james Allen

[Alfaster-F1]

[maripi]

Faultless Vettel holds off comeback king Raikkonen to win Bahrain GP

Sebastian Vettel produced a faultless drive from pole position to win the Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of the the two Lotus cars of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean. This is Red Bull Racing’s first victory of 2012 and makes it four different winners in as many races this season.

It was Vettel’s 22nd career F1 victory and his first of the season. He is the fourth different winner in four races.

If Vettel’s pace in qualifying was a surprise, it was the Lotus’ performance on race day which caught the eye. Raikkonen, starting in 11th place, had a chance to win the race and was frustrated afterwards not to have done so. It’s a sign of how sharp the 2007 champion is after his two year layoff and how Lotus has produced a very good car.

Lotus brought a raft of updates to this race including a new rear wing, floor and barge boards and this made an already fast and consistent car into arguably the fastest car of the weekend.

Vettel now leads the Drivers World Championship, whilst Red Bull take over the lead of the Constructors’ World Championship as McLaren had a very poor day in the office which saw Jenson Button retire on the penultimate lap and Lewis Hamilton suffer two slow pit-stops resulting in an eighth position finish. In total he lost 16 seconds and inevitably ended up with a lot of traffic. But McLaren were struggling anyway with race pace and the rear tyre wear was clear from early on in the race.

Red Bull collected thirty-seven points this afternoon to McLaren’s three as Mark Webber continued his consistent form and finished the Grand Prix in fourth place, for the fourth time this season.

Vettel led the race from lights-to-flag and a perfect start allowed him to open up a gap of almost six seconds before the first round of pit-stops. Behind him, both Lotus’ had scythed through the field during the opening stint and found themselves knocking on the door of the podium after their first tyre change. During these stops Raikkonen opted for another set of the soft option tyre, unlike many of the field, and he was soon up into second position after passing Webber and Grosjean before the second phase of pit-stops.

During the second stops and seeing Lotus’ pace on the soft tyre, Red Bull gave Vettel another set of softs to try and maintain the gap to Raikkonen as the Finn was now on a new set of prime tyres. The Lotus once again showed very good pace as the tyres got older and the former World Champion closed to within 0.5 seconds of the current World Champion. Raikkonen was unable to pass Vettel before the final set of pit-stops and barring a couple of fast laps from Raikkonen the gap stayed constant through to the end of the race.

Grosjean had a fairly quiet race after a brilliant first stint and he claimed France’s first podium finish since Jean Alesi in 1998. The same can be said for Webber who had a fairly lonely afternoon, finishing the race in the middle on a fourty-five second chasm between third and fifth position.

Nico Rosberg had a very eventful race, having dropped down to ninth from the start he managed to claw his way back to fifth position, making two very aggressive defensive moves in the process on Hamilton and Fernando Alonso which landed him in trouble with the stewards. However they ruled that Hamilton was always behind Rosberg when he made the move to block and so awarded no penalty.

Rosberg, like Raikkonen, chose to run his extra set of option tyres during the second phase of the race, however he could not make them last the distance of the Lotus’ and was unable to make any strides towards Webber.

Behind Rosberg was Paul Di Resta, the Scot making just two stops during the race as he defended very well to keep Alonso and Hamilton at bay until the chequered flag. Alonso was another very fast starter, making his way up to fifth position during the first lap, although the Ferrari driver was unable to match the pace of Rosberg and Webber. Hamilton had a frustrating race, compounded by two slow pit-stops which both surrounded the rear left corner that cost Button time in Shanghai.

Felipe Massa was much closer to his team mate than previously and finished the race in ninth place. Michael Schumacher added another point to his solitary point from Malaysia as he made his way from twenty-second on the grid to take the final points position.

Sergio Perez’s Sauber headed the remainder of the field, as he too had a quiet race ahead of the second Force India of Nico Hulkenberg and the Toro Rosso of Jean-Eric Vergne. Vergne was able to beat team mate Daniel Ricciardo after the Australian made a poor start from sixth on the grid and finished the race in fifteenth, the Toro Rosso’s either side of Kamui Kobayashi in sister Sauber.

