Canadian GP: Four times the charm for Hamilton

[Frederic Schornstein]

Well, that would seem to be the case, but they sure keep throwing her name out there.

I saw an interview of their team principal at Canada and they asked him about Danica and he said "She seems to be happy where she is right now" and sounded much like "Yeah, not a bad idea, but not gonna happen".

 

[Blkout]

I saw an interview of their team principal at Canada and they asked him about Danica and he said "She seems to be happy where she is right now" and sounded much like "Yeah, not a bad idea, but not gonna happen".

I don't even think its a good idea even if she were available but its not my decision.

 

[f.1.]

Regarding Haas I see Gutierrez in their lineup and probably Rossi alongside. I would love to see one of the Indycar drivers like Newgraden or Muños in F1 but that would probably be in 2017 or 18

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

Regarding Haas I see Gutierrez in their lineup and probably Rossi alongside. I would love to see one of the Indycar drivers like Newgraden or Muños in F1 but that would probably be in 2017 or 18

I think someone like Vergne would be a better fix. More time in F1 and in my view a lot better then GUT he never made a great impression on me.

 

[Nox]

The English teacher in me is squirming at the title of this article Nice write up though, a good read. Didn't think much of the race though, as is sadly the common story this year in F1.

 

[f.1.]

I think someone like Vergne would be a better fix. More time in F1 and in my view a lot better then GUT he never made a great impression on me.

That would be my first choice as well but JEV is in Formula E so we'll see what happens.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

That would be my first choice as well but JEV is in Formula E so we'll see what happens.

Lots of time until next season

 

[Torcano]

McLaren is destroying McLaren. They've been on a downward trajectory for a few years, pre-Honda.

Oh yes, not disagreeing with that. This situation is like that saying - Honda is that final straw that just ends up breaking the camel's old arthritic back. Not exactly a fun feeling to watch my favorite team in F1 go through such hardships but can't help but think that they brought this upon themselves.

 

[Darth]

I was really disappointed not to see a top end battle for yet another race
this year. Either Rosberg is having a bad season or Mercedes are trying
to avoid any loss of points because of Ferrari. Whatever the case,
if you watch the last 6-7 seasons, Rosberg was never this reserved.

 

[Nox]

I was really disappointed not to see a top end battle for yet another race
this year. Either Rosberg is having a bad season or Mercedes are trying
to avoid any loss of points because of Ferrari. Whatever the case,
if you watch the last 6-7 seasons, Rosberg was never this reserved.

I think the changes to the front wings means it is very difficult for the car behind; the dirty air, increased tyre wear, etc means there's not much you can do behind someone in the same car. Not saying Rosberg can't attack more, but I think the dirty air certainly plays a large part.

 

[Yannick Van Broeck]

Oh yes, not disagreeing with that. This situation is like that saying - Honda is that final straw that just ends up breaking the camel's old arthritic back. Not exactly a fun feeling to watch my favorite team in F1 go through such hardships but can't help but think that they brought this upon themselves.

I agree. It pains me to see my favorite team and driver in this position. It is their own doing though. In Woking, there must be people wondering why they broke up the agreement with Mercedes in favor of Honda. They can't turn back now though, too much money was invested in this and they need to keep improving race by race. Both Honda and McLaren need to save face by doing so and get some more point scoring finishes during the year. However, Austria will be another Canada for them

 

[Darren Bentley]

I don't know if people are aware but the fastest lap with harder Super Soft tyres was only 0.8 slower than 2013 and a second or so faster than 2014,

 

[Torcano]

I don't know if people are aware but the fastest lap with harder Super Soft tyres was only 0.8 slower than 2013 and a second or so faster than 2014,

2015 cars are significantly more aerodynamic than the 2014 counterparts, and the powertrains especially are beefier as well, they simply cannot be compared.

If you look into how the engine development tokens had a special rule implemented for Honda, where out of the 32 tokens available to all the manufacturers, they would be allowed to use the average amount of tokens left after the other three engine manufacturers have done with their first homologation step. Which means if Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault have used up a bunch of tokens and came to the party with beefed up power units with few tokens left, then that would mean Honda would get shafted pretty hard since they will have less to work with in terms of upgrading through out the season. And that is exactly what happened where everyone else showed up with like 10 tokens left and Mercedes showed up with 7, Honda had to negotiate with FIA to have 9 tokens, which automatically and drastically reduced their chance of doing any major upgrades to the unit other than do some minor reliability fiddling every now and then... even more difficult considering for this season they have to make 4 power units last the entire year.

So unless Honda showed up on the grid with a class leading engine with solid performance they had no chance and were inevitably going to get pummeled, even though they had one year of extra development time they could not deliver that sparkly engine that could have saved them from this plight. Now all they can do is hope the remaining engines don't break. It's all pretty dire like some sort of Game of Thrones episode when you think about it.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

I don't know if people are aware but the fastest lap with harder Super Soft tyres was only 0.8 slower than 2013 and a second or so faster than 2014,

Yes, but in these years the general pace was a lot higher. The cars can be fast, but only for a very limited amount of time e.g. a qualy lap or a fast in/outlap, but most of the time they are slow. They are not driving fastest lap after fastest lap.

