hrd-hr30

Grosjean pork chopped it 4 times over the weekend, didn't he?

how many times did Perez take the run off while trying to pass? once that I recall on Kimi. End result - no harm, no foul. Big deal. Monaco is an exceptionally difficult place to pass... lol at "just lunging for the apex" - hitting the apex isn't exactly bungling it all up! And any pass under brakes is a big lunge anyway... Perez made good clean passes on Alonso and Button there, fully alongside under brakes and made the turn no problem, as did Button on Perez. The second attempt on Kimi wasn't going to work anyway - he wasn't far enough up alongside. Kimi didn't need to run him into the wall in the braking area. Kimi wasn't turning into the apex, he was just squeezing Perez into the wall. I guess Kimi wanted Perez to evaporate into thin air or something, because when you're fully committed & braking on the limit you can't stop any harder if the other guy fails to leave a car width in the braking zone. That was Kimi being a douche, not Perez.

The tyres haven't changed yet - they're aiming for Canada or British GP. Its just that track doesn't have any real long/high load corners to f**k the tyres in the space of a few laps. And you can drive as slow as you want, just about, without fear of being passed by everyone. I thought all the slow corners might hurt Mercedes rear tyres under power, but that's not their problem apparently. Anyone who has ever watched Monaco before knows what to expect in terms of the racing. Absolutely no sense complaining about that. I don't agree Perez was in the wrong in any of those moves - certainly not the one where Kimi ran him into the armco before the corner! And he was more than fully up alongside Alonso and made the turn-in to the corner no problem whatsover. When someone has you up the inside like that and there's no room to fight it - sorry, you've lost the position. Even if you are Alonso and even if you are in a Ferrari.

I suspect the Mercs may manage to get passed here too - look how bad they were under brakes last race, particualrly in the downhill braking area... If they suck that bad here, they will be passed into the first chicane after the tunnel. And if they hurt their rear tyres too badly, they might find themselves getting passed on the pit straight or even after the first chicane.

lucky you're not in QLD! Excesive noise is one of the offences covered by our new anti hoon legislation. Your car can be taken for 90 days for a first offence and confiscated and either sold or crushed if a second hooning offence is committed within a five-year period. Second offence doesn't have to be the same car either. How good is that?

I haven't used RSR's myself, but 3F/1.5R sounds like enough for them. Probably near the upper limit of what they'd need.

Pretty dodgy info above. All RWD race cars run some static camber. Even live axles guys will weld/shrink the housing to bend it such that they get some camber on the rear! You definitely want rear camber for grip work. I had about 2 degrees (might have been a bit over - can't remember exactly) on the back of my 180 on semi slicks. Front you want as much camber as possible. I had about 4.5deg and it wasn't enough. Less grippy tyres like KU36, RSRs etc need less camber.

they have SFA fuel to race with next year , so they definitely won't be wasting it straight out the exhaust! Maybe in qualy they might crank it all up - if they are allowed to?

Harness shoulder straps have to be kept short (and close together at the mounting points) for HANS devices, so it makes sense to put the harness bar in the main hoop if building a new cage.

SFI standard belts are only good for 2yrs from date of manufacture. Better off buying FIA, or Aus/Euro Std belts.

not with these tyres designed to degrade - the tyres aren't lasting any better at the end of the races with the cars on low fuel. And Webber claims his Q3 lap was ruined because his rear tyres went off during that single qualifying lap on low fuel before the third sector! http://en.espnf1.com/spain/motorsport/story/107725.html remember that's not some experimental super soft gumball qualifying tyre - its a medium compound race tyre!

Hamilton; "I can't drive any slower" Thanks for making the racing so much better, Pirelli. That's what's been missing from F1 all these years!

That's retarded. Cotton King Gee overalls are OK, but cotton pants and shirt aren't???

well they did tell Perez to toughen up... McLaren don't tell their drivers to bend over - they let them race. And good on 'em! Mercedes are suffering the same fate as the last couple of years. A strong start to the season then quickly fade away because they have NFI how to make the rear tyres last. The first few tracks must be more 'front tyre limited' which makes Merc look better than they are. If F1 had decent tyres and refuelling, the Merc's could be genuine front runners. They make old-school F1 race car - ones that go fast on low fuel. But they suck at the game of conserving tyres designed to degrade. RBR seem to love the warmer races that use Mediums and Hards. Malaysia and Bahrain, their pace has been untouchable. They seem to come back to the field in the cooler races that use the Softs and Mediums. Fastest lap of the race 4.5sec slower than qualifying. Awesome...

