling for his insightful article in this months F1 Racing. Cant wait to get the book.
The way I see it, the fundamental concept of designing a quick car is to have the air under the car moving a lot quicker than the air on top. This is basic aeronautics. What an F1 designer must try to achieve is to have four separate airflows to make a car work effectively. Underneath, above, and the two sides of the car.
The idea is to keep these "chunks" of air as independent of each other as possible. So in other words, we don’t want air flowing from the side of the car bleeding into the air flowing over or under the car. As there are four big black squares on a car, the philosophy is to minimise this "bleeding" as much as possible.
It all about compromise.
So on to the cars that have been launched to date.
Ferrari
Ferrari seem to have a simple and sleek design. Quite an attractive car I think, and it hurts me to say that. Love the lighter red colour, and the white wings are bearable for sponsorship purposes. Not a bad deal for Ferrari to get Alonso basically for free, when Santander are obviously footing the bill for him. So can we now class Fernando as a pay driver!
Average height for the nose. Not as high as others and about even with Mercedes. The all important front wing is clearly not as detailed as Mclaren, Red Bull and Sauber, but maybe it doesn’t need to be because the rest of the car deflects the air where needed. Fat, and weighty sidepods are well streamlined, and have the bulk purely for side impact crash testing. A feature most cars have this season.
Where I think Ferrari have excelled is the rear end. Although they haven't chosen to go the "sharkfin" path, there is so much free space at the back for clear airflow over the rear wing. Of course the "sharkfin" is subject to crosswind buffeting that can affect pitch and yaw mid-corner, and more importantly, under braking. What might let them down is the lack of cover over the rear suspension. This may cause turbulent air affecting the air that exits above the diffuser.
McLaren
For one, I am glad McLaren kept their silver and red livery. Its effective, sexy, and unique. Even if the Mercedes has tried to replicate without copying.
McLaren have boldly copied the splitter/divider underneath the nose that Williams had last year but strangely decided to opt against this year.
If we look at a front on view on the MP4-25, it is clear that this device will divide the air to flow more cleanly through the suspension arms and steering column, and swiftly into the sidepods. It will have the effect of forcing more air faster into the sidepods, which explains in a fashion as to why they are so small compared to other teams.
"The front wing is, in layman's terms, off its face!"
The front wing is, in layman's terms, off its face! Incredibly detailed, and obviously Mclarens' philosophy this year was to not be caught out by last year's mistakes. They learned a lot last year as a design team. Although they seemingly have "borrowed" ideas from RBR and Brawn, they have made them uniquely Mclaren. The Sharkfin is high, and long, and a bit fatter at the bottom. This is to accommodate the exhaust exits that, again unique to Mclaren, exit horizontally, rather than vertically like the rest of the grid. It will be interesting to see what benefit this has. The MP4-25 is vastly different in appearance to anything else this year which means that this year Mclaren will go either one of two ways - that is poor, or win the lot.
Mercedes
My overall view is that I'm largely unimpressed by Mercedes. I was expecting big changes in this year's car. The Mercedes livery is average, and hopefully will be updated next year.
They have gone with a higher nose than the Brawn, and the design remains largely unchanged. Of course as Ross alluded to last year, the nose has the air channelling veins. This seems to be a large talking point, although I think its effectiveness is overrated. I can only assume the concept was born out of a need to direct airflow away from the drivers helmet, which is a rather large obstacle.
The most noticeable change is the air box. Low and broad with a splitter. There is a semi-sharkfin, and I expected tighter packaging at the rear considering they have had a year with the engine and drive train. All this being said, I still believe they will be a top four team.
Sauber
This one gets me excited. BMW obviously did a lot of work before the withdrawal. A great looking front wing that should be successful in diverting airflow around the front wheels and into the rear sculpted body work. A high nose to increase the amount of air flowing underneath the car, and unique sidepods that have the idea of moulding airflow back inward toward the rear wing.
A large and bulky sharkfin as per Mclaren, but inspiringly sculpted sidepods and tight rear packaging. All in the name of rear stability and front end grip. I believe the Sauber should have great traction with the low sitting rear, and as F1 is mainly made up of slow to medium speed corners, this will be a great advantage over the course of 19 races. I think they will be the surprise of the year. Kubica left too early. Which leads me to...