 

[Darren Bentley]

So unless Honda showed up on the grid with a class leading engine with solid performance they had no chance and were inevitably going to get pummeled, even though they had one year of extra development time they could not deliver that sparkly engine that could have saved them from this plight. Now all they can do is hope the remaining engines don't break. It's all pretty dire like some sort of Game of Thrones episode when you think about it.

Who is Stannis then, Red Bull or Renault, I guess we will find out when either Red Bull drop Renault or Renault Pull out of F1. Because either one is basically like setting your daughter on fire to try and get the iron throne

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

2015 cars are significantly more aerodynamic than the 2014 counterparts, and the powertrains especially are beefier as well, they simply cannot be compared.

If you look into how the engine development tokens had a special rule implemented for Honda, where out of the 32 tokens available to all the manufacturers, they would be allowed to use the average amount of tokens left after the other three engine manufacturers have done with their first homologation step. Which means if Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault have used up a bunch of tokens and came to the party with beefed up power units with few tokens left, then that would mean Honda would get shafted pretty hard since they will have less to work with in terms of upgrading through out the season. And that is exactly what happened where everyone else showed up with like 10 tokens left and Mercedes showed up with 7, Honda had to negotiate with FIA to have 9 tokens, which automatically and drastically reduced their chance of doing any major upgrades to the unit other than do some minor reliability fiddling every now and then... even more difficult considering for this season they have to make 4 power units last the entire year.

So unless Honda showed up on the grid with a class leading engine with solid performance they had no chance and were inevitably going to get pummeled, even though they had one year of extra development time they could not deliver that sparkly engine that could have saved them from this plight. Now all they can do is hope the remaining engines don't break. It's all pretty dire like some sort of Game of Thrones episode when you think about it.

I think the way Honda's token are handled is extremely unfair. They had less development time and had one season less than all others and end up with less tokes than Renault WTF?!
I am not a Honda or McLaren fan, but that is in general bad for F1, because now it is a Mercedes (and Ferrari) party and other good teams like RedBull and McLaren have no chance, because they cant get a competetive engine.

 

[Martin Maaskant]

I think they (FIA, Strategy group) should ban the hold on engine development. It was done due to cost reduction. But there are only four engine developers right now and they are all big names in motorsport. I don't think de development of the engine throughout the year should have a huge cost increase. When you lift that ban you can see a better development of the Honda and the Renault engine and that gives us closer racing. I can imagine that the Mercedes teams are not that thrilled about that idea. But when you look at it from the fan point of view, the last year and this year we see a huge advantage of the Mercedes engine and that is not good for the sport in a whole.

As far as McLaren concerned. This is not the first time that they positioned them in this situation. I can remember a time when they raced with Peugeot engines. That was a real blast in the literal meaning of the word.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

I think they (FIA, Strategy group) should ban the hold on engine development. It was done due to cost reduction. But there are only four engine developers right now and they are all big names in motorsport. I don't think de development of the engine throughout the year should have a huge cost increase. When you lift that ban you can see a better development of the Honda and the Renault engine and that gives us closer racing. I can imagine that the Mercedes teams are not that thrilled about that idea. But when you look at it from the fan point of view, the last year and this year we see a huge advantage of the Mercedes engine and that is not good for the sport in a whole.

As far as McLaren concerned. This is not the first time that they positioned them in this situation. I can remember a time when they raced with Peugeot engines. That was a real blast in the literal meaning of the word.

I think the current system is weird in itself or maybe I just dont have enough understanding for engine development. Currently you have to pay for every upgrade with a certain amount of token and you are limited how much you use, but doesnt it mean, that you have to try let's say a turbo upgrade against a possible kers upgrade and make sure you only use the one, that is most efficient in terms of result and cost of token. If you have no tokens, you just throw the upgrade on your engine and it's fine, but with the token you have to make sure, that you only use the most efficient one in terms of token. No idea how that should save money?!

I think Formula E and WEC do a much better job in terms of new technology why can't F1 just focus back on pure racing?! They have supposedly the best 20 drivers in the world and at least half of them wouldnt see the finish without slowing down. Some said, that the racing around 2009 and 2010 (still with Bridgestone) was booring, but I could much more appreciate what the divers were doing back then.

 

[Darth]

Mclaren were right to switch to the Honda engines because having your own
engine means better usage and installation ( one of the reasons why the Mercs are
ahead of the Williams cars).
They simply chose the wrong time to do it, they should have waited till 2017.

 

[Alberto Casado]

The issue (reading Boulier comments) is that Mclaren's engine is not Mclaren's, its Honda's, and the japanese do not seem to let them try to fix something.

I can see the disadvantage respect to the other teams, with one year less of experience, but the fact is that last year no team had the abysmal performance of Mclaren-Honda. Both Caterham and Marussia had by far better reliability, the only team near the amount of retirements was Sauber-Ferrari and 3 or 4 were due to crashes.

Seems to me the honda engine is simply a very slow unreliable brick.