I liked that article as I read it yesterday. Mercedes just might be on verge of real improvement. Red Bull would appear to be slower overall. It is just early days yet. I think Ferrari are in a good position to start strong, as they say they must.
Agreed. He doesn't really mention it does he. Then again, soft compound tires when they have reached a certain degredation yield I believe the absolute slowest lap times making softs a doubled edged sword, at least last year they were with a few teams. in other news: F138 has a hole under the nosecone. It is unknown if this is for driver cooling or what. Red Bull have a passive DRS system they have been testing as well. The exits are under the beam wing, very difficult to see.
That's actually a very good point. Softer tyres really mean stickier tyres. Now, on bends twists and turns, sticky is good, in the same way as down-force is good there. But, on straights sticky like down-force is unwanted drag. Remember how the the softer compound tyres gave no advantage at Monza compared to what they did at a Monaco or the like? Indeed it is. I speculated elsewhere that perhaps Felipes comments about overheating on the first day weren't spur of the moment. Imagine if it is a part of nose-hole-gate to justify the hole being there on the pretext of being needed for driver cooling - when in reality it passes under the driver and co-incidentally gets vented to some needed area diffuser sealing etc. Now some might rightly say that would be easily seen by the FiA, but, if we think back to extreme overrun, that too was obvious, and CW stated it (immediately after the Aussie GP IIRC). Yet the official didn't take any action until Silverstone, and then only for one race. We are yet to find out what nose-hole-gate is all about, or even if it is a "gate" but it would be sweet if it was and it worked as well for us as extreme overrun did for RB. Here's a neat image (courtesy of @nano-F1) showing something that does seem to line-up with where that hole is and match it approx in size. But it still doesn't show us where it's going to?? One more point, if they are trying to say its for cooling the driver, in reality, last years vent to cool the driver wouldn't have been 1/10 the size .... Perhaps another effect of global warming Image Unavailable, Please Login
Gary Anderson wrote: For both Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton, the Mercedes seemed to have understeer. The rear would sometimes snap, but it wasnt so much of a problem as it was for Sauber or Toro Rosso. When the drivers tried to push mid corner and get on the power earlier, the understeer was just magnified. That seems to be the characteristic that dictates the cars outright pace.