The Caterham cars came home line astern, with Vitaly Petrov beating Heikki Kovalainen to sixteenth place. Kovalainen received a puncture on the first lap, which ruined any chances of him progressing on from a great qualifying effort.

Timo Glock was the only finisher for Marussia after Charles Pic retired from the race on lap 25. Glock came home ahead of the HRT pairing, Pedro De La Rosa once again finishing ahead of Narain Karthikeyan.


http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2012/04/fa...ahrain-gp/

[maripi]

How Raikkonen nearly won in Bahrain

The Bahrain Grand Prix was another example of close racing with uncertain outcomes, dependent on race strategy, which has already come to characterise the 2012 F1 season.

Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull became the fourth different car/driver winning combination in four races, showing not only how closely matched the teams are, but also how delicate the balancing act is in getting the strategy right on the Pirelli tyres.

In just four races we have already had eight different drivers on the podium, more than in the whole of 2011.

Bahrain’s Sakhir circuit provided the sternest test yet of the tyres, with plenty of high energy corners, hard braking zones and track temperatures around 40 degrees.

Tyre degradation was very high, especially due to the heat. Degradation is a measure of the decline in lap time performance, whereas wear is the consumption of the tyre.

Strategists briefed on Sunday morning that the wear was not a problem – it would be possible to do a whole race distance on one set of tyres – but the drop-off in lap time was severe over 20 or so laps on the medium tyre and 14 on the soft.

So it was a question of being reactive. It was essential to have a plan in mind, whether that was two stops or three stops, but to be prepared to change it, reacting quickly to pit once you saw degradation affecting the lap time. There was also a huge benefit in having new sets of tyres, rather than used sets.

Pre-race expectations were that most drivers would do three stops, with a few trying a two stop strategy. In the event, among the top ten finishers, only Force India’s Paul di Resta managed to do two stops.


Lotus takes on Red Bull

There were many surprises in this race. The poor performance of McLaren on track and in the pits, for example. But the biggest was the way the Lotus cars of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean took on the Red Bulls. They managed to beat Mark Webber fairly easily, but Raikkonen couldn’t quite do enough to beat Vettel to the win.

Lotus has had a good car at every race this season, but hasn’t quite got the strategy right before. In China, for example, they tried to do a two stop race with Raikkonen, but timed the stops wrong and on worn tyres he was vulnerable to the three stoppers at the end of the race, falling from 2nd place to 14th.

In Bahrain they got it almost perfect. The strategy planning began in qualifying, where the Finn did only one lap in the Q2 session, intending save a new set of soft tyres. Here Lotus made a small mistake, which turned out to be a benefit as they sent him out too early and underestimated the track improvement at the end of the Q2 session. Raikkonen failed to make the top ten shootout, where Ricciardo’s result shows that a 6th place start might have been possible for the Lotus. But to do that would have used up more tyres.

It wasn’t their intention to miss Q3, however the upside was that by failing to make the top ten, it meant Raikkonen had two new sets of soft tyres and two new sets of mediums, so he would do the whole race on new tyres. He also had a free choice of starting tyres. Vettel, in contrast, by going all the way to the end of qualifying and taking pole, used all his tyres except for one set of mediums and was forced to start on used softs.

How much was the gain from this on Raikkonen’s side? Every new set you run compared to your rival on a used set is worth around 8 seconds for a stint. Here’s how the strategists work it out: Degradation is 0.3 seconds per lap, so after 3 laps in qualifying on a set of a tyres they is 0.7s per lap slower than a new set.

So for Raikkonen compared to Vettel, in the first three stints there was 24 seconds available to him, provided he could make use of the new tyres and not lose time with mistakes or in traffic. It’s what got him in the game and almost won him the race.

Lotus went for the soft tyre for the start, because it has a higher working temperature than the medium and free practice had shown the car worked well on it with high fuel. They thought they were the fastest car on Friday.

