than the factory Renaults?
I'm shocked he took this long to get competitive...now he needs to keep it up to bring the fight to the Brawn/Button/Barrichello steamroller.....
Newey. Only Ross can claim to a a bit better. These are the two best engineers in F1. Oh, and Vettel and Webber are prety damn good.
Newey and Brawn are quite different. Newey does actually design stuff in addition to leading the design team. Fundamentally he works at a drawing board. Newey is best compared to either Rory Byrne or John Barnard - he is the original "pointy headed genius". Brawn on the other hand is a superb manager (which actually Newey may not be judging by his time at McLaren). What RB does is bring bright & talented people together and point them in the right direction - but fundamentally he doesn't design cars. As to why the Red Bull car was better this weekend, it was clearly very very good through high speed corners - good aero & good mechical grip. The Brawn OTOH is not quite as good at those things but is even better under braking - of which there really isn't too much for the first half of the Silverstone lap! Without a bit of braking to put energy into the tyres the Brawn also seems to struggle to generate tyre temperature - its very, very easy on its tyres (a feature which contributed to it doing so well in some other places). I would expect things will be a lot closer next time out and in Hungary.
As I predicted a while back. No team will be allowed to run away with it too soon. There is too much money at stake. Are the redbulls really that much faster or has Brawn backed off a bit. Its funny, if Button and Brawn had won this race then it was all but done. Now things will get closer and Brawn will squeek it out in the last 3 races. The show begins.
You mean like when MS dominated? - In the "glory years" of F1? So, in your opinion, the entire, seventeen race series is a sham? Brawn "backed off"! I really hope your post was a joke. This is not the WWF (or the Nascar taxi cab races where there's "debris" whenever they get too far apart.] This is multi-million $ *constructor* teams going head to head - And, this past weekend, RBR was a little (~-0.1-.2seconds over a 3+ mile course btw) faster than the Brawns...... IIRC, Matchett said it seems the Brawns like it a little warmer, the RBR's run better in colder temperatures - *That* was the difference this weekend IMHO, nothing to do with any "show". My 02c, Cheers, Ian
So was it warmer for RB? Come on, look at what would happen if Button had won. RB was right where he normaly would be. Its Button that was off the pace and just happened to come back in the last 7 laps.....They must think we are all fools. Just watch the rest of the season and see how they manipulate the results. I guaranty it will come down to the end.
That explains why JB was running behind Kimi and co. for most of the race, but when Kimi and co. pitted, JB stayed out and passed them, but JB pitted, he reentered basically in the same position that he pitted and kimi and co. were no where close to JB when he exited the pits, how did he pull that off towards the end of the race?
The Red Bull is like last year's McLaren and Brawn is Ferrari of last year, in terms of how they use tires. Add Jenson who drives very smoothly and it's not at all inconceivable that he would've had trouble getting temperature into the tires in that car. What makes zero sense is that the team decided to put both drivers on their worse tire for the longest stint.
Not at all - He just had a better weekend than JB and their strategy didn't work for once. [Happens to Ferrari all the time according to many here!] Same as Rubens sometimes had better weekends than MS. "That's racing" - At least at this level. So, I'll ask again - As you ignored the question the first time: Lots of people criticize F1 for being "boring", and the championship gets decided too early in the season, blah, blah. I therefore infer that your "it's all fixed" notion is a fairly recent factor? Cheers, Ian
Brawn admimtted after the race that the soft tires showed graining, so the longer stint on the hard tires. Apparently some people here have not been watching F1 for long. You would have noticed that different circuits favor different chassis. Not to mention drivers have their favorite circuits and it can show in performance. Just because the Brawn was victorious on the previous circuits, does not mean it will do well on a high speed circuit like Silverstone. Temperature, track surface, a specific batch of tires, all will affect the way a car performs on a given day. Also, the Red Bull was virtually an entirely new car, the Brawn was not. If you had watched the very start of the race, you would have seen that Button has a great start but got trapped behind a car along the pit wall. Passing has improved in F1, but not to the extent that was desired. Then Jenson was stuck behind I think Raikkonen, and that pretty much messed up his day. If he had not been trapped by the first turn, the results of the Grand Prix would have been much different. Also, it appears some people have not noticed there is a conflict between the FIA and FOTA, that has become very nasty. To think that those two would be cooperating on a season long fix is a bit much.