I'm with Roy. Perez only got a few decent results when the 'go long, go slow' strategy worked out. If F1 was about racing and going fast, he would never have been looked at as the next big thing. And now, the very thing that made him look good a few times has turned against him! With the 2013 extra-degrading Pirellis, it doesn't look like he'll get the chance to make that strategy work because everyone's having to do the long slow strategy just to make it to a normal pitstop window! So far this year the Hard tyre has only lasted 1 lap longer than the Medium in the race they were used. No chance to make one less stop.

On the topic of Mark Webber's starts - can't find one of the F1 Jaguar front row start

I dunno, I'm more tired of you coming into the F1 thread just to tell everyone to stop talking about F1 lol

Interfering in the outcome of a sporting event for no conclusive benefit is unsporting in my book. The team got the same points regardless of the finishing order. $20million worth of drivers should be trusted to be able to race their team mates without crashing. If they can't be, you're paying them too much! Engines only have to last two races, and they spend alot of the GrandPrix these days nursing tyres anyway, so they're not getting an absolute caning. A few laps of pushing hard shouldn't hurt them - they've proven to be very reliable in recent years anyway. The concern about tyres not lasting to the finish was obviously not really a problem - Vettel made it home comfortably ahead of Webber. They raced hard and clean. The fans got treated to a great dice. Everyone made it home intact. The best man on the day won. It's wins all-round from a sporting perspective. The alternative you want is that we would have watched another pair of drivers cruising the last quarter of the race in formation like the farcical Mercedes situation for 3rd and 4th. Wouldn't that have been exciting! They may as well have got the FIA to throw the chequered flag early to end the tedium if that had happened as planned... And better yet, RBR have agreed to ditch these types of team order until they actually need to support one driver over the other, which is a massive win for the sport and the fans. If only Nico had the balls to do the same...

besides, with how close the championships have been in recent years, every single point counts. Particularly when your main championship rival from last season is out of the race, it's time to capitalise on that mistake, not cruise around and settle for 2nd place - that's no way to win championships. Which is what the sport is all about, after all...

That's not what happened though. Mark said himself that during the race he was wondering how the team would deal with the situation and was ready for a sprint to the finish - not something you would say if there was a standing agreement before the race about exactly how it was going to play out. They made the Multi21 call during the race. All Vettel did was the same Mark did at Silverstone - ignore team orders during the race to hold station. When Mark did it he was the little aussie battler showing some trueaussiegrit by sticking it to the man or some nonsense, Vettel returns the favour and everyone goes off.... Worse still, Mark did the same thing in Brazil last year witht he championship on the line for Vettel - he was a fool to think Vettel wouldn't do the same to him when the chance came! I say good on him. It was an unsporting team order that served no actual point to the team or drivers. Until there is a clear championship contender to support, it should be best man wins, not some old blokes behind the pit wall calling the race off with a quarter of it still to run. Let them race. Stupid orders should be broken.

that's the reason Seb is hated... F1 fans need to have a villan character. It has been that way since at least the 80s. F1 fans are conditioned to hating successful Germans. Vettle fits the mold - the fact that people can get so worked up about his finger victory celebrations just goes to show how little there actually is to hate about him! And the other thing that makes him "a dog" is the same thing other drivers have been applauded for... You just can't do it if you are a successful German...

Loeb's not a successful German in F1...

Unfortunately, it is utter nonsense that he would have walked away from the crash if he had been wearing a HANS device - he also suffered a massive cardiac arrest and was only kept alive with CPR at the scene. You have to be a little sceptical just how safety conscious track management actually are when they twist stories like that. Particualrly when they are planning to import and sell HANS type devices... are they really all about safety, or just sales. Last weekend at Lakeside track management allowed racing to continue in wet conditions with a car off to the side of the track at the highest speed part of the track, the Kink on the front straight. There is next to no run off there, and in the wet it is effectively zero opportunity to have any say in where you end up. A driver, wearing a HANS device, went off and ploughed into the back of that car and suffered a fractured vertebrae as a result. Luckily it was an under 1600 car only doing about 160kph. The front running cars are well in excess of 200kph at that part of the track.

Mediums and Hards for Bahrain, just like Malaysia. In Malaysia, Mediums were still the preferred race tyre because the Hards were so slow and still only lasting the same amount of laps as the Mediums... And the drivers are doing nothing but conserving to make the Mediums last for a three stop strategy... http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/04/tyre-situation-splits-the-formula-1-paddock/ It's a sorry state of affairs for F1 GrandPrix "racing"

I've always been a fan of Vettel. The debut with BMW was impressive, as were his wet performances with Torro Rosso, including their only GP win. He is very good, and it is nice he's matched Schuey's wins at this stage of their careers, even if he did have to stay with the dominant team for 4 years to do it. SV himself has said himself he's all about racking up the stats and records. That clearly wasn't the way Schumacher went racing... everyone thought he was mad leaving the multiple championship winning team for Ferrari. quick question - was this stat from before or after Malaysia? lol