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Sakae

2018 F1 season - discussion

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This story is five days old.....and.....it does not address the oil consumption. In the case of oil consumption, FIA clarified the rules about refilling oil during qualifying. So, nothing illegal here, but I suspect Ferrari will lose some of their qualifying edge as a result.

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And if those struggles cost Hamilton the title, Diario Gol report that the current champion will lose his right to veto any potential new team-mates, paving the way for Alonso to sign for the Silver Arrows.

Hmmm, surprised?

Hamilton could be powerless to stop Mercedes signing Alonso - Report

"Great" team builder again on the move?

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9 hours ago, Ruslan said:

Slow news day and a pretty pointless article.

Agree; just like the groundless accusation of Ferrari from cheating.

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Well, the large amounts of blue smoke wafting across the paddock was for a reason. Maybe not a cheat... but certainly an interesting interpretation of the rules. It will be interesting to see how Ferrari goes in qualifying at Barcelona.

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I have a different take on this. It started actually with Horner who wanted FiA to investigate W09, which Mr. Whiting refused, the same article claimed. There could be several reasons why we saw smoke at the exhaust of Ferrari, which some may or may not be related to spiked fuel with oil. We simply do not know. It is however definitely wrong to term it as cheating, simply because no rules were broken in races past, and click bait headlines are just too lazy and ignorant to explain the issue properly.

After Baku we have new spec on the books and we are yet to see who will or will not deviate of benchmarks set on oil saturation. Problem with some fans is, they cannot accept, that Vettel is actually top draw driver, who can give Mercedes run for their money with almost equal equipment, and if he is winning, he then must be "cheating". Now when we have 3 or 4 teams in the game, Hamilton is suddenly not looking too great, which is why we get such conspiratorial stories.

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Well, to put it all in context, Vettel was saying before the season that Mercedes had the edge, as were many other observers (including Sakae). Vettel was even saying after his win in the first race of season that Mercedes had the edge. Then suddenly Ferrari is competitive in qualifying. I agree that "cheat" is too strong of a word, but I do suspect something is going on that neither you or I fully understand. We will know more at Barcelona, but FIA clearly went to close a loophole. I can only assume that they closed it because one or more teams were using it. If so, and it was giving a performance advantage to one or more teams, then we should see some changes at Barcelona. If we don't, then that is pretty interesting also.

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7 hours ago, Ruslan said:

Well, to put it all in context, Vettel was saying before the season that Mercedes had the edge, as were many other observers (including Sakae). Vettel was even saying after his win in the first race of season that Mercedes had the edge. Then suddenly Ferrari is competitive in qualifying. I agree that "cheat" is too strong of a word, but I do suspect something is going on that neither you or I fully understand. We will know more at Barcelona, but FIA clearly went to close a loophole. I can only assume that they closed it because one or more teams were using it. If so, and it was giving a performance advantage to one or more teams, then we should see some changes at Barcelona. If we don't, then that is pretty interesting also.

I think that the only loophole in the matter of burning oil is the one that was used by Mercedes to run to a different specification for over a year, that was never cheating, but if someone called Ferrari closes the gap some media immediately start calling them cheats, despite the fact that according to the FIA the Ferraris are perfectly legal. And that is the point, despite the smoke the Ferrari have been deemed perfectly legal. Anytime Ferrari manages to come up with a competitive car they are cheating, any time they win the do so thanks to their huge spending power etc etc etc. Sadly the same media never mention anything about the other teams, they never mentioned the tricks used by Red Bull like increasing the flow of fuel, the tricky suspension etc etc etc. I am not a Ferrari fan, and more often than not I think that I'm a very hard Ferrari critic, but it's becoming a farce, they can never do something right according to some section of the media, IMHO they should pull out of F1, they only get flak.

Mind you it's the same with the drivers: if they're Brits they are always right, they are always great drivers fighting to save the planet from evil foreigners, if you're not British and you talk to your engineers you're a bad sport, if you're not British (or English speaking) and talk to the media you're a cheat, if you're not English speaking and you try to race you're a silly loser trying to achieve the impossible, and so on.

I understand a nationalistic feeling but this is getting a bit too far

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11 hours ago, Ruslan said:

Well, to put it all in context, Vettel was saying before the season that Mercedes had the edge, as were many other observers (including Sakae). Vettel was even saying after his win in the first race of season that Mercedes had the edge. Then suddenly Ferrari is competitive in qualifying. I agree that "cheat" is too strong of a word, but I do suspect something is going on that neither you or I fully understand. We will know more at Barcelona, but FIA clearly went to close a loophole. I can only assume that they closed it because one or more teams were using it. If so, and it was giving a performance advantage to one or more teams, then we should see some changes at Barcelona. If we don't, then that is pretty interesting also.