Renault
U-G-L-Y they aint got no alibi, its ugly!! For a team that pulled out as late as they did officially, I think they must have pulled out mentally beforehand as this year's car will be the joke of 2010. My heart sinks for Kubica, it really does. Ugly cars rarely do well in F1, and I don’t think this year will be any exception.
Of course I'm saying this under the impression that this is the car that will actually race.
It looks quite uninspiring, and a bit too bulky at the sides. Like a driver, the car needs to be fit, and trim the fat. It looks shorter than the rest, as does the RBR at first glance. Go Renault engine efficiency!!
"I expect design changes early on in the year"
The rear wing is left of field, and might suit their own philosophy, but I expect design changes early on in the year, if not before Bahrain. The front wing endplates are also a tad bland, and are the least detailed of the already established teams.
Let's not expect much unfortunately.
Williams
I always hold high hopes for Williams. Shouldn't everyone? Real racers, battlers and sadly of late, the perennial underachievers. This all stems from their brief encounter with a walrus, and they have never recovered fully from that.
I'm a bit befuddled as to why they went with a clean sheet, as last year's car was quite decent, and an evolution of that may have pushed them up the grid. I hope it works for them, but as strange as it sounds, the car seem too clean to be a top performer.
It seems as of late, to find real performance and aero gains, a car needs to look messy. But I guess the 2009 Brawn put that to rest too. Nose is high, which in the past meant high centre of gravity, but with the double diffuser malarkey, this is necessary to maximise air flow underneath the car. I suspect that with this year's cars most performance will be found from the floor, and suspension geometry.
Interesting to note the Williams front wing sits backward from the mounting pillars, whereas the other teams have their mounting pillars attached closer to the front of the front wing main plane. There are some interesting components on the end fences that look successful in dispersing airflow around the tyres.
Toro Rosso
Nothing to see here folks! Keep moving. Seriously, not much change from last years RBR. Not expecting great feats from the driver pairing, although Buemi has some potential. I expect them to be toughing it out with Williams and or Renault at best, Virgin and Lotus at worst.
Virgin Racing
There will be some bad headlines printed about this team this year. My impressions of the car are that it might surprise. Well packaged at the rear, and sidepods of a Mclaren nature. The real sticking point will be suspension geometry and heating the tyres in unison. The front wing looks large, and dual channel end plates look as though they will get the desired result there. Except for one fine point. Sure the CFD would have calculated big downforce levels, but as our friend Mr Saward mentioned in a podcast last year, how will it go in turbulent air? There are no intricate details that suggest it will cope well in traffic, and there is a massive space behind the front wing that has no details to direct air straight toward the floor splitter and onward and downward toward the diffuser.
The car itself looks fantastic. I love the livery, the addition of the Yorkshire rose is just brilliant. I'm Australian, and it means nothing to me, but it’s a beautiful design. For me it harks back to the first Jordan in '91. Clean and unpretentious (even though it is a Branson baby). I think they will score points for sure, but not more than 10 unless they get lucky in the wet.
Red Bull
The one we were all waiting for. The thread for the launch was full of negative comments which surprised me. Sure it looks like last year's car, but they were the quickest last year, so the only thing they had to concentrate on was the rear end because they missed the double diffuser boat. Additionally if RBR can get Total to incorporate into blue, why did Renault insist on that hideous red?
"The rear end is even more tightly packaged than last year"
Firstly the front wing. Equal in development man hours of the Mclaren I would imagine, and running in turbulence was an issue for them last year until they introduced the stepped top wing. The nose is almost round once we get past the yellow tip, and the airflow channels on top are more pronounced and sharper at the front than other teams who have copied the idea. The rear end is even more tightly packaged than last year and it looks low thanks to the pull rod suspension geometry. This will assist with traction out of the slower corners, as last year, the RBR was an oversteer car compared to the understeering Brawn.
The sharkfin has now been filled in underneath the rear wing, and comprises the rear wing support post. It should be quick, but will it be the quickest?
