Formula1

Cuky said:
Mercedes' development driver and last season's DTM champion Pascal Wehrlein was confirmed today as one of drivers for Manor Racing. There is only one place left on the grid for 2016 and that is also in Manor. Drivers who are in talks include last years' Manor drivers Rossi and Stevens, though best chances for that seat are rumored to be for Rio Haryanto, 23-year old Indonesian
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The final seat will go to the highest bidder, unfortunetely F1 is no longer about being the pinnacle of the sport but which average mediocre driver has the most financial backing behind them.

But I am very glad to see that Crashtor has finally been kicked out the sport.
 
Testing starts next Monday so hopefully Ferrari and Honda have made massive progress this winter.

Because when I watch the Australian GP in March, if Lewis Hamilton wins and it is another Mercedes 1-2 I will find it very difficult to watch yet another extremely poor, predictable and boring season.
 
bsmaff said:
Testing starts next Monday so hopefully Ferrari and Honda have made massive progress this winter.

Because when I watch the Australian GP in March, if Lewis Hamilton wins and it is another Mercedes 1-2 I will find it very difficult to watch yet another extremely poor, predictable and boring season.
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Reports are that Honda has gained quite a lot in terms of performance, but the reliability took even greater hit then last season. Lots of fine-tuning left for them to do before the season.

Ferrari reportedly had some cylinder knocking on their first fire up of the car that due to fuel mixture imbalance and miss-firing. It shall be resolved when Shell delivers new fuel blend. They also had changed quite a lot on their PU, especially on V6 engine itself as they will finally implement variable length intake trumpets (other manufacturers had them already in 2015) and have pushed for higher pressure inside combustion chamber to have more efficient ignitions and thus produce more power with less fuel used. Also, some rumors are that new car is about 1,5 seconds faster in simulations than last years car.




In other news:
Seems that Manor wants to secure a bit more cash to be able to develop the car more through the season as rumors are that they will have 3 drivers for 2nd car, each to drive in 7 races. Drivers will Rio Haryanto, Will Stevens and Alexander Rossi

EDIT: Manor has confirmes Haryanto as their 2nd driver
Great news! We've signed Rio Haryanto to our second seat. Our young & hungry 2016 line-up is complete.
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And Red Bull have presented a new livery for 2016 just a few minutes ago. It was presented on last years car, while new car will be presented on Monday
B9gPpV4.jpg
 
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today Williams has revealed its new car
williams-fw38-4.jpg



It was then spotted doing shakedown drive at Barcelona earlier today.



Mercedes did 100km shakedown drive which they are all permitted to do twice in the season for filming days etc. and have posted this video on their twitter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRYL6Wz6ovU


EDIT: And here is the new Ferrari
ferrari-3-4.jpg

ferrari-front.jpg

ferrari-side.jpg
 
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Here is a first look at new Mercedes car. It is hand drawn picture creation of which is shown in time lapse video on Mercedes' youtube channel

KE2ObzL.jpg
 
New McLaren revealed late last night (CET)
mclaren-honda-mp4-31-2016-c.jpg




And new Mercedes car revealed earlier this morning
Mercedes-w06-2.jpg




Haas is expected to reveal their car later today
 
Red Bull
red-bull-rb12-d.jpg



Force India
force-india-vjm09.jpg



Toro Rosso
849e6e49-b2a9-45e3-8c63-9ed377cd9ef0_800.jpg



Renault
rena-cata-2016-2.jpg




Last year's Sauber with modified livery. New car will be revealed next week
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EDIT: And the last one for this week: Manor
manor-mrt05.jpg
 
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So basically all cars but Ferrari and Williams and with minor adjustments Mercedes are darkly colored, not to say black. Great for the spectators. =D And a bit sad that the cars nearly look the same as last year, but that's the fate of a passing season like this one before a new set of rules is introduced next year.

And a note to Wehrlein as I haven't been able to comment here in quite a long time: I remember his first DTM race in 2012 (2013?), where I directly said the guy is good. I think it's still too early for him, especially I don't like his personality, his is not very grown up yet as his behaviour during last year's championship showed. And for the title: It is debatable, if he would have been able to win it without his team colleagues' help, especially during the latter stages of the season, where they helped him a lot. Maybe he'll be a good F1 driver, but I really don't think we'll see constant outperforming races by him in the first two years.
 
