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Just received the entry list for next year from Bernie: Lotus March Stewart Ligier Alfa Romeo Scuderi Italia Brabham Minardi Jordan Tyrrell Simtek Lola

Can we team Ayrton up with Ronnie Peterson? Have JPS sponsor them again? Use a proper ground effects chassis? Oh, check that. Maybe Jim Clark or Graham Hill instead of Peterson.

Well in 93 both cars were on Goodyear tyres. Both cars were powered by Ford V8's - Customer motors for the McLaren's factory for the Benetton which meant the Benetton had slightly better motors. Senna scored 5 wins & 73 World Championship points. Schumacher scored 1 win & 52 points. Senna team mate was Michael Andretti who scored bugger all. Hakkinen replaced him for the last three races & by out qualifying Senna at his first return race made the Brazillian really pull his finger out. Patrese earnt 20 points, giving Benetton 72 for the constructors. Senna managed 73 of McLarens 84. Not sure what you mean by double, but anyway. The difference in the 92 constructors was 8 points. Schumacher scored a raft of podiums that year, so the Benetton was a pretty useful thing. The 92 McLaren Honda was a bit of a dog. The V12 wasn't by any means the best thing to have, least of all when teamed with the massively conservative approach they took to all the tech Williams had by then rolled out. They started the season with an update of the 91 car, itself not the best around that year. If you look at the results from 93 Senna had three wins to Schumi's one, but suffered seven retirements (of 16 races) to the Benetton's 4.

Yeah and I was hoping to get this thing sorted for once and all BEFORE lunchtime. It is not about convincing everyone about the righteousness of your viewpoint. It is about having a yak about F1.

Supersprints usually allocate you a number on the day. Stick it on a window (usually) & it won't damage anything. Blue triangles - you can either go buy one from somewhere like revolution racegear or do what I did & trundle down to your local sign shop & ask for an offcut of blue sticker stuff. Either that or go for the classy insulation tape. Noice.

I'm suprised you haven't heard it before. It is a pretty common view point. The Williams had over the previous few years been honed (In an aerodynamic sense) to function over a small bandwidth (for want of a better word). With the removal of the active everything the cars had to work over a larger envelope. The early FW16 didn't have a particularly large envelope which is why it could be made to qualify better than it raced. Benetton routinely trounced Williams at the pitstops. They as often as not made Williams strategies look ordinary. Good luck to them for it. Not saying there is anything much wrong with doing it, just that it was what happenned... It is worth noting mostly because it sheds some light on Senna's mind set at his last race. Between that & losing his mate (Not sure how close they were really) in Ratzenberger probably was messing with his head. Maybe Senna couldn't tell about the traction control, but the FIA did find the traction control software in the ECU's of the Benettons. They couldn't prove it was used, otherwise presumably they would have thrown the book at them. Much like they did over the dodgy modifications to the fuel rig that probably caused that huge fire in the pits on Verstappen's car. Anyway, launch control is not the same as traction control & in turn is different from anti stall. It is nothing against Schumacher in any case, but more so against the engineers in the team.

As ever there are two sides to every argument. I don't think anyone expects to convince anyone else of anything much, but anyway. I think you are drawing a long bow to say the Williams FW16A was markedly superior to the Benetton. Early in the year it was a noticably recalcitrant thing - particularly senstive to changes in ride height & pitch. So it could be set up to qualify well, but less so in race trim. None the less Senna still put the thing on pole 3 times from 3. He led in Brazil before an uncharacteristic off (& was miles ahead of Damon Hill) & at Aida was Liberacied by Hakkinen after Schumacher lifted off mid corner in an attempt to slow Senna's corner exit speed. I don't think that anyone would argue that by the end of 94 the Williams was the better car, just not so at the beginning. It is perhaps worth noting that Senna went to his death believing that Benetton was still using traction control. I wasn't so much wondering what might have been as lamenting the fact that we didn't ever get to find out. Probably the most equal their respective cars were was in the '93 season. The Donington GP that year was probably amongst the best race that Senna ever drove. I can't remember where Schumacher finished, or even if he did. Senna was (at that race) just on another planet to everyone else. I was no Senna fan at the time, but sat absolutely transfixed through the whole thing. Also, Senna's first victory for Lotus was pretty damn special aswell.

F1 is basically soap opera for blokes. If you want a movie about grand prix racing try Grand Prix. Hopelessly melodramatic in the 60's tradition, but worth a look. Muz, hate to dissuade you but BE doesn't own the rights to Brabham any more. Nothing wrong with the rumour other than that. Heard the one about Colin Chapman coming back from exile in South America to reform Team Lotus? Young Andretti will be driving for him. Cosworth motors.

On a good day Eddie Irvine was full of it. By putting Schumacher on a plane above everyone else he (by inference) tried to elevate himself to the level of the remainder of the drivers. Don't get me wrong I have nothing but admiration for the way Irvine turned a mediocre talent into an absolute bucket load of cash (Nice one Jaguar!) but he was a gob shite. He lobbed one year at Bathurst (visiting Tomas Mezera from memory) & made his way to the commentry booth. The was a long silence after his "Bathurst is really the formula one of touring car racing" comment as the rest of the commentry team struggled to stifle their laughter. To be fair Irvine was almost certainly taking the piss. There is a photo from Adelaide in 85 or 86, showing Senna along side Prost, Mansell, Piquet & Rosberg - the gang of five. Some pretty healthy competition. I can only hope we see the likes of it again. One of the great tragedies of Senna's death was that we never did get to see how the 94 season would have played out.

