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Track temp is one reason....another is the SF71-H is awesome on softs.....can go 10+ laps beyond Pirelli's recommended tire change given track temp and circuit. Lewis experienced blisters on his tires on a cool track WHICH might have been induced to the new rims Mercedes was running to get more heat into the tires-->I bet they opt to go back to the original OZ rims.Originally Posted by Rookie
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Now Bottas has been involved in crashing into some one in two consecutive races... he should have got a 10 sec penalty. What's the point in the penalty if it doesn't affect him in any way.
Salut Gilles
Last time he gained a place on lap 1?
Forza Ferrari
Full Member
I get it okay. He's third in the points behind Hamilton; how much closer or farther from Hamilton/Bottas is debatable due to himself, bad pit strategy, or being at the wrong place at the wrong time on the track by another driver.
Cavallino Rampante
Anyone can provide me with some good photos of Maurizio Arrivabene from this SPA grand prix alone or together with our drivers Seb and Kimi? Please send me a link!
Maurizio Arrivabene fanpage:www.facebook.com/maurizioarrivabene
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From memory it was Abu Dhabi 2016. We have had almost 30 races since then and Kimi has not gained a position of the line. In fact he ends up losing places off the line
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LOL! While they're at it, perhaps the pit crew and strategist should go to a refuelling 101 seminar and learn how to calculate how much fuel an F1 car needs to qualify on any given circuit.
Full Member
Video of merc's flexing wing. No doubt the FIA will pretend to not see this.
https://twitter.com/Vetteleclerc/sta...91752216473605
~FORZA FERRARI~
Banned
I'm still confused what the wing moving left to right help with? If it rocked back I can see it helping by reducing the angle of attach on the wing and reducing drag/downforce, but side to side? The only thing I can think of is making it lighter.
Either way, the FIA won't say boo.
Full Member
Spa 1998 was totally Coulthard's fault.
You don't slow down in rain, very low visibility, on a curved section on the racing line!!!
Later he understood what he did:
https://www.pitpass.com/6684/Coultha...-to-98-mistake
" .... Michael's reaction was that I'd brake-tested him," he told reporters at Magny Cours this weekend. "The reality is, I lifted off to let him past me but I did it in heavy spray on the racing line. You should never do that. But in '98 I didn't have the experience and knowledge. I shouldn't have lifted on the racing line in the wet....."
Full Member
Are you impressed after yesterday? I'm impressed. Man and machine in perfection.
If I could help Kimi in any way, I would. Even if it comes down to losing a limb for a few seconds. I would.
Ferrari is still behind. But better that than being infront without anything to look forward to.
Full Member
Car: 10/10
Vettel: 10/10
Strategy: 6/10, Mercedes almost pulled an undercut.
Pit wall/Race operation: 3/10, could've been an easy 1-2, but as always, they messed up. I think Raikkonen needs a new race engineer.
Full Member
It does move a lot, but I'm not sure if it brings any benefits swinging left-right though.
Unless it implies that the entire rear wing could tilt backwards too under high load.
Full Member
Flexing = less drag which is what Mercs are after to try and match the Ferrari speed. Regulation states it cannot flex more than 5mm so if you can see it flex on replay then it's way more than a hardly noticeable 5mm! Flex replicates DRS (Drag reduction)
Full Member
Yup. What on earth happened to dave greenwood. At least he was pretty decent.
Full Member
If i'm not wrong, he actually passed bottas at the start of the austrian GP, no ?
Drive it like you stole it!
Old, not obsolete
IMHO it is the final classification that counts, not the amount of 1st lap passes.
"Leave the gun. Take the cannoli."
Full Member
It’s nothing to do with kimi starts. Grosjean & kimi very bad off the line.LOL! While they're at it, perhaps the pit crew and strategist should go to a refuelling 101 seminar and learn how to calculate how much fuel an F1 car needs to qualify on any given circuit.
I always see either of the RB hit ferrari or bottas hit ferrari. In such tangle kimi always the sore looser. Such are his starts.
He needs to improve a lot on his starts as Grieg said.
Full Member
Merc rear wing was flexing too much in Spa?
Full Member
Video link in post 518.
~FORZA FERRARI~
Ferrari Lover
Spa exposed Mercedes' weaknesses as much as it highlighted Ferrari's strengths
SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium -- Ferrari had beaten Mercedes to victories before this year, but Sunday's win at the Belgian Grand Prix was the most convincing so far. Sebastian Vettel finished the race 11 seconds clear of Hamilton, and while at least three of those seconds came in the final few laps once the Mercedes had backed off, Hamilton had no answer for Vettel during the most important stages of the race.
Perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise. Ferrari has held a growing advantage over Mercedes since the British Grand Prix at the start of July, and at the last two rounds in Germany and Hungary, Hamilton won against the odds thanks to wet conditions either in the race or during qualifying. The result in Spa, therefore, could simply be seen as the start of a rebalancing in the championship in favour of the team with the faster car.
"I would say those last two races in particular, with the cards that we were dealt we did a better job even though they had better cards," Hamilton said on Sunday evening. "But there is only a certain amount of times you can do that. If you are playing with a deck of cards and you are bluffing there is only a certain amount of times that you can do that before your opponent realises."
The layout of the Spa-Francorchamps circuit was perfect for exposing the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two cars. Ferrari's package seemed almost tailor made for Spa's first and final sectors, with Vettel enjoying better traction out of the first corner at La Source and more grunt to pull him from the base of Eau Rouge to the next braking zone at the end of the Kemmel Straight. The same traits helped in the final sector, which consists of another long straight and a slow chicane at the very end of the lap, helping cement Ferrari's advantage over a complete lap of Spa in the dry.
Vettel now trails Hamilton by 17 points in the race for the 2018 drivers' title. EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images
Mercedes held the edge in the high-speed corners of the middle sector, but that was of little use once Vettel had used his car's strengths to get a better exit from La Source on the opening lap and power past Hamilton on the run to the next braking point at Les Combes.
"They have a power advantage," Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff admitted on Sunday evening. "We have seen that yesterday in qualifying, that power advantage is at various parts of the straights. You can see even if the exits are worse than ours, the engine keeps pulling.
"We can see they have a slight power advantage and then you add that to our weaknesses out of Turn 1 especially and that causes the doublewhammy. If you're not very good at traction and you're being outperformed slightly on power, that lap one happens."
The lack of traction created a downwards spiral in performance for Mercedes as it also left the rear tyres prone to overheating. The team ran more downforce than Ferrari to try to ease the strain on the rear tyres, but that also resulted in more drag, handing an even greater advantage to Ferrari on the straights.
At the end of the first stint of the race, there was clear blistering on Hamilton's super-soft tyres while Vettel's still looked in good shape. That meant Mercedes' hands were tied in terms of strategy and Ferrari was able to defend against a simple attempt at an undercut on lap 20. In every criterion required to have a quick car at Spa, Ferrari held the edge.
"Ultimately Ferrari did a better job all weekend, or they were just faster all weekend," Hamilton said on Sunday evening. "It's difficult to say they've done a better job, it's just that they were faster, simply faster. Their overall pace was stronger and I couldn't match it."
Is Ferrari's advantage locked in?
We've seen the balance of power swing between the two teams all season long, but Spa saw both teams introduce their third and final power unit update for the year. Any new hardware from this point onwards will result in a grid penalty, so the engine the two teams are running now will be the same one the drivers use until the end of the season. Mercedes was happy its upgrade brought the expected performance gains to Spa, but the only problem is Ferrari appeared to at least match that step with its own upgrade and, therefore, retain its overall advantage.
Ferrari hasn't won its home race at Monza since 2010 but head to Italy as favourites. Charles Coates/Getty Images
The exact details of how Ferrari is extracting so much performance from its power unit is still a mystery outside of Maranello. GPS data of the cars on track can trace the extra performance to areas where Ferrari is likely deploying electrical energy from its hybrid system, but how it was suddenly able to gain a significantly bigger boost than its rivals under the same set of regulations remains a subject of speculation.
The FIA conducted a thorough investigation into Ferrari's energy recovery system between the Azerbaijan and Monaco Grands Prix earlier this year. At the time it could not find anything untoward with the way it operated, and race director Charlie Whiting is still confident the system is legal following updates in the second half of the year. Wolff admits his team has questioned how Ferrari had found such significant gains, but insists he still has full confidence in the FIA.
"It is human nature that if you're being outperformed on track, you're looking at yourself where you are lacking and then it's looking at your competitors. And if you haven't got an explanation, you're trying to imagine all the nasty things. I haven't got any information, but I have real faith in the FIA.
"There's a great group of people around Olivier [Hulot, head of F1 electronics], Cedrik [Staudohar, F1 data analyst] and Nikolas [Tombazis, head of single seater technical matters] that are on top of things, that control every team and that are open minded and this is the case for all the teams. Everyone will try to innovate and find additional performance and they, the FIA, as far as I'm concerned, are doing the right things."