We’ve seen how the start is crucial in strategy terms and Raikkonen made a great start, showing the advantage of new softs tyres off the line, up from 11th to seventh and ahead of Rosberg and Perez. He made a mistake on lap three and let Massa past, taking a couple of laps to get back past him again. During this time he lost three seconds to the leader Vettel. But more significantly he damaged his front wing and so had to deal with some aerodynamic loss, which also cost him for the rest of the race.

Thanks to the new tyres he passed Hamilton, who was struggling, and he managed to extend the first stint to lap 11. By doing this he got ahead of Alonso, Webber and Button. Now he was a contender for the win.

In the second stint on new softs he was the fastest car on the track until he caught his team-mate Grosjean and it was here, arguably, that he lost the chance to win. Vettel was not getting away at the front, Grosjean was on used medium tyres and Raikkonen was caught up behind him. He passed the Frenchman then set off after Vettel.

On new mediums compared to Vettel’s used softs he caught up quickly, but couldn’t pass. With some clear air instead of the four laps he spent behind Grosjean, he might have had the platform to jump Vettel in the final stops, but instead he made his third stop on the same lap and with Vettel using his only new set of tyres in the final stint, Raikkonen had no further tyre advantage to play and had to follow him home.

Raikkonen was disappointed after the race. He had a chance to win, just as Perez had a chance to win in Malaysia. The strategy was good enough to give him a chance, but not perfect. Perhaps with a little more ruthlessness by Lotus, moving Grosjean aside, it could have been perfect.


Tour de Force by Di Resta and Force India

After a trying weekend off the track the Sahara Force India team got a great result on Sunday with Paul Di Resta finishing sixth. As the Scotsman said afterwards, this felt like a win for the midfield team.

He did it despite having the slowest car of the top 12 qualifiers, with a pace offset of 8/10ths of a second per lap to the Red Bulls and McLarens and 3/10ths to the Mercedes.

Again the strategy planning began in qualifying; the team had taken the decision not to do a lap in Q3 but instead to save tyres for the race, knowing that he was going to try to do a two-stop race. This gave him two new sets of soft tyres and one new set of mediums for the race.

The ideal two stop race was to stop on laps 19 and 38, but even though he had new soft tyres at the start, he couldn’t get further than lap 14 before the degradation became too great, relative to the three stoppers, and he had to pit. He was the last of the top ten to do so.

With everyone around him three stopping, Force India knew their driver would be vulnerable at the end of the race on worn tyres to three stoppers on fresh tyres, but Di Resta drove a masterful race, keeping the tyres alive at the same time as keeping the pace up.

On new softs at the start, he lost two places off the line and lost time behind Senna. However, by extending his soft tyres to lap 14 he was able to get ahead of many of the three stoppers, including Rosberg, whom he was racing for final position.

Traffic is less of a problem for a two stopper than a three stopper, but Di Resta still lost time at various stages of the race, particularly the second stint where he was faster than many three stoppers, despite looking to do a 19 lap stint compared to their 13 laps. If there was a place where he lost the opportunity to finish ahead of Rosberg, it was probably here.

With a final stint of 24 laps, he was vulnerable at the end of the race, to Rosberg, but was helped by Button’s late race retirement and the fact that Alonso didn’t quite have the straight line speed to attack in the final laps. Using KERS, Di Resta could defend and hold his 6th position, equalling his career best F1 finish.

[Alfaster-F1]

[Unai]

"How much was the gain from this on Raikkonen’s side? Every new set you run compared to your rival on a used set is worth around 8 seconds for a stint. Here’s how the strategists work it out: Degradation is 0.3 seconds per lap, so after 3 laps in qualifying on a set of a tyres they is 0.7s per lap slower than a new set."

Lo tenia por alguien mas serio como para soltar numeros sin fundamento alguno.

[Alfaster-F1]

[maripi]

McLaren is set to run with the higher nose it ran on the MP4-27 right at the end of the Mugello test in Spain this weekend, its team principal Martin Whitmarsh today revealed in a conference call with journalists, with the team also making changes to its pit-stop procedures in wake of the problems of recent races.

Having bucked the trend for stepped noses seen elsewhere on the grid in the design of its latest car owing to its predecessor’s higher chassis profile, pictures from the final day of last week’s Mugello test appeared to show the Woking team’s MP4-27 running with a revised nose cone, with more gradual curve in evidence.