Ever heard of such concept as in season development? Ferrari is not the only team that is improving race by race, however they are the only team subjected to harassment by a section of media (sq. head losers). 

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So "Shoey" is now F1 trademark; why I am not surprised, however I am not going to say - bad example for kids watching the race, because I know someone who had more than once a coffee at dormitories when ladies underwear served as an emergency coffee filter. People are sometimes very inventive.

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10 hours ago, Sakae said:

Ever heard of such concept as in season development? Ferrari is not the only team that is improving race by race, however they are the only team subjected to harassment by a section of media (sq. head losers). 

It is possible that they could have developed something over the last couple of weeks that changed the competitiveness between Mercedes and Ferrari.....but the season is like only about a month old. So, I am guessing they found a little trick that evened up the two teams in qualifying. We shall see if the relationship between these two change in Barcelona. If they are roughly the same, then there was probably nothing significant going on. If Mercedes has a definite edge, then Ferrari was probably doing something with oil that gave them an edge. If Ferrari has a definite edge, the Mercedes was probably doing something with oil that gave them an edge (Scipio's hypothesis). Of course, just to confuse the picture, all the teams are showing up with revised aerodynamics. 

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11 hours ago, Ruslan said:

It is possible that they could have developed something over the last couple of weeks that changed the competitiveness between Mercedes and Ferrari.....but the season is like only about a month old. So, I am guessing they found a little trick that evened up the two teams in qualifying. We shall see if the relationship between these two change in Barcelona. If they are roughly the same, then there was probably nothing significant going on. If Mercedes has a definite edge, then Ferrari was probably doing something with oil that gave them an edge. If Ferrari has a definite edge, the Mercedes was probably doing something with oil that gave them an edge (Scipio's hypothesis). Of course, just to confuse the picture, all the teams are showing up with revised aerodynamics. 

my hypothesis, corroborated by years of press evidence, is that last year they and only they were allowed to use a system that allowed them to burn "oil" and that when the others asked if they could do the same were told that no, it was no longer possible BUT nevertheless Mercedes was allowed by the FIA to carry on with that system

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13 hours ago, Ruslan said:

It is possible that they could have developed something over the last couple of weeks that changed the competitiveness between Mercedes and Ferrari.....but the season is like only about a month old. So, I am guessing they found a little trick that evened up the two teams in qualifying. We shall see if the relationship between these two change in Barcelona. If they are roughly the same, then there was probably nothing significant going on. If Mercedes has a definite edge, then Ferrari was probably doing something with oil that gave them an edge. If Ferrari has a definite edge, the Mercedes was probably doing something with oil that gave them an edge (Scipio's hypothesis). Of course, just to confuse the picture, all the teams are showing up with revised aerodynamics. 

In published Prost's opinion, Ferrari's engine improvement program is more successful than other sections of their car. I am assuming that Alain knows what he is talking about, and progress is more substantive than pouring oil into fuel. Lastly, fuel development program (by supplier) is not static, but least discussed on various Internet forums.

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3 hours ago, Sakae said:

In published Prost's opinion, Ferrari's engine improvement program is more successful than other sections of their car. I am assuming that Alain knows what he is talking about, and progress is more substantive than pouring oil into fuel. Lastly, fuel development program (by supplier) is not static, but least discussed on various Internet forums.

My opinion, and it's just an opinion, is that Ferrari, Renault and Honda have all been very careful not to come up with tricky devices that let them burn "oil" for the very simple reason that they had already asked to be allowed to implement the same as Mercedes and their request was refused (that's an interesting take on the concept of level playing field...), so in a snese they cannot claim that they didn't know that it wasn't legal.

Other than that is the development of new and expensive fuels, it has been widely reported that everyone is working on a new generation of fuels and that could be an area where Ferrari (= Shell) has achieved some advantage, we don't know. IMHO that is another reason to force teams to use commercial fuel. I understand that commercial oil coulnd't be a viable option but in that case I personally believe that either they come up with the same oil for everyone or each engine manufacturer has its oil sanctioned by the FIA at the beginning of the season and then they have to use it for the whole season (testing should be rather straightforward).

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I am increasingly bewildered by FiA's true role in what is supposed to be sport they are mandate to regulate. From blatant biases in many forms to questions of competence on technical side, having now Brawn budding in with his team of hand-picked mercenaries behind him replacing the Strategy Group, not to forget long standing unhappiness with race stewardship. So, who is really in charge? Williams's post-Baku retro complains against decisions rendered by the Stewards of the race that involved several drivers is merely latest flak in that department. "Old hands" have problem to comprehend what's going on, and I would not expect that new generation of fans is any better off learning sport from reading trashy articles posted on the internet. 