Force India
With the Mclaren association, I am expecting big things from this team this year. The front wing is nicely detailed and there is plenty of space under the high nose to get lots of under the car and into that diffuser. High chunky sidepods like the Ferrari, and the rear packaging looks too high. First impressions are that it has a higher centre of gravity than the others as the exhaust exits sit high in the bodywork.
No change in livery, which is fine by me. Its effective, if not attractive. I'm also expecting over the course of the season for Liuzzi to beat Sutil resoundingly.
It really is all up in the air this year, and anyone who thinks they know who will win at this stage is kidding themselves. There will be some good guesses only in prediction land, and I for one am predicting a Lewis WDC and a Red Bull WCC.
This week we discuss CBeebies, ARCA, exclamation marks, red vs orange, James Allen’s awesome Twitter thing, Kamui Kobayashi and Canadian coverage.
Intro
Our sincerest apologies, but this is definitely a Twitter heavy show.
Good Week / Bad Week
It's been a good week for the BBC, as they keep Anthony Davidson, and got to launch nothing at all. It's also a good week for Paul di Resta who was confirmed at Force India. It's been a bad week for Christian Klien and Nelson Piquet Jr, though, who are still outside of Formula 1.
News and Views
We have more launch coverage, with Toro Rosso revealing their year old Red Bull to the world during the test. Virgin Racing had an even worse time as their online launch didn't go very well at all, and even Twitter couldn't save them.
Also of note, testing was seriously popular which was unexpected, Twitter was huge, and Mercedes signed Heidfeld as their test driver.
Here's the updated table of our launch scores:
Team Launch
Christine's Score
Mr C's Score
Mercedes
3
4
Ferrari
6
4
Williams
0
6
McLaren
8
6
Sauber
2
4
Renault
2
4
Toro Rosso
1
3
Virgin Racing
-5
0
Feedback
A voicemail from Nick leads us into a discussion of GP2 vs F1, we get constructive criticism over our content and my pronunciation, plus some thoughts on how teams do and don't declare their fuel weights. We also almost get distracted by talk of LOST.
Housekeeping
There's a new rankings system in town, and it's based on some seriously technical algorithms, plus Kathi convinced Danny to start Fantasy WRC.
Yesterday was a bit mad, wasn't it? Launching and testing at the same time is quite a push, and it's no wonder Toro Rosso suffered some reliability issues. Anyway, today we just have testing to keep an eye on, and so far it's looking pretty interesting. Keep an eye on the dedicated threads for all the info. Meanwhile, here are some of the things we're discussing:
Talking of testing, Mr C pointed out yesterday that we saw the largest spike of traffic ever on Sidepodcast since we started - even bigger than when Lewis Hamilton took the championship in that oh-so-epic Brazil GP in 2008. I want to imagine this is down to a rejuvenated interest in F1 that isn't down to Schumacher, but... I can't really fool myself like that. Still, yay for F1!
Joe announced plans for A Formula 1 Evening With... which will see the man meet a limited number of Formula One fans in London, to discuss all things motor sport over a drink or three. There's a dedicated page should you need more detail.
Lukeh has been covering the launches pretty well so far, and yesterday he got to not only cover a brand new STR, but also the appearance of Rubens in his new Williams seat. Technically, Williams haven't done the whole launch thing and we've only seen a couple of leaked photographs before so seeing the new car in action was pretty good.
This weekend's F1 Debrief went up last night, and there's plenty of fine chatter in there, including my thoughts on the new Renault colours, and shock, horror, some compliments for Autosport. We even scored the launches out of 10, and intend to do more of the same! Let us know your scores, if you feel like it, in that thread.
I also want to highlight James Allen's Twitter thing, which is pretty impressive. we've heard mixed feelings about it so far, but whether you're a fan or not, it's quite the sight when you first check it out!
That should do for now. We'll be around all day following the action in Valencia, so I will see you in the comments.
Coming up this week, we discuss bridges, aerodynamics, Twitter, videos, testing, surveys, domains, previews, jokes and rankings.
Intro
Back to back shows! We're getting the new year off to a good start.