Speaking in a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes phone-in on Wednesday morning, Whitmarsh confirmed the modified nose had been tried – although pointed out that this was only one of several changes to the front of the car ahead of Barcelona. He added that there was a “reasonable chance you will see it on Sunday, yes” following further assessments by the team during Friday practice.

Asked if the change had been influenced by the platypus-style noses on rival cars, he replied: “I think there must be a bit of that, but I think actually if you look at the detail a bit, the height of the front of the nose is one of the more minor pieces of that new front wing assembly. So there is a range of things. We’re consistently developing the car so a lot of what we were doing was gathering information [at Mugello]. It’s unusual these days of course to have a mid-season test, so we felt we would use that to gather lots data and I’m sure, aside from the nose, you would have saw there were all sorts of appendages, sensors and equipment wedded to the car over the course of the three days.”

With the regulations around what designers can do at the rear of the car now more tightly controlled than ever, Whitmarsh says the front of the car naturally comes in for increased attention and is where McLaren has been focusing on with the latest update – trying to improve airflow going over the car. “Nowadays in Formula 1 the incremental improvements are generally modest and typically you are looking at the aerodynamic performance through corners,” he explained. “So you log a lot of data, classically of course you are looking for lower drag, higher downforce. In the case of front wing and the nose, there’s the attachment pylons – which you may have noticed are quite a lot different – and then the wing’s flap and end plates themselves there are all subtle differences. You’re managing the airflow that is enjoyed by the rest of the aerodynamic-generating surfaces and features of the car.

“It’s nowadays quite a critical part of the car – you’re looking to find very small improvements. There’s a lot of restrictions and prescription around the end of the car, so you can often generate more performance by managing the flow that arrives at them than developing them themselves. Clearly it was really a data gathering that’s given our engineers a lot of information and you will see it in Barcelona. For the race engineers and the race drivers it will be the first time they experience it and they’ve got the data to set it up and they can find the performance on the track.”

He also confirmed that changes to both the team’s pit stop personnel, and procedures, were afoot after problems with problematic left-rear wheel nuts in both China and Bahrain. “We’ve looked at what we were doing, we have made some changes to the team and the process and we’ll see them on Sunday in Barcelona.” Whitmarsh also expressed surprise that so many people had put themselves forward for roles in the crew: “I wondered whether we would get volunteers for some of the more critical positions and I was just astounded by just how many guys in the team wanted to put themselves in those challenging positions. It reflects well on the spirit within the team. There’s been a reasonable amount of practice, some changes in process and they’ll be seen at the weekend. I believe we’ll have good pit stops.”

The changes to the front of the MP4-27 and the team’s pit-stop procedures come as it attempts to rediscover the kind of race performance it displayed at the season-opener in Australia. Despite claiming two poles and front-row berths at every race so far in 2012 (although Lewis Hamilton didn’t start from second in China owing to a grid penalty), McLaren returned to Europe once more trailing Red Bull in the championship after problems with race pace – particularly in Bahrain – but Whitmarsh is hopeful the team not have a better handle on how best to use Pirelli’s tricky tyres.

“I think we’ve had a car that’s clearly been able to be on the front row in each of the four grands prix so far and therefore inherently the pace is there,” he said. “We haven’t got all the results that we wanted…but I believe we will be competitive in Spain and going forward. You don’t know what other teams are yet to do, I know we’re working hard to understand the tyres and understand the car and continuously develop it, and we know others are doing the same. “I think within the team at the moment there is a positive feeling. We had a very interesting data-gathering test at Mugello and we’ll see in Barcelona.”

McLaren ready higher nose and pit-stop changes for Spain

[maripi]

Drivers split over the Schumacher inspired debate on what kind of race F1 should be


Michael Schumacher said today that he is very pleased to have launched a debate on F1 about what kind of sport we want it to be; one where the drivers push to the limits or one where they have to manage the tyres.