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13 hours ago, Publius Cornelius Scipio said:

my hypothesis, corroborated by years of press evidence, is that last year they and only they were allowed to use a system that allowed them to burn "oil" and that when the others asked if they could do the same were told that no, it was no longer possible BUT nevertheless Mercedes was allowed by the FIA to carry on with that system

If this hypothesis is true, then we should see Mercedes fall further behind Ferrari in qualifying at Barcelona.

Perhaps the story is more complex. Perhaps Mercedes was burning oil last year, so Ferrari decided to challenge them by coming up with a system this year that even more flagrantly burned oil (hard to miss the waves of blue smoke coming from the Ferrari garage). FIA then stepped in and banned burning extra oil in qualifying. If so, then they would both see a drop off in qualifying performance to the benefit of Renault.

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10 hours ago, Ruslan said:

If this hypothesis is true, then we should see Mercedes fall further behind Ferrari in qualifying at Barcelona.

Perhaps the story is more complex. Perhaps Mercedes was burning oil last year, so Ferrari decided to challenge them by coming up with a system this year that even more flagrantly burned oil (hard to miss the waves of blue smoke coming from the Ferrari garage). FIA then stepped in and banned burning extra oil in qualifying. If so, then they would both see a drop off in qualifying performance to the benefit of Renault.

just to clarify that it's not my opinion but that Mercedes actually did use a loophole to burn oil

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/tech-analysis-mercedes-oil-burn-spa-946864/

I don't have anything against people using a loophole, my problem is when the people that should ensure a level playing field and a fair interpretation of the rules act in a way which I can only describe as partisan.

regarding Mercedes performance this season, and the same IMHO applies to Ferrari, it could easily be that they have included some of the components that were in their oil into their fuel, that would be perfectly legal. what I don't understand is why Ferrari can only win by cheating, the FIA deemed their engine within the rules so I don't understand why going on and on with saying that they improved only because they are cheating, IMHO that is very unfair

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True about Ferrari (MB occasionally) is being a target of cheap comments. Then, welcome to Vettel's world, in which (his detractors continue to claim) he wins "only" because he drives vastly superior car, or sits on the grid front row in P1.

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Been gone for a few days...

Thoroughly enjoyed this last topic discussion, good points all round... I agree much with what Publius has stated...

 

Let's see what the Spanish GP throws up

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Article on Vettel's comments about Barcelona. Main take aways:

  1. Mercedes seemed best in the pre-season test at Barcelona.
  2. Ferrari's one-lap pace on Saturday is the biggest difference between Ferrari's 2017 and 2018 cars.
  3. "Barcelona is a very good gauge of where everyone really stands" (Vettel).

https://www.gpguide.com/News.aspx?articleId=MXwwNS8wOS8yMDE4IDAwOjAwOjAwfEZlcnJhcmkgJ2NhbiB3aW4nIGluIEJhcmNlbG9uYSAtIFZldHRlbA

 

If the biggest difference in Ferrari between 2017 and 2018 is the one lap pace on Saturday....then how was that achieved?

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13 hours ago, Sakae said:

True about Ferrari (MB occasionally) is being a target of cheap comments. Then, welcome to Vettel's world, in which (his detractors continue to claim) he wins "only" because he drives vastly superior car, or sits on the grid front row in P1.

There is some reason to question Vettel's abilities in traffic. He has won 49 races, but I believe has never won a race from below 3rd on the grid. Now, some of that is due to the nature of current F1, where there are often only two competitive teams in any given season, but, as we saw last race, he is not always his best in traffic.

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11 hours ago, Ruslan said:

If the biggest difference in Ferrari between 2017 and 2018 is the one lap pace on Saturday....then how was that achieved?

quicker in putting temperature on the tyres? different compounds from last year? different use of the MGU-K? different petrol? Hamilton non very focused this year? there's plenty of possible explanations, it doesn't mean that if they are faster they are cheating, Honda is much faster than last year are they cheating as well? Sauber is much faster as well, again due to cheating? It seems to me that some parts of the media have an agenda of suggesting "Ferrari doing well = they are cheating"

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15 hours ago, Publius Cornelius Scipio said:

quicker in putting temperature on the tyres? different compounds from last year? different use of the MGU-K? different petrol? Hamilton non very focused this year? there's plenty of possible explanations, it doesn't mean that if they are faster they are cheating, Honda is much faster than last year are they cheating as well? Sauber is much faster as well, again due to cheating? It seems to me that some parts of the media have an agenda of suggesting "Ferrari doing well = they are cheating"

<<quicker in putting temperature on the tyres?>> Not sure how this would really do it race after race.

<<different compounds from last year?>> This would effect everyone.

<<different use of the MGU-K?>> Perhaps.

<<different petrol?>> Perhaps.

<<Hamilton non very focused this year?>> Well......Raikkonen has been out-qualifying Bottas this season.....

I would probably add to this list: Doing something creative with oil.

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