Good Week / Bad Week
It's been a good week for Toro Rosso who now have a full line up for 2010, and for Button, who is getting a bridge named after him. It's been a bad week for Alan Donnelly, who isn't involved in F1 anymore, and for Lotus, as Trulli thinks they have less potential than Toyota. Oh dear.
News and Views
We start with the new stuff for the upcoming season, including Sauber's new driver. We were sure it was going to be Heidfeld, but Pedro de la Rosa gets the nod. We briefly discuss Williams' plans for a brand new design, plus some great tweeting from them, and we cover the Barcelona test for Rossi and Massa.
The Castrol Driver Rankings are back for another week, with some interesting feedback after the last show. We read through some of the comments received, in the interest of balance, and then also take a look at the F1 Racing Fan Survey that will open soon.
Feedback
Two great voicemails this week - Mark has an idea to improve racing just using some paint, whilst Cody has a request for a refresher course.
A few fabulous emails too - Rolando has some domains and ponders what he should do with them, Marc stuns us with some serious maths, and Michael Parker has a request for some jokes.
Marc's maths:
According to Wiki, the largest 747 holds about 243,000 litres. An F1 car, during race, goes about 1.3 km per litre. Silverstone is 5.1 kms. It takes nearly 4 litres to lap Silverstone. The GP has 60 laps. So 240 litres per car, multiplied by 20 cars, equals about 4,800 litres, multiplied by practices, qualifiers, etc, let's say multiplied by 3, that's about 14,400 litres of fuel to race Silverstone. Let's round it 15,000 litres. There are about 20 races, so 300,000 litres to race an entire season.
That's more than the largest 747 holds; about 243,000 litres.
Housekeeping
There's plenty of launches and testing action coming soon, and we are keeping on top of it all with our brand new Google Calendar.
It's Saturday, and that means the weekend is officially here! Woohoo! As ever, we're going to be around during the weekend, fiddling with bits and pieces on the site and gradually making Sidepodcast a better place to be. Starting with:
Mr C has been busy at the coding grindstone and has put the awesome comment filter box on every single page. So, if you are using Ye Olde Comments, you can now filter those as you would be able to on the LCLT or the Doohickey. If this means nothing to you, we'll probably be explaining in more detail soon, but why not test it out and let us know how it goes?
We created another breakout thread yesterday with the news that Jaime Alguersuari has finally been confirmed at Toro Rosso. It seemed like an obvious signing, and everyone involved seem to think that he was all set for the drive, so we're not sure why the delay occurred. Either way, we are now down to just four unclaimed seats for the upcoming season.
Massa finished up his return to the F1 cockpit, albeit an F2008 with GP2 tyres on. He took over the reigns from Valentino Rossi at Barcelona, and said he feels 100% fit and isn't worried about returning to the grid at all. Yay for the return of Massa!
That should do it for now. Let us know how your weekend is going and what you're up to, and I'll see you in the comments.
It's Thursday once again. So far this year, I haven't found Thursdays too bad, but I can only imagine the bad vibe is waiting round the corner for me. To battle it, it turns out it is National Hug Day today. I'm not that good at hugging, but make sure you celebrate the day for me, and give someone a big ol' hug. Anyway, on to F1 things:
There's been a nice comment over on F1 Minute, from Mike of Sweet F1. I am already married, of course, and I am also slightly concerned about the word "us" used in the proposal, however, I can certainly manage a link or two. It looks like the site is on hiatus at the moment during the off season, but it will be racing time once again before you know it.
Whilst we're linking to things, the Forza Toro Rosso blog has an interesting post about the team's decision to sack Bourdais, pondering whether they were right to do such a thing. The post is generating quite the discussion, and I just know we all have opinions on the subject as well. Add yours!
Finally, RG wrote a pretty awesome guest post for us yesterday, taking a closer look at how easy it is to make up news on the internet. Although an ultimately harmless experiment, RG's made up headline actually got passed on as fact, so it's definitely worth reading how that turned out.
That's all for now, let us know what you're up to today, and how the weather is where you are, and I will see you in the comments.