And in the paddock today the other F1 drivers have been giving their views on the discussion. The younger ones, who by and large have limited or no experience of racing on the Bridgestones used up to the end of 2010, say that they are quite happy to race on the current tyres. Others have mixed views with some drivers like Mark Webber on Schumacher’s side and others, like Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso, seeing it as part of a modern F1 which is more entertaining for the fans.

“I just think that they’re playing a much too big effect because they are so peaky and so special that they don’t put our cars or ourselves to the limit,” Schumacher said on the CNN network recently.

“We drive like on raw eggs and I don’t want to stress the tyres at all. Otherwise you just overdo it and you go nowhere.”

Webber agrees with his rival,”Always drivers want to push to the limit, it’s in our DNA, ” said Webber. “THe last couple of years it’s changed. There’s a large element of pacing going on and that’s a new trade for us, at this level. Sometimes it can be a bit frustrating, the engineers can get frustrated with how powerful the tyre can be. We can have phenomenal tyres but the racing might not be as exciting. So depends who wants to do what for the sport.”

There’s no question that the moves made on the rules in the last 18 months have made the races more spectacular with a ten fold increase in overtaking at a track like Barcelona compared to the Bridgestone days. Many fans have had their say on this site and elsewhere and there is strong support for Schumacher’s point of view. But at the same time, F1 is aware that it needs to broaden its appeal and the sport has changed from a series of short sprints, to a spectacle full of uncertainty as drivers are forced to react to the tyres’ performance going off. As Webber says, with tyres that degrade at 0.01s per lap and refuelling, the drivers push to the limits, the fastest car will always win and it’s not much of a race. With the current rules, there are times to push (especially in qualifying and at key stages of the race) and times to conserve. It’s an ideological question of what teams, drivers, fans and administrators want F1 to be.


Vettel said this afternoon, “The racing in the last couple of years, since we changed a couple of things, has become much better. I had a race here where I followed Felipe for 60 laps. Nowadays you know that your chance will come in the race. We get a completely different inside the car from what you see outside the car. You have to look after your tyres more than three years ago. Take 2009, we were allowed to refuel, we had new tyres and they lasted longer with not much degradation, it’s a different quality inside the car because you can push every lap. Now we fuel the cars up, the cars are much heavier, it puts a different stress on the tyres. There’s more overtaking, which I imagine is seen as a better quality from the outside, because things happen.”

Alonso agreed with Vettel.


Some other voices from the drivers are as follows:
Sergio Perez “You have to manage your tyres in the first lap to have a more consistent pace and then after that you can push. I find it okay, I have no problems at all with it.

“Perhaps in Bahrain it was a bit too much. But I think it makes the race more interesting for the team, for the drivers, for everybody. It makes it really great because of how you have to approach the race. I’m happy.

As for this prospects for this weekend’s race in Barcelona he said, “It’s going to be a dramatic race for the tyres. I expect high degradation, but it’s the same for everybody. It’s not easy, you have to adapt all the time to different condition. Yes you want to go flat out but you have to take care of the tyres.”

Romain Grosjean: “I think you know what the deg is before the race and then you have to play with it and adapt yourself. For sure you cannot run at 100% for all of the race and it’s part of the game. The driver has a big influence on the tyre. It’s a lot of work with the engineers to save the tyres and see how you improve yourself and if you can make a difference at the end of the race, then good.”


Daniel Ricciardo: “I don’t know any different, Michael has spent more time here and known different stages. I’ve come in and driven on the Pirellis and I haven’t had a problem with it. I’ve adapted to the situation. I don’t know about driving on raw eggs..but for me I’m driving in F1 and it’s awesome.”

Mercedes CEO Nick Fry observed that one of his drivers doesn’t like the Pirelli way, while the other one, Nico Rosberg, welcomes the opportunity to do a better job with the tyres than his rivals. This debate over tyres, he said, “Is a question for the teams and the organisers to answer and we support Michael on having a strong point of view on this. It may not be a point of view that other drivers share, but it is a perfectly valid and intelligent point of vie

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2012/05/dr...should-be/

[Alfaster-F1]

Gracias maripi, como siempre, un paso por delante.

[Rubenchu]

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