Alonso to outperform the Mercs, until Wolff pulls rank.
One thing Ferrari have to do is improve their straightaway speed. It does no good to have a car that corners good, but is a cat turd on straightaways. There has to a balance. Obviously, don't build a dragster, but don't build a car that's design sacrifices tons of drag for tons of downforce. Red Bull learned from this last year, when Mercedes were able to be stay with them in the corners, then eat them alive on the straights. Leclerc doesn't need help getting through tight corners, or traction off of the corners. He needs grip through the high speed corners and straightaway speed that's with Max. Build the car around this need, and he'll bring in lots of wins, imho.
This is the way to go. They all know this. More difficult to achieve this kind of compromise between aero efficiency and grip while cornering slow and medium corners. This is why Newey and his troops are specials. My biggest fear is that the aero concept chosen by Ferrari is more limited than the RB18. Next year could very well be a copy-paste of this championship.
I expect RedBull to be strong as the concept has no real weakness overall. Similar to past Mercedes. Unless others make strong improvement, the next season favorites have to be RedBull by a decent margin. This season is not over and more wins will arrive for them - RedBull.
If Ferrari can design a car that doesn't eat tires they could be right there with RedBull. Somehow they need to rectify the problems brought on by the TD so that Charles doesn't have to spend the entire race managing the tires.
Exactly, there is no easy fixes for these type of things most of the time. Mercedes has struggled with it for best part of a decade. Sure they had an overpowered engine and could deal with it, so the need to fix it wasn't as high. The one positive I can see on this, with how quickly Ferrari fires the tyres up, doing an undercut next year will be easier for them compared to their direct competition (if they can stay within 2.5 seconds of Red Bull, that is...).
After test weekend 2: Merc knew the car's concept was fundamentally flawed. To fix the concept flaw, would require a completely new car--which is not possible under the budget restrictions. They won't make that mistake again.
Without a competitive car during a race, strategy is useless. Their tyre management is their main problem right now. Biggest fear is an aerodynamic concept with no real room of improvement.
They also need to understand exactly what it is about their concept that doesn't work. They thought they had a complete animal on their hands (and who can blame them, so did everyone else when they unveiled their Bahrain spec). They spend a serious amount of time (years) developing several concepts (remember these cars where supposed to race in 2021 first), and came to a conclusion this was the best one. None of the issues they're having showed up in the windtunnel. The amount of serious upgrades they've thrown at the car and haven't actually improved all that much (their quali deficit in Suzuka, albeit in not exactly the greatest conditions with rain all of friday, was the same as in Bahrain!). Their USA package is actually really important. If they made a clear step forwards then we know they understand their problem and they'll be a serious thread next year. If the package doesn't work, they need to concede that they still have serious correlation issues between their windtunnel and their actual car. With then just 3 races to go, time is running out quickly for them.
Ferrari have. the smallest time gap to RedBull. Mercedes is larger. I have more trust in Mercedes making more improvements than Ferrari. Hope Ferrari prove me wrong! Possibly the competition is closer but RedBull would have to make major mistakes not take all again….
We'll see...it's very hard to predict where Ferrari and Merc will be next year. On recent success and ability to adapt, you'd think Mercedes...but then there's also the case that they where capable of turning their engine up when life got a little difficult to overcome the deficit, so it's really tough to say how much of their quick fixes where because of genius solutions or just turning the power up a little. This year is their real test. Before 2014 when they also had engine parity life certainly wasn't very easy for them, either. Next year with the raised floor edges it'll be another challenge for Mercedes, they have in the past and indeed this year run a car as flat as possible, whereas most other teams ran with rake angles, small in cases of Ferrari or quite extreme in cases of Red Bull. What teams with a rake angle learned in all those years is how to seal the floor despite using a rake, and I don't think it's something easily learned. I hope Ferrari gets on top of their tyre wear issues but I very much doubt there is an easy solution to this. In a way Ferrari did exactly what Mercedes did in 2014-2020 when life got a little difficult, turn the engine up to 11 and deal with the problem by throwing more power at it. Only downside is, when Ferrari did it this year, it tended to be followed by a massive fireball coming out of the back of the car...
Bye Yuki lol - Done after 23 Marko: De Vries should be AlphaTauri F1's team leader in 2023 Red Bull's Helmut Marko believes AlphaTauri hire Nyck de Vries will be the team's leader from the start of his 2023 Formula 1 debut season, despite his rookie status.