It was Hamilton's birthday yesterday and I missed it! I am not very good at keeping up with these important days and things, am I? Anyway, Happy Birthday to LewHam, hope he celebrated with his new friend Jenson Button. Anyway, thankfully there wasn't an enormous amount of Flav news yesterday, so we could concentrate on other things.
Lotus have been talking up their chances for the new season, with Mike Gascoyne confident they can beat Force India and Toro Rosso - running midfield. They're already ahead of schedule, about a week further up than where they should have been. They appear to be one of the furthest ahead teams, although Sauber have confirmed their launch, so it's a race to be ready.
Autosport is talking about the double diffusers and the potential that they will be banned going forward. I kinda thought this would always be the case because it was obvious that's not how the regulations were intended to be interpreted, but it was a clever way to do so. It would make sense for the FIA to tighten up on it, wouldn't it?
Some of the top names in British Motorsport (although I have only heard of one of them) are doing the London Marathon this year to raise money for charity. It's a BRDC thing, and if you're feeling generous you can donate here. I think it's quite crazy to run more than a few paces, but it's for a good cause, so I'll let them off.
That'll do it for now. It's Friday at last, so we are just hours away from the weekend. Yay for that, and yay for seeing you in the comments.
We've been looking forward to the young driver event next week because it's been a long time since we saw anything in the way of testing (thanks FIA). Jerez will play host to three days of testing from the 1st to 3rd of December, but we haven't heard of many of the drivers before.
Mr C and I have our heads in the F1 cloud, so these new drivers working their way through lower formulae rarely appear on our radar. In order to get ourselves up to speed, we wanted to run through who's driving, for which team, and the reasons we should keep an eye on them.
We're starting with Toro Rosso, who are naturally picking up their drivers from the Red Bull stable of talent.
Brendon Hartley
Age: 20
Nationality: New Zealander
F1 Experience: Demo driver through to official test driver for both Red Bull and Toro Rosso.
Notable Achievements: 1st in Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 2007, 3rd in British F3 Championship 2008
Hartley has been in our peripheral vision for a while now, as an occasional tester for the Red Bull suite of teams. He was signed up as the official reserve driver for 2009 but couldn't get his superlicence in time and had to hand the role to retired DC. He was ready to go by the time the Spanish GP rolled around, but was strangely overlooked when Alguersuari was given the Toro Rosso drive as Bourdais' replacement while Hartley returned to the lower formulae once more.
Clearly he's not upset at Red Bull, or they him, as he'll be having another go behind the wheel. Brendon is currently scheduled to test on the first day in Spain.
Mirko Bortolotti
Age: 19
Nationality: Italian
F1 Experience: Tested for Ferrari in 2008 as a performance reward - was the fastest of the three young drivers
Notable Achievements: 1st in Italian F3 2008, 4th in Formula Two 2009
It seems as though the Red Bull stable of drivers have turned away from picking out only those named Sebastian and instead are focusing on drivers who look exactly the same. Good luck telling these two apart!
I haven't heard of Bortolotti but a test drive in a Ferrari means he has some contacts within the paddock. His previous results would indicate spending more time on Italian series' and just now switching to the more notable brands such as GP2, so Mirko may be one to watch for the future.
Monday flew for me, so we are on to Tuesday already. Over the weekend, I said that the site hadn't gone down since the redesign, and yesterday it fell over twice. So, what can I jinx today? Anyway, here are some of the things we're talking about:
Rosberg has said that the year he's just experienced has upped his value as an F1 driver, and allowed him to move away from Williams and presumably on to a team that can fight for championships. Did I miss the bit where he did anything supremely exciting?
Meanwhile, Toro Rosso are also pretty hopeful for 2010, with Franz Tost believing their driver lineup will be strong by about mid-season, plus the fact that they're going to be building their own car as well. There's no more involvement from Red Bull, so will this help or hinder STR next year?
Whilst we're talking about teams getting stronger next year, Brawn think they may be able to be even better in 2010 than they were this year. Ross Brawn says that they'll have had a year's experience, particularly with the Mercedes engine, and hopefully everything should just fit better.
That'll do it for now. We wrote about Must Comment Monday yesterday, but as it's Tuesday today, it's a bit late to remind you about it. Be prepared for next week though. I'll see you in the comments.
