djr81

Here is hoping they can do a good gearbox to go with the engine. Maybe there is a reason no one else is running stupid drive shaft angles?

Well here is hoping the motor brings a step forward. They are certainly making plenty of changes, so fingers crossed. Which old colour scheme. The current one is very similar to that from 1994. I guess not having any sponsors makes it easier to paint the thing however you like.

Well any similarity between anything called HRT and a proper race team is entirely coincidental. For that matter any similarity between a race team owned by an investment bank and a successful race team is entirely coincidental. Look at how "Renault" are going backwards for instance.

Renault pioneered the turbo charged formula one motor. Nissan on the other hand have never even built an F1 motor of any sort. So what would Nissan possibly be able to help them with?

Some random investment bank. Great investment. Oh, wait. Renault needing Nissans help. That is comedy gold. Good work.

An F40 is just a 288GTO Evolution built to a later timescale and to no purpose other than to seperate rich idiots from their money. So pretty much like all Ferraris then. Anyway the base 288 was the business the evo was butt ugly.

Vibration is usually because the rotor is warped & they need skimming. The stock R32 gear is really not up to much. The rotors are too small, the callipers flex alot and the pads are too small. Upgrading will save you mone in the long run but it is expensive up front. As for performance you can generate nearly the same amount of retardation with the original gear just not for long. There is stuff all time in it. I hope for everyones sake the DBA4000 series is alot better than it was. I would check the price on some Project Mu rotors on import. As some free advice (Worth every cent) a cheap data logger that shows you how many gees you pull under brakes (& laterally) is one of the best investments you can make. Try the new GTech stuff (fanatic?) or just an app for your phone. Dont use a vernier. They dont clear the lip on the outside of the rotor & hence dont measure properly. Use a micrometer. If you are doing sprints get a pad that works from cold. Eg a DS2500 rather than a 3000. Then you dont have to swap them all the time.

You are missing the point. To a journalist a hoon and a car enthusiast are exactly the same thing.

I reckon that while it is easy to drive a slow car slowly (based on my years of experience of doing just that) it is actually much harder to drive a slow (ie bad) car to its limit which tends to be all over the place. You see it time & again. Someone who has been struggling in an average car finally gets something half decent and they are touted as the next superstart when they do well in it. I guess as long as it helps him progress to the point of replacing Vettel it is all good. It is all good having a West Orstraylean in F1 anyway.

So all that is missing is a circuit? What could possibly go wrong?

I went & looked it up. Sort of The answer is supposedly two. Two are Monza in 2005. The Dutch GP in 1961. The big news is: Narain Karthikeyan is the first driver in F1 history to finish 24th.

Fair call.

Blown diffusers have been around for ages. But off throttle blown diffusers are a relatively new innovation. According to the website it was once related, but not anymore. Did anyone else notice there were no retirements from the Gp on the weekend. AFAIK that has never happened.

That is nonsense. The entrants I know who are having to run on "street" tyres have left their R compounds at home in the shed. It is a nonsense rule aimed at artificially dividing the classes. In any case people end out going out & buying the closest tyre to an R compound they can find.

Dont get too excited - it is a different McLaren.

I couldnt give a rats about manufacturer involvement in F1. They come & go as they please. F1 appears to be going ok given Honda, Toyota, Ford, BMW have all bailed out. Euro V compliance has no relevance to any engine used in motor sport.

In 1994 Lotus was on its last legs. They were running on old Mugen motor that was heavy and out of date. They finally received a new one for Monza and scored P4 in qualy. Anyway it didnt amount to anything much as Eddie fkn Irvine punted the thing. They stopped after that year. At about that time Lotus was being wound up Jackie Stewart was convincing Ford that the way forward was to give him the money for Stewart Grand Prix. Which amounted to fk all with one win before they changed it to Jaguar which went even worse. It is now Red Bull for whatever that is worth. Anyway the point is that for the money Ford wasted on Stewart/Jaguar they could have run a Lotus Ford and got a heap more credibility & publicity. Not to mention stuff like winning races etc. Ford got shafted by Benetton at the end of 1994 after Schumacher crashed into the WDC. They ran in the Sauber after that which was hopeless. The debts that sent Lotus to the wall are about the same as Ferrari now spends annually on potted palm trees. More than a little of it was owed to Ford. Given the current fight over the name is just makes you shake your head. Oh and in a random, unrelated subject. Ayrton Sennas salary in 1987 - $4 million US - paid direct by the tobacco company. Lotus budget from the cancer company to run the whole team: $3.5 million US.

Oh 56kg. Only 40kg lighter than me then. I guess my point is you still make big improvements if you do a consistant <100% effort & it is easier to find motivation. The odd maximum effort to see how well or otherwise you are doing doesnt hurt - other than if you try it too often. Then you end up tired/unhappy and often as not injured.

It is easier to maintain motivation if you dont bust your arse everytime out. It is not like you have to do maximum effort interval training or run a pb over 10kms everytime you walk out the front door. Find a level that you can enjoy it. Chances are you don share much with Haile Gebrselassie.

Not so much. Back in the day you had a Lotus Renault. The car was by Lotus the engine was by Renault. Easy. Now you have Lotus Renault. Fk all is by Lotus other than the (usually late) sponsorship payments. The Renault is sort of a Renault although the team isnt owned by Renault but by a bunch of investment bankers with the car made at the old Benetton factory in England and the motor in France. No idea how much coin or in kind support Renault actually make to "their" team. As for Team Lotus. They bought the old Team Lotus rights but cant use the logo. It is all madness. Mostly I blame Jackie Stewart and Ford for all this.

To be fair Zakspeed have been around for ages (gone now I think) and they did other stuff besides F1 at which they didnt suck. Actually people now bitch about HRT being shite but compared to alot of F1 teams back in the day they are awesome. Bring back the olden days I say - you know when a Lotus had an actual connection to something.

Yeah go get a Cusco rear bar.

What was the Isuzu AWD they had years back. Actually looked pretty funky? The Vehicross? Or dont buy and import & go buy a Territory instead. New ones are actually pretty good given they are a 4WD. The old ones could be bought with a 4 litre turbo & a 6 speed box.

From memory of the turbo motors: Renault was a 6 cylinder. Honda was a 6. BMW/Megatron was a 4. Brain Hart motors were 4. Ferrari ran a 6. The Porsche/TAG motor was a six. Ford/Cosworth was a 6. Alfa Romeo ran a V8. Zakspeed was a four? Thats off the top of my head. Doubtless a few I have missed. The trend in road car motors is to small capacity turbos, hence the FIA's interest. But they are better off leaving them to the WRC & keep the atmo motors. The turbo motors cost huge coin. F1 was better when the manufacturers just supplied motors. Maybe they should restrict them to just that. Get rid of MB & FIAT. Unfortunately the manufacturers want the credit if they are paying the bills. Oh and for whomever missed the tobacco cancer colours Ferrari just resigned a huge deal with Phillip Morros. Which tells you all you need to know about their ethics free zone.

Actually the 2mm thicker alloy hat on the front caught me out. I put them on then wondered where all my thread depth on the wheel studs went. Yeah I have the SCR's on the rear of my car. They weigh a tonne & have more vanes the the SCR Pro's. NFI why they would do that. But they haven't cracked.