Scathing what you are saying is fine, but remember it is the rear rotors we are talking about. They don't get any where near as much heat loading as the fronts. Yet they still crack. A second point to remember is that, however good your brake ducting is, for the time you are braking you are not getting any cooling effect relative to the heat input. So losing a few tenths of your brake pad coefficient, whilst it makes the braking zone longer has very little effect on the peak temperatures the rotors reach. In saying that there will obviously be a difference on the rotor face immediately beneath the pad. The crucial point as far as this post is concerned is that the cracks do not form or propogate from this region - they are edge cracks. In trying to pick something to fix the problem I would suggest: Remove the stone shields. The fit closely to the inside of the rotor & may well promote a differential in the cooling of the rotor which in turn will induce stress & promote fatigue. Try some one elses rotors. I have pretty much lost faith in DBA. certainly I can't see the value in the 4000 series. Maybe try RDA, project mu or even something fancy like AP Racing. I dont see the problem being from the slots in the rotor. Almost all race rotors have slots of some description. But perhaps worth noting is that other than DBA, no one seems to run the slots to the outside edge of the rotor.

Um, ok. I should have asked before, but what diameter is the main pipe? (at the cat end)

Have you some pics? I am not sure if the pipes extend to the turbos or if there are dump pipes between them & the turbos.

To me the extra speed he had down the straights was much more than just being towed along. It looked like the Ferraris had a substantial straight line speed advantage. Maybe they turned the wick up on Schumachers car to help secre the teams championship trophy. If they did they didn't miss by much.

I was just going by what was ont he tellie the other night. Super Aguri has come good at last. Just in time for.... oh damn.

I don't see how you can blame the pads. Firstly, the metal in the rotor will be massively more conductive than the pad material (Any pad material). Secondly the amount of heat input into the rotor will be defined by how hard you are braking, not by the pad characteristic. Lastly, we are talking about rear rotors here. Mine don't usually get hot enough to flash off the high temp thermo paint (The third of the three colours). But they still crack. And yeah, the DBA (lack of) warranty is piss week. The things are designed for track work but as soon as you get within 100 miles of a circuit the warranty is void. That is not that suprising, but it is still rubbish. I have had to bin rotors with no more than a few tenths of a mm wear. Which pisses me off no end.

Somewhat telling is the difference between top end speeds at the end of the main straight. By way of just one example the Ferrari had an 11km/h better terminal speed than the McLaren. What the hell are they doing at Mercedes? Did the get the F1 engines mixed up with the diesels they put into the E class taxis?????

Well I have & unsuprisingly they do say that. Pretty much the only time I can remember team members not saying things along those lines was when Frank Williams' was talking about Nigel Mansell. Or Mario Andretti about Mansell. Or Prost about Mansell. Or Senna about Prost. Or Prost about Senna. Or Mansell about Piquet. Or Piquet about Mansell. The more level the team mates the less well they tend to get on. Many of his rivals have more than a little vitriol for him aswell.

Baron, could you include me in the group buy. I am chasing a Light flywheel ($410) + freight + needle roller + pivot. For an late model R32 Gt-R.

Well I dunno. Some people maintain that you can't be both a good bloke & great at the same time. Some people say you can't be regarded as great if you aren't also a good bloke. Each to their own I guess. For my 10 cents I prefer my heroes to be from the old school - more your Alan Shearer type.

You have got to respect the job Renault did this year. Other than a couple of very public fumbles it was faultless.

You missed my point entirely. What I am saying is that (in my book) there is a difference between successful & great. Greatness requires more than just winning races or even championships. You have to include the other qualities the drivers bought to the sport. By way of an example many people consider Stirling Moss to be one of the best ever GP drivers. He never won a world championship. For that matter Chris Amon, for all his skill never even won a race. Jacky Stewart contested all of 99 GP's. Gilles Villeneuve dragged his Ferrari around many tracks & posted results that were all about him & not about the car. Different era's, different expectations.

There is a distinct difference between the "most successful" & "greatest". When you consider the achievments of some others, for example: Jacky Stewart: Three World Championships. Completely revolutionised the sport in terms of safety. Many GP drivers owe their lives to the deeply unfashionable stance that Stewart took in the early 70's. Jack Brabham. Three World championships, including one in a car bearing his own name and with an Australian built engine. Pierless integrity. Niki Lauda. Three world championships. Astonishing bravery in coming back from a terrible accident in Germany. Astonishing integrity in withdrawing from the 76 Japanese GP on safety grounds when the championship was on the line & rejecting Ferraris offers to make excuses about the car breaking. Damon Hill. World Champion. Led Williams in the wake of the trauma induced from Sennas death. Just like his old man did with Lotus after the demise of Jim Clark. If you want to measure greatness, you may want to think about those blokes achievements before talking about Schumacher.... Also, like ctjet says. Take a look at the old in car footage of the turbo cars (there will be some on you tube somewhere). Those cars had to be DRIVEN....

So which side of the limit of the law is trying to run people off the road on?

Since when is the willingness to cheat the measure of how good someone is?

Do you still have the rear stone guards fitted to your car?