Well I think marko could be right. De vries does bring shiploads of experience in many different racing classes so I would actually not be surprised if he beats yuki on all fronts, incl taking the lead in the team
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/how-f1-teams-narrowed-their-tech-focus-in-final-2022-races/10403997/ How F1 teams narrowed their tech focus in final 2022 races This year's white-hot Formula 1 development battle cooled off several races ago, with teams switching their main focus to 2023 cars, which meant they focused on the finer details at the track in the closing weekends of the season. By:Matt Somerfield Nov 23, 2022, 2:38 PM The result of this slow-down in performance orientated parts arriving at the track inevitably leads to teams narrowing their focus further still, with teammates often running different setups and aerodynamic configurations during free practice sessions as they seek the balance required around the entirety of a lap. As qualifying approaches this usually leads to convergence on both sides of the garage but, as we’ll discover, that’s not always the case either. In Abu Dhabi last weekend, the Mercedespairing started off on the same footing on Friday by running the medium-high downforce rear wing assembly, featuring an upper flap with a cutout in the trailing edge (upper left). However, as the drivers searched for a little more performance in the middle sector of the lap, both tried another lower downforce option (upper right). The top speed advantage this offered didn’t provide the overall laptime boost they were looking for, owing to the losses accrued in the first and third sectors, and so changes were made on both cars ahead of qualifying. George Russell actually went one stage further with his setup, opting for a Gurney on the trailing edge of the upper flap that didn’t feature on Lewis Hamilton’s W13. However, whereas Russell had used the upper rear quarter endplate cutout in his breakthrough Brazil weekend (inset), he opted for the full-height variant for Abu Dhabi. Image Unavailable, Please Login Ferrari F1-75 rear wing comparison Image Unavailable, Please Login Red Bull RB18 rear wing comparison Red Bull and Ferrari also toyed with different rear wing configurations during practice, as they both tried a higher downforce option (bottom images) before both chose their lower downforce counterparts. Ferrari also used some practice time to evaluate a revised floor design (below), likely as a precursor to changes that the team expect to implement for 2023, which needed real-world data to validate their findings in CFD and the wind tunnel. The revised design centres on changes made to the section of the floor just ahead of the rear tyre. An upwardly scrolled edge will alter the course of the airflow, resulting in a behavioural change as it meets with the face of the tyre. Image Unavailable, Please Login Ferrari F1-75 floor comparison Photo by: Giorgio Piola It’s a relatively small change but one that could be beneficial in the team combating the issues posed by tyre squirt, a phenomenon that robs the diffuser of consistency and potency as the airflow is pushed laterally off the tyre into the diffuser’s path. McLaren also had test items at its disposal at the last race of the season, as it too looked for validation of a new development pathway for 2023. Unlike Ferrari, its investigations resulted in a more thorough overhaul of the floor’s edge, including the edge wing. The test item featured a design more in-line with the one championed by Red Bull and that’s subsequently been copied by others up and down the grid. The scroll, complete with flow deviators, in the forward section of the floor's edge was replaced by a more simplistic Gurney, with a cutout found behind it where a lower section of floor then resides, with the remaining section of the floor tapering out ahead of the rear tyre. Image Unavailable, Please Login McLaren MCL36 Photo by: Giorgio Piola Image Unavailable, Please Login McLaren MCL36 floor detail Photo by: Giorgio Piola Unseen, as it’s beneath the floor, McLaren also made its first foray into using an ‘Ice Skate’ too, a solution first seen on the Red Bull this season and then subsequently found on the likes of the Ferrari F1-75, AlpineA522 and Aston Martin AMR22. There’s also a small tab connected to the skate that juts out of its side and can be seen in the frame created by the rearward floor cutout. This will act on the airflow relative to the height of the skate, rather than the floor around it and should help combat some of the issues posed by tyre squirt. The skate therefore has several functions, as it not only provides a physical limitation against the track surface as the car compresses, it also has aerodynamic benefits as it alters the airflow’s path rearward. McLaren was obviously eager to see just how powerful this could be under real world conditions, and even noted as much in its submission prior to the event: “We aim to evaluate the effect of this floor edge on the car’s ride height behaviour.” This data will now be analysed as the 2023 challengers gestate ahead of their build for the upcoming season.
Hoping for Ferrari to win as always. But….I’ve been burned many times before . Still, I’ll watch the races (even more of them now )
Can I have some of what you have been smoking ? Perhaps I could borrow some crack from your stash..... Can you give me the number of your contact ??