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Results from 1st test day. Mercedes already did 2 and a half race distances

1. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari, 1:24.939, 69 laps;
2. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, 1:25.409, 156 laps;
3. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull, 1:26.044, 87 laps;
4. Valtteri Bottas, Williams, 1:26.091, 80 laps;
5. Alfonso Celis, Force India, 1:26.298, 58 laps;
6. Jenson Button, McLaren, 1:26.735, 84 laps
7. Carlos Sainz, Toro Rosso, 1:27.180, 55 laps;
8. Marcus Ericson, Sauber, 1:27.555, 88 laps;
9. Pascal Wehrlein, Manor, 1:28.292, 54 laps;
10. Romain Grosjean, Haas, 1:28.399, 31 laps;
11. Jolyon Palmer, Renault, 1:29.356, 37 laps.
 
Looks like normal service..

Mercedes are running the car long and not showing their true pace.
And the rest of the field look pretty much where they will line up come end of Qualifying at the Australian GP.

No big surprises on the time sheets and sad to see McLaren are still 2 seconds of the pace.

I also see the people who owned has Paster crashed yet have started a new website:-
http://hasmclarenhondawonyet.com/
 
F1 Strategy group (Bernie, Todt and 6 F1 teams) basically decided to screw up one thing that was the same for past decade and which actually worked and made some sense - qualifying.
Qualifying format will be changed from this season on if FIA World Motorsport Council agrees with it. It will still be 3-part qualifying session, but after few minutes into each part slowest car will be dropped out and then one each after 90 seconds
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/122937



But from their meeting at least something good came out. Teams have proposed, and will decide next time they meet, to remove the limit of 100kg of fuel per race per car.
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/122945
 
Cuky said:
F1 Strategy group (Bernie, Todt and 6 F1 teams) basically decided to screw up one thing that was the same for past decade and which actually worked and made some sense - qualifying.
Qualifying format will be changed from this season on if FIA World Motorsport Council agrees with it. It will still be 3-part qualifying session, but after few minutes into each part slowest car will be dropped out and then one each after 90 seconds
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/122937



But from their meeting at least something good came out. Teams have proposed, and will decide next time they meet, to remove the limit of 100kg of fuel per race per car.
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/122945
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Read about that this morning..

I don't what sort of excitement it is meant to bring to qualifying as Qualifying is not very exciting anyway.

I only liked Qualifying when it was an hour long and it rained, so if a car went out at the right time it really screwed up the grid.
With these Q1, Q2 and so on it just gets rid of any excitement.
 
3rd day laptimes
aOz2jH8.jpg



Lots of reliability problems today. Toro Rosso had some mechanical problems, Ferrari had fuel system and later cooling problems which kept Kimi in the garage until almost 15:00. Haas had some electrical problems later in the day and just before the end of the session McLaren was stopped smoking at the end of the pitlane.
 
well, they were looking surprisingly good on first two days. Then Alonso came out commenting how they had made some great progress over winter and almost immediately reliability problems appeared. If I was superstitious I would say that he must have jinxed them with that.
 
McLaren do have a new engine coming to the test next week.

The current engine apparently they have fixed the problem that the power runs out half way down a straight but the engine is still 100BHP down on the Mercedes.
The new engine is meant to be bringing a significant performance increase although till they start testing we won't know.
They do believe that McLaren do have the 3rd best chassis at the test.

BBC done where they think the cars stand based on tyre used and estimated fuel load:-
Rosberg (Mercedes) 1:22.1
Hulkenberg (Force India)1:22.6
Vettel (Ferrari) 1:22.7
Bottas (Williams) 1:23.3
Verstappen (Toro Rosso) 1:23.3
Ricciardo (Red Bull) 1:23.4
Magnussen (Renault) 1:23.8
Gutierrez (Haas) 1:24.1
Alonso (McLaren) 1:24.5
Wehrlein (Manor) 1:24.7

The only surprise really is that the Force India is so high in the table.
So unless the new Honda engine brings a massive performance increase they will be battling it out with Hass and Manor this season.
 
