F2003 vs Champ Car at Laguna

I am... but I guess if you took a modern champ car it would lap much slower. F1 cars have also had loads done to them to try and make them cheaper and slower, so it deosn't surprise me as much.

 

It doesn't surprise me at all. That Champ car record was recorded during an actual race weekend: The car would have been set up optimally for the driver, with a full race team behind them; i.e. it was done in high stakes no expenses spared conditions.

A Ferrari Clienti F1 car by comparison has alot of the electronics disabled and removed that would normally be there and active during the Formula 1 championship races. Then you have the lack of a team which would normally been receiving telemetric data from the electronics in the car and subsequently adjusting the setup of the car for the track; some of the sensors as well as the in-car setup adjustment controls are removed in the Clienti F1 cars.
Also you have to wonder what the rev limiter was set to; I highly doubt that it would have been set to full F1 race settings, to prevent the engine from being worn out after only brief use.

Further things you could ask are what tyres were used? What downforce settings were used? How quick is the driver? Also as you outlined, only 12 laps were completed on a track currently alien to Formula 1; that certainly would have had an impact.

 

I agree.
I remember reading in Evo that the clienti engines are de-tuned to make it last 1000 miles instead of the 400 miles or so they used to do. nd it wasnt Schuey or 'chello doing the driving....

That might be worth a few seconds..

 

I'm suprised,but not shocked. The Champ car teams have years of data re: Laguna. The Ferrari guys had a dozen laps; aero config, tire pressures, ride heights, tire compounds, etc. were all up in the air - and probably set at some, median, baseline.
In and of themselves, the grooved tires probably caused the F1 car to lose 1 to 1.2 seconds v. a true slick.
All in all, he got within 1.5 seconds of the outright lap record in 12 laps - that speaks volumes about the depth of the F1 cars capabilities.

 

CART 1998 was one of the finest years of pure RACING that ever was. Lots of winners, lots of passing, lots of excitement. It was a great show and the crowds were there, too.

I got to hang around with Gurney's AAR team that year through a funny set of circumstances and made 4 of the races. AAR was not at the front by any means, but what a bunch of great people. No big Bernie deal to walk around in the pit lane before the race and talk to Bobby Rahal, Zanardi, etc.

 

The way the article reads, the 2003 car was not a Clienti car, but a factory car. One would think if they were going to try for the track record, they would have send a race-spec engine, if not close. However, I agree with what others have said, there's no substitute for seat time and the Champ Car drivers would have put in hundreds of laps at Laguna Seca vs. a dozen for Bertolini. F1 is faster by more than a second at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, so the arguments about grooved tires, etc. don't really hold water.

 

How good is this guy Bertolini? To my knowledge he's never competed in a GP, so he might be a couple of seconds slower than Schumacher might have been in the same circumstances. Put MS in this year's car on that track and I think the record falls comprehensively, even with Ferrari's obvious lack of experience with the track.

Of course it also shows how impressive Castroneves' lap was, since that came some 5 years ago.

 

Still, my point remains about him only completing 12 laps on a totally unfamiliar track. Plus we don't know how quick the driver was; if it was Luca Badoer doing the driving, you could be more certain.

What did the '99 CART cars weigh and how much power did they have?

 

It could have been a bit closer than it was I think. It is ironic that Ferrari has again come to the US expecting to have an easy time in a competition event, only to have underestimated the competition. Thinking back to the CanAm events of 1968.....

 

If you want to make an "apples" to "apples" comparison look at the lap times from Montreal last year where both CART and F1 competed.

It's no contest. Read below:

Six seconds. That was the difference between Juan-Pablo Montoya's 2002 pole position time at the to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Christiano Da Matta's pole in his Newman-Haas Lola-Toyota. In perspective, the slowest F1 qualifier, Alex Yoong - believe it or not, still qualified 1.4 second in front of Da Matta, and probably would have lapped the CART field over the race distance.

Source: http://www.f1rogues.com/index.php?pOption=articleview&pArticleId=105

Consider that the car wasn't setup properly and was driven by someone of "less than F1 talent" . Bertolini is not in my opinion the man to bring to beat this record. He was a great karter and a decent FIA Sports Car racer but he is not F1 material and you are asking him to get into a million F1 car on a track he has never driven and also a track not know as being easy to learn.

Champ cars weigh more, make less hp and use steel vs. carbon brakes. They also have quite a bit of turbo lag.

Regards,

Jon P. Kofod
www.flatoutracing.net

 

I agree.

Also, how much did the CART cars from '99 differ in terms of power and weight to the ones used now? When did the changes take place?

 

James,

I don't think they have changed drastically since 99 but that means they haven't improved much either. Remember that the pace in F1 is incredible. the car Ferrari used at Imola would now be a middle of the pack car in the current F1 grid.

The problem with CART is money, or lack of it. There has been literally no development work the past 2 years and pretty much a single chassis (Reynard went bankrupt a year ago).

The engines used the past two years (Ford Turbos) are detunned for more life (4 races) and make about 750-820 hp which is down from the 800-850 that the last few Penske's made before they left for IRL.

Also traction control has now been outlawed.

Last years pole time at Laguna was a high 1:09 which was 2 seconds slower than Helio's time in 99.

Regards,

Jon

 

Thanks for the info, John.

I think if there were hypothetically a real FIA Formula 1 World Championship race at Leguna Seca in 2003, the fastest lap recorded would have been around the 1 minute mark. I guess roughly the same amount of time that it takes Schumi to lap Fiorano these days.

On a side note, last night I stayed up to watch the Champ Car World Series race at Denver and it was pretty damn exciting! It was amazing watching the Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, who wears glasses under his helmet, to win after storming through the pack from 13th having been bumped into a spin from 2nd or so right at the first corner of the race!

 

Sad too, isn't it?!

 

They said he's a factory test driver so I doubt that's his first time in an F1 car. They say he's pretty fast in testing, that's why they use him. The car looked slow in the corners to me. Those grooved tires look absolutely tiny compared to the slicks they used to use. It didn't "launch" out of the corners like the old cars did. He also had a misfire in a couple slow corners that must have cost him some time. They probably didn't tune the gearsets for the track.

 

One other thing to factor in is the fact that on Saturday they ran an F2003-GA and on Sunday they ran a F2002. This could not be of any help also as i am sure the cars require quite different set ups.

One other thing is the fact that he ran all of the laps with the other clienti cars, stopped did a burn out and then did 5 hot laps. I was expecting that they would have changed his tires so he could have the advantage of fresh rubber. Also he had to have been running heavy on fuel where as the Champ Car was running light with enough fule to do an out, hot and in lap durring qualifying durring that race weekend.

Here are a couple of shots i took over the weekend. The first on Saturday of the F2003-GA the second was shot durring the morning practice on Sunday of the F2002.

 

I'm not surprised at all, 12 laps in total is not much from a driver/car set up perspective, especially if they are running a car in a new track. Give it a couple more runs and even with that driver, the Ferrari would have broken the track record.

 

Welcome to FerrariChat Fernando. Enjoy