"No team will be allowed to run away with it too soon" Not allowed by whom? Max? Do you think the teams would let themselves be dictated to by him right now? Bernie? Perhaps slightly more plausible, but I doubt that they are in any mood to listen to him either. I'm with Fast_ian, I believe what we are seeing is genuine and I think we'll see Brawn winning again soon and wrapping it up well before the end of the season.
+1 Just imagine how fast they would have been had Adrian interpreted the rear diffuser design the way Brawn did! Without the diffuser they were still close to the Brawns in the beginning. As their design continues to evolve I believe the RB cars will become even faster. The second half of the season is going to be very interesting. I wouldn't assume that Button is going to be the WC yet!
Yes ..but more puzzling to me is Mclaren's pace they really have got it wrong, looking at the pace of Mclaren at the start I had them ahead of Ferrari, LH in real terms had 3/4th in the Aussie GP. It could be they were lead up the wrong path with there KERS efforts. I agree with most of the views in this thread, Franco I see where coming from but, come on man ...like has been pointed out Max and Bernie have there hands full of other pressing issues right now..
i hate to say it but i was thinking this while watching the race. i've heard rumors from the very beginning that the brawn cars were even faster than they were showing but generally only did just enough to make sure they won when they needed to. sad to think this way but i think it's true...
The Red Bulls had all new aero, and as it was mentioned, their speed up till now has been without the rear diffuser. With their new aero developments I am sure they are working in more and more diffuser. Imagine how the season would be so far if the diffusers had been banned, RedBull would be further ahead of the pack then the Brawns are now.
No its not a recent factor. With the idiots relying more lately on the ad revenues than ever before.....they dont care about sell outs or not. Look at Montreal...they sold out every year. Infact they made more money on tickets than most of the other races. Max and the little gimp dont care. What they do care about is the money lost from the ad revenue. This has become a bigger and bigger slice of the pie in the last 10 years but more so in the last 5 or 6 especially with the asian fly away races near the end of the sched. If the championships are wrapped up early(namely the WDC) then the ad prices drop for those fly away asian races simply because the viewership drops big time. So if you remember when Mike wrapped it up ....cant remember the year but it was around 2002 or 03 when Mike wrapped it up really early. Ferrari was told that it was costing everyone money when Mike killed the WDC early. Ferrari told Mike but he didnt care for the idea so he kept racing all out every race. Then in 2005 06 Ferrari was told to ease up and Mike again told them no....that is why there was so much to do about Mike retiring or not....He always insisted on racing to win every time he strapped on the helmet. So Luca had no choice but to give Mike the altimatum of doing it our way or your way....If it was Mikes way then he would have to retire.....and thats what he did in Monza in Sept..06. This is the game being played....it is no longer a sport but a business which has made it a show. All the stories about Mikes wife wanting him home safe and sound with the kids is a load of crap.....Look at him racing motorbikes now and getting hurt. Does that make sense?
So, I'll ask again: In your opinion the entire 17 race series is fixed? Yes or no please. That's not Bernies problem - The TV contracts are negotiated ahead of time [For example, IIRC Speed just committed to another three years.] The amount paid is the amount paid. Now, if Speed's advertising rates drop because no one's watching that's their problem. Nothing to do with the pygmy. I'm not going to bother commenting on your conspiracy theory about MS beyond saying "BS!". - I'm prepared to stand corrected if you can give me one shred of evidence that "they" (whoever they may be) tried to instruct him to slow down. Cheers, Ian
I'll turn that round the other way: You can believe what you want to believe. I know what I know, and I know that Ferrari, BMW et al are not going to spend 100's of millions per year on a "fixed" series. Sometimes they win, sometimes they *dominate*, sometimes they lose, but there is no puppet master (beyond MM of course ) orchestrating things as you imply. Why not answer my question btw? Cheers, Ian
