hrd-hr30

Maldonardo is the kind of driver you'd be looking for. He's got pace and isn't afraid to pass. Much easier to coach him to stay calm and patient when needed than to try and turn a nice safe steady driver into a fast one.

I dunno what that's a picture of, but its not Nemo unless its a very early "in progress" shot. No B pillars in Nemo, and alot more bar work. Haven't looked at the floor of it - not that interested in it tbh. This thing looks alot more like a rally car with the fabed passenger seat mounts.

That stems from when Time Attack was about tuned road cars, so they used road legal tyres. When they can do Nemo type mods, why bother limiting them to semis? Absolutely pointless.

don't single Nev out - the rules have been broken in Clubsprint for years, so if you want to be competitive you don't have much choice but to do the same. And there's certianly others there this year with just as much aero and flares... So its not like it a was totally unfair fight. And it is an awesome time on street rubber!

rationalise it all you want, the rules don't allow it. but as I said from the start, nothing was going to be done about it because the organisers simply don't care. The rules have always been broken from day 1.

It obviously has a pretty good chassis setup, but when all that horsepower equates to just 240kph top speed and 220kph minimum T1 speed, it's fairly obvious the aero-grip is the difference between it and the others, rather than its chassis. That's where the really impressive grip is coming from.

unfortunately that will only mean even less running for the big guns - no point wasting tyres (and the car!) on a wet or damp track...

every team in the field worked it out at exactly the same time then, eh? I don't buy it. Pirelli were getting bad press about their tyres falling apart. Tyres were just about all that was being talked about, and not in a good way. Suddenly at Silverstone it stops happening to everyone, and hasn't happened again since. The falling off the cliff, the random midfielder popping up out of position... And none of the engineers who were talking about how difficult it was to make the tyres work has since said boo - if they had suddenly found the secret, they'd be jumping up and down with excitement... But suddenly tyres barely rate a mention anywhere. Hey, its a much better conspiracy theory than RBR sabotaged their point haul and discriminated against our boy by using the same 3 stop strategy for both drivers!

One minute you're talking about how falcons tow well over 2 tonne easily and without any problems at 110km/h up and down hills, the next your telling us how often you've had to recover from sway... A good tow car that's well within its capabilities won't suffer from sway in the first place unless you load a car on backwards or something.

Maybe it was a mistake for RBR to 3 stop their drivers. That's a very different argument to "RBR sabotaged Webber again". But RBR's analysts and strategists had access to far more information on the state of their tyres than armchair experts watching it on the tube. They came out and said after the race they expected other teams to be in tyre trouble at the end. I still reckon Pirelli quietly reverted to last years compounds a few races ago. We haven't seen any unexplainable randomness or falling off the cliff for a few races now.

http://www.f1fanatic...x-fastest-laps/ yes, he was catching Alonso in that stint, but had a few laps of degraded performance before he pitted indicating he 'd burnt up that set of softs. Its been a pattern over this season that the Pirellis warning sign that they are about to drop off the cliff is 2 or 3 laps slightly slower than your current trend. RBR would have had more data like tyre temps and pressures as well to base their decision on. His last 2 laps of that stint were slower than Alonso, who seems to have just been managing the gap and his rubber to get to the end because he was faster than Mark even after Mark stopped for new tyres. RBR did the same strategy for Seb 3 laps later, and his times hadn't tapered off. So its obviously not a conspiracy against Mark.

Sorry to ruin yet another RBR Webber conspiracy theory with facts, but Webber's last 3 laps before that pit stop were getting consistently slower and the last was 2.2 slower than 3 laps earlier. I don't think they had any choice. They also 3 stopped Vettel 3 laps later and his lap times hadn't even started declining.

When rules start with things like "Cars must be presented as manufactured except for..." then you can't do anything unless they specifically say you can. That's Clubsprint Class. When the rules say "Aero is free except for mechanical devices to generate downforce", then you can do whatever your imagination can dream up. That's Open and Pro Classes. As Ben said, reclassifying the cars doesn't have to alter the schedule at all - just the results. Reclassified cars (ie ones that couldn't take their splitters and canards off) stil run in their originally allocated sessions. Too bad if that's less track time than other Open class cars - if they entered the correct class or had a Clubsprint legal car, that wouldn't have happened.

the thing is they're not really open to interpretation, just misunderstanding. The Clubsprint rules for aero/body start off with (paraphrasing) "you can't do jack unless we state it below", and the Open and Pro rules start with "aero is free except for fan cars".

Richo, yes your hypothetical example of a FRP front bar with canards as part of the FRP moulding would be legal, however it is clearly not the case in the examples on the WTAC website. As would a shovelnose front on a Clubsprint car, as long as it was made from FRP instead of carbon. btw, the "spirit of the rules" clearly isn't that only Clubsprint cars and not Open or Pro cars are allowed to use mechanical devices to generate downforce, which if you take Snowy's incorrect interpretation of the rules, is 100% OK.

the steering wheel example is a stupid oversight in the rules, but replacing a standard steering wheel with another steering wheel is completely different from adding canards and diffusers where there wasn't any before.

No, the rules state everything must be "as manufactured unless stated below" It doesn't have to specifically say you can't run canards, splitters and diffusers. It has to specifically say you can. if that's not what they meant when they wrote the rules, that's an entirely different problem!

You can see from the pics on the WTAC website that many Clubsprint cars are not legal, so its not like the organisers aren't aware that they are modified well beyond the rules now, it won't be a surprise at scrutineering. The organisers could simply do a mail-out to entrants with a reminder about the rules and what they mean if they were concerned about cars complying with the rules. There's still a couple of weeks before the event All of these aero components not allowed in clubsprint could simply be removed. Its not like they're welded on. Or if they can't comply with Clubsprint, bump them up to Open like they do at CAMS speed events - if they find a car's not legal for a class, they reclassify it if possible. there's no need to turn anyone away. The entrants should read the rules. Its not like WTAC rules are complicated or hard to interpret like some IPRA or Sport Sedan rules.

lol it was an ex-F1 engineer responsible for those things! and you might want to learn what the CAMS safety cage regs actually say before demanding everyone comply with it - because they already are complying with the CAMS regs which do not require cages in road reg cars even at national level speed events, and specifically permit non-complying cages in instances where cages are not mandatory. It's your who wants something other than CAMS requirements for cages.

hehe they asked me to crew for them this year. I don't know what the wording of the rules were in 2010, but in 2012 regardless of material used splitters, canards and diffesuers are not permitted in Clubsprint according to the rules published on the WTAC website. As I said before, I doubt there will be any enforcement of the rules - that's not what WTAC is about. The rules have always been broken since day 1 in WTAC and the organisers don't care.

big wing is one of the things actually "mentioned below" so its OK

I reckon alot of the cars that turn up in Clubsprint will be technically illegal. I doubt anyone will pull them up for it though. That means no splitters, no canards, no diffusers, no lightweight or non OEM mirrors, no widebody or flares - hell, technically even lipping would be illegal! A quick look on WTAC's Clubsprint page shows pics of cars entered with all those things! lol

2 races in a row where Pirellis haven't fallen apart... 2 races in a row where the lottery effect of random people turning up high on the grid and in race results hasn't happened... I'm tipping they've quietly changed back to last year's compounds. Either that or every team in the field suddenly worked out how to make the tyres last at exactly the same time...

ah, in that case it was a good agressive move! lol

must be my memory failing me - I thought he was the one clambering over the kerbs up the inside of a couple of other cars...