Shame Ross brawn couldn't be brought back, even as advisor, he would be able to get the best out of the team. I don't think arrivebene needs to go, but the management of the team clearly needs to be refocused, and ownership of their sections needs to be reinforced on the individual section managers for the car. Changing drivers isn't the best idea, it would be better to bring in Alonso, what's the point in jumping to a rookie who will likely need time to get consistent (even lil Maxine had to start at TR), and would Alonso, good as he is, be better than Kimi, or Seb to that matter, with a car that breaks down too much?
Marrichone at RACE NYSE event reported in Gazzetta Dello Sport "Without being arrogant I think we are at the same level if not superior to our rivals. I'm not talking about misfortune, it's important not to lose confidence, in the next 4 races we will recover much of the gap"
Then, with reference to the candle (spark plug) that compromised the race in Japan, he said "it was a technical nonsense" that had an impact on a car that costs millions of euros. "When it comes to a component that costs 59 euros, which blows the race on machines that cost millions of euros, it really hurts
From Champion's Website - A lot of accurate machining, tolerances etc. in the manufacturing process. "Besides its tiny size, another interesting feature of the F1 plug is that there's no protruding hook on the bottom. That's because simply there is no room for one. A normal ground J shaped electrode doesn't have a chance of surviving in an F1 motor, It would get crushed by the piston or simply shaken loose by the intense vibration. When an F1 piston is at the top of its stroke, it just about touches the cylinder head. The combustion-chamber volume is mostly made up of the recessed parts in the piston tops that are there to provide room for the valves. Without that hook, the ground electrode is simply the bottom edge of the threads. This design is known as a surface-gap spark plug. Surface-gap spark plug is a spark plug designed to produce sparks along the isolator surface at the ignition end. This spark plug type is also classified as semi-superficial discharge type and superficial discharge type. This spark plug has a smaller heat exposed isolator, therefore, it gets dirty easily. To overcome dirt, a capacitor discharge system is used which reaches rapidly the required voltage to produce the sparks. It is used in engines of high performance like the engines of Formula 1. "To get an idea of the precision of the components of an F1 engine, when Champion builds its F1 spark plugs, the length varies minutely from plug to plug. This is known as manufacturing tolerance; for the F1 plugs, the difference from the longest to the shortest plug is only 0.05 milimeters, or about the same as the thickness of the hair. If a spark plug is on the long side, the piston might hit it, so teams machine a divot in the piston or shim the spark plugs with washers." Over the course of a year, Champion produces about 10,000 of these special units, and they're not cheap. Whereas you or I might pay two bucks for a spark plug, an F1 team spend between $35 and $50 each, or as much as $500 per engine. We all know the old racing saying: "Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?"
59 € for a F1 spark plug is not so mich, I thought it would be more expensive. A good spark plug for bikes can cost half of that and I remember paying around 40 € for 2 plugs for a cheap Japanese bike just because they were "rare" in my country (that was in the pre-internet days). Maybe the problem is that Marchionne has been cheap.
This story seems to have some teeth. Quoted from fellow F Chatter: jgonzalesm6 said: ↑ F1AT report that Ferrari has pushed on the combustion of the fourth ICE in an attempt to compensate for the 0.9 oil and add a few more BHPs than the ICE 3. They say the new ICE wasn't originally designed with the 0.9 oil rule in mind, so they had two alternatives: put a new ICE 3 in the car and lose some performance because of the 0.9 (according to them the gap of ICE 3 to Mercedes was 20-25bhp) so that the gap to Mercedes will open to 30bhp or accept the risk to debut the ICE 4 (+new cooling) that is pushed very hard on the combustion side, to gain the power lost because of the 0.9 oil rule and another 10-15bhp (10 according to them 15 IIRC according to motorsport). The problems on the spark plugs would happen because of the very advanced combustion of the ICE. Questo scrivevamo io e il mio amicone @spontonc prima di Monza: "una Power Unit (la 4) che potrebbe decidere le sorti del mondiale" #FUnoAT AND PG Tعch @SmilexTech 7h7 hours ago Per vincere il mondiale, Ferrari non poteva aprire ulteriormente il gap di 20-25 CV tra EVO 4 Mercedes e sua EVO 3. Ci hanno provato #FUnoAT and the twitter page https://twitter.com/SmilexTech[/QUOTE]
So it was a failed spark plug because of poor engineering. Which means it wasn't the plug randomly going bad but someone failed to do their job properly Got it.
Analyzing the situation it is clear to me that the FIA destroyed the championship by changing the rules from 1.2 to 0.9 in oil consumption in the middle of the championship only for the new engines which was totally unfair. For me these changes were not necessary and they could have waited for next year.
Allison pointed that out at Mercedes after he arrived when he pointed the spotlight on Ferrari oil burning and then the FIA began issuing rules.
Thinking back, has Channel 4 F1 given any attention to the oil burning saga ? Maybe I missed it? Karun is pretty good at explaining technical issues...or is this a not for discussion?
"Oil burning" is in fact a method to circumvent the ban on additives in fuel. They put additives in the oil instead, and that gets into the combustion chamber to improve engine performance. Clever exploitation of a loophole in the regs. .
You cant win anything with this attitude - either you have all functions covered and operating or you dont and you lose or fail then.... Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne conceded after the Japanese GP that the team may have overlooked quality control up until now. "It's a problem we've probably ignored over time because it was never of much importance," Marchionne explained.
Arrivabene delivered a giant Gold Tapier from Canale 5 https://it.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferrari-consegnato-ad-arrivabene-da-striscia-la-notizia-un-tapiro-d-oro-gigante-963967/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BaJGgkFFMeo/?taken-at=257135560
"Ferrari's title campaign collapsed with a crash in Singapore and reliability problems in Malaysia and Japan, prompting the Italian broadcaster Canale 5 to deliver a huge, satirical Tapiro d'Oro (golden Tapir) award to Maranello this week." Golden Tapir, a small golden statue, is a special "prize" delivered to big celebrities or politicians who have been humiliated or defeated.
That's what all the fuss was about on Italian F1 tweets yesterday. I'm like " Why is MA standing in front of this golden like pig statue with a reporter?" Thanks for explanation.