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So Bernie has came out and said that new qualifying system even if approved by FIA Council won't be in use until at least Spanish GP since software for race control won't be ready in time for fly-away races.

Some speculation is already circulating that teams don't want to start season with one qualifying system only to switch to the other few races later so new system might be postponed until 2017
 
Cuky said:
Some speculation is already circulating that teams don't want to start season with one qualifying system only to switch to the other few races later so new system might be postponed until 2017
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Of course not. I wouldn't do that either. Why would you change the rules, when the season is already up and running?
 
S-NipE said:
Of course not. I wouldn't do that either. Why would you change the rules, when the season is already up and running?
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I would change the qualifying rules half way through the season, because the season is going to go the same was as the last 2.
After qualifying we start all the races in reverse grid order. Just so the first 10 laps are really interesting before we then return to watch the first 2 laps - nap - wake at 2nd pitstops - nap - wake for last 3 laps with all cars in the same order they were after lap 4.
 
bsmaff said:
I would change the qualifying rules half way through the season, because the season is going to go the same was as the last 2.
After qualifying we start all the races in reverse grid order. Just so the first 10 laps are really interesting before we then return to watch the first 2 laps - nap - wake at 2nd pitstops - nap - wake for last 3 laps with all cars in the same order they were after lap 4.
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I agree on everything you say, except for the fact that rules can't/shouldn't be changed during a season. If you start something with a set of rules they have to stay in place until the end, otherwise you have incomparable results during the course of the season/year.
 
Proposed changes to the qualifying session were a bit modified and was confirmed by FIA World Motorsport Council. It will be in use from the opening round of 2016 season.

So rules are as follows:
Q1: 16 minutes. After 7 minutes driver with slowest time is knocked out and then every 90 seconds next one is knocked out until there is 15 drivers left

Q2: 15 minutes. After 6 minutes driver with slowest time is knocked out and then every 90 seconds next one is knocked out until there is 8 drivers left

Q3: 14 minutes. After 5 minutes driver with slowest time is knocked out and then every 90 seconds next one is knocked out until we have only the fastest one left


FIA WMC has also confirmed changes to technical regulations regarding aerodynamics and tire width for 2017. Tires will be wider, cars will return to the width of pre-1997 rules (2.0m instead of current 1.8m), diffuser will be bigger, rear wing lower and wider (like before 2009). According to early simulations cars will be 4-5 seconds faster than current ones, depending on track.

This is how the basic look of the cars is expected to be compared to 2015 Mercedes car:
2017%2Bside%2B2.png

2017%2Brear%2B2.png

2017%2Babove%2B2.png



In last two days of testing Ferrari had brought mockup of proposed driver safety mechanism that should be introduced in 2017. Both Vettel and Raikkonen had one lap each with device mounted on their car to check for visibility.
f1-testing-halo_3425275.jpg

f1-testing-halo_3425276.jpg



Both have said that visibility was Ok, but lots of drivers were quite vocal about not wanting to see something like that on their cars with Hamilton even stating that it should be optional for driver to choose if he wants it on his car or not. Red Bull has commented that they are working on different solution that would look like batmobile with open top for easier exit and access to drivers in the event of accident.
 
I was watching Formula E qualifying session today (1st time that I have seen their qualis, I usually only watch races) and I just don't understand why F1 didn't copy their system if they really wanted to change it.

In Formula E drivers are divided in 4 groups (18 drivers, 2 groups of 4 and 2 groups of 5) and each group has 6 minutes to go out on track and set a lap (usually they set a banker lap on lower power setting and then real flying lap on qualy setting). After all groups have set their times drivers from 6th to last are locked in their grid positions while top 5 drivers go into superpole where they drive one by one in reverse order (5th goes first, 1st goes last) and they all have one lap each to set their time to qualify for positions from 1st to 5th.
 
Renault will reveal their livery for 2016 season tomorrow, but picture of their showcar in yellow with black wings was leaked today
yellow.jpg
 
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