So now it's down to Mercedes to hit back, and Wolff is confident there is scope for his engineers to find more performance from its latest upgrade.
"It's all about understanding the new power unit, calibrating and extracting all of the performance out of the software, the fuels and the oils and optimising the way you run the engine. It's something that doesn't involve the hardware, and this is an ongoing process so the answer is yes, you can find performance.
"There is no silver bullet. We won't find any performance where it adds three tenths to the car or to the engine and then we disappear into the sunset."
Will Ferrari win in Monza?
On the face of it, Ferrari, with its power advantage over Mercedes, appears to be the favourite heading to its home race in Italy this weekend. Monza has been a Mercedes stronghold in Formula One since 2014, and even when Vettel came close to beating Hamilton in Spa last year, he was still some way off a week later in Italy. And despite Ferrari's stronger showing in Spa this year, Hamilton is confident Mercedes could still hold the edge on Ferrari's home turf.
"Luckily there, apart from Turn 1, it is not that slow, the chicanes. I'm hoping that the traction loss that we are having in the super slow corners here won't be so bad. The last two corners and Turn 1 is where we lose most of our time [at Spa].
"But also today, he [Vettel] didn't have to do any management. It was just flat chat and he didn't have the same problems with the tyres that I did. Hopefully that element is not a problem in the next race, but let's see."
Vettel could only manage third at last season's Italian GP as Mercedes dominated and scored a one-two. ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP/Getty Images
Wolff is also intrigued to see how Monza pans out and believes it could act as a more useful barometer of performance for the remainder of the season.
"Spa was a tricky one for us in the past, but Monza was a good one, so I am very curious to see how it's going to go in Monza. Last year, we were very much in control of the whole weekend, Ferrari had their worst weekend of the season performance wise in so far, so I'm not worried.
"I think we should still address the opportunities that exist within our car, where we need to optimise and only that will make us win the championship."
After Vettel beat Hamilton at his home race in Silverstone and Hamilton returned the favour in Germany, the Italian Grand Prix is shaping up to be a real grudge match. A win for Ferrari will mean more than ever following the death of its chairman Sergio Marchionne last month, but Mercedes will not be in a charitable mood knowing its bogey track Singapore follows two weeks later.
Hamilton still holds a 17-point lead over Vettel in the drivers' championship, but with Ferrari's performance advantage that can easily be whittled awy over the remaining eight races. Mercedes has to hit back with performance upgrades soon and Wolff knows it.
"When I look at today's race, I see many deficits," he said. "We're a strong team and but there are deficits which are obvious, which cause us not to perform as we expect and insofar, it's not about someone else outperforming us, it's about us finding the clues to understand our underperformance."
Hero's come and go, but legends never die!
Full Member
https://www.planetf1.com/news/race-e...elgian-gp-win/
Race: Early attack hands Vettel the Belgian GP win
I am so tired of these biased F1 sites. Ferrari is never congratulated and respected as it should. How can they write that Vettel was handed the win? Would we ever see "Faster car and special tyres hands Hamilton multiple championships” on any headline? Never! If Hamilton had won the Belgium GP the headlines would have been “Hamilton Dominates, Hamilton Untouchable, Hamilton was Sublime etc”. Vettel didn’t turn a wheel wrong and the team worked amazingly at preparing the car and did a lightening fast pitstop. This is my problem with Hamilton, Mercedes and the current state F1. It’s Ferrari against everyone. Ratboy is the chosen one who can do no wrong. Ughh, sickening.
Rant over/
~FORZA FERRARI~
Full Member
I second that rant and it makes me want to vomit, too!
Full Member
Chill out, mate. Though I agree with you, this overall attitude you wrote about against us will make it even more sweeter when we shut them all up at the end of the season by winning it all. Then they can complain about tricks and write how we cheated the Cs but noone will care.
Full Member
Bottle crashed out in q1 so started from near the back, Kimi started 2nd and remained 2nd after turn 1.
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Yeah he was unlucky in Singapore and Austria but 2 good starts in 30 races is awful
Full Member
That was the Australian GP in Austria Kimi passed Bottas at the start but was re passed at turn 3 by Bottas and Max
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Looks like its gonna rain in monza :(. Wow
Back to School Kid
It won't hit qualifying hopefully.
"Always move forward, take it one step at a time, eventually you'll reach your goal and if you happen to fall on face your still moving..."
Full Member
Hopefully but its for sure gonna hit friday which will be a problem for the stup and optimizig performance. B
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