FORMULA 1 2018 ROLEX AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX: QUALIFYING *** SPOILERS ***

O come on... Did you watch the qualifying?

It was close the whole time until the second run in Q3. The first sector Ham gain 0.5 seconds...over a 26s sector!!! that has 3 turns...that isn't talent. You don't run thousands of laps on a track and then all of a sudden figure out how to gain that kind of time. It's a power mode and Merc just waited till the last runs to turn the power to 12

 

Suspension, tyre and downforce setup that is carrying the W09 with the best times per sector.

Look at their speed trap per sector (as TheMayor pointed out)....it's not up their or the fastest speed per sector. It has to be their suspension, tyre and downforce setup that is carrying the W09 with the best times per sector.

 

Force India and other lack the aero details, suspension management and chassis elements, finely tuned and synched in the Mercedes. Ferrari would like to have this and did last year. Ferrari have time to make such adjustments. Red Bull need an engine.....to have a chance.

 

Right. So what does this tell us? Special short-term ERS deployment out the last corner and out of the chicane, maybe. If we negate this advantage during the race, does that mean Kimi is only minus .1 and Vettel is more or less even as he didn't get the most out of his lap? Let's hope so.

 

Yes but the Mac has the same power as the Renault. So, Mac has a car with more drag and probably more downforce.

 

The Mercedes has so much power they can afford to run more downforce without losing significant top speed to their rivals. For Red Bull it's a compromise. Look at the Force India and their speed....and they don't even have the crazy party mode.

 

I wonder if from this someone will step in and ban all "party modes" somehow.

6/10ths ahead of the rest of second best car is just ridiculous. This is not racing. It's an exhibition.

BTW: Did anyone else notice how THIN Vettel looked in the interview? He almost looked sick. Trying to make up for HALO?

 

In LewHam’s defense (I can’t believe I just typed that...) Seb started the “zingers during press conferences” years ago...and until yesterday, seb had a commanding lead in THAT championship. Especially when one considers lewis’s lack of a quick wit, I have to give him the points for yesterday. Your turn, seb.

First, Mercedes and Ferrari have been in lockstep...the sweater has been the unwitting bad cop to Toto’s good cop. If (there isn’t a font big enough for that IF) one goes, it will be because the other has agreed to go also...

Add to that Renault. They have generally been quiet because they really don’t hold enough cards to play in the game. BUT...they forced this formula and have quietly said they want to keep it.

So...IF something happens, best case will be Honda and Renault remain. Worst case, it’s just Honda...

But wait. The whole reason that officers Wolff and March. are making the threats is because Liberty wants to dumb down the formula to attract other works and independent teams. So, perhaps Cosworth, Ilmore, Briggs and Stratton (hey, they compete with Honda for market share), Aston Martin, etc. will join the party.

At this point it’s all just chest puffery.

What I do know is: every time the formula is changed, one and only one team dominates out of the gate. Wholesale change for the sake of change has never worked as intended in F1...it has always been followed by tweaks and revisions. But...an iterative process eventually gets us to good racing. Right now we are part way through that process...I don’t think a reset will do anything but what it has done before. Learn from history or repeat history.

 

Horner saying they're running a lot of wing, so high downforce setup which always flatters in quali. If they had that plus top speeds the others would really need to be concerned.

Back in the days before parc ferme the teams would always trim out some DF to gain some speed on the straights for the race so hopefully Ferrari will have a better set up for the race and if Merc revert to a more normal ERS deployment we may actually witness a race

 

Seb has a Halo Haircut, ridiculous IMO.

 

4-6 tenths on a pole lap buy a driver has been done multiple times throughout F1 history. Why is it such a big topic now in Australia?
Question for today:
Is it possible to get a gap like that by simply being a fast driver?

 

The easy way to get rid of "Party Mode" is mandate that each team has to provide the FIA with there ECU programming that has 1 and only 1 engine map in it. After qualifying and the race the programming is downloaded from the ECU and must match bit for bit the original map. Also the ECU has a limited amount of RAM so the programming cannot create a power mode in the RAM on the fly. Only 1 driver controlled input to the ECU, Pit lane speed limiter.

Problem solved

 

Party mode or no party mode he was still slower especially on sector 2. Seb had a faster time on Q2 than Hamilton had on his final lap on Q3. I believe that Vettel run out of time. If he only had one more lap.... same for Kimi. The red boys are comfortably fast. My money is in both Ferraris.

 

I wonder if Toto gotta a call from the powers at be and got scolded. “Toto... we agreed... you’re not supposed to beat everyone by that much...”

In the end... I don’t blame Merc. They just do everything better. Yes F1 certainly handed them the advantage in 14 and 15 but no one has been able to keep up. They keep innovating and clearly are making giant leaps even today. It ruins F1 but it’s not their fault. Between the halo and Lewis just once again just “miraculously” coming out of nowhere to find almost a second at the last lap just pretty much ruined my excitement for the season. I’m not being a downer but their advantage is so clear that it’s just not fun as a fan any more.

 

Why? Because it came out of nowhere for 2 months. No where in 2 months did Merc reveal this "party mode".

 

Why don’t Ferrari and RB just make their own party mode? Problem solved as well

 

All teams times trop throughout the testing season, every team is faster now than they was 2 months ago. Thats why they test, to get faster. Vettel had several party mode moments in qualifying, thats why he gained over a second from q1 to q3, but when Lewis time drops, its modes/team cheating etc.
Also you forgot to answer my question of the day

 

Maybe because of this:

Or this:

 

Not as simple as writing the code. A "party Mode" puts more stress on an engine. If you don't build the engine to the stress level that the "party mode" creates all you have done is shorten the life of the engine. Merc has spent hours and $ on the dyno working out the limits of "party mode" they can only deploy it so many times before the engine is toast. Remember back in the good old days of F1 where the top teams had a qualifying motor that was pretty much a paper weight after running so many minutes. The fact that they are to get 7 race weekends out of an engine with the current rules a lot of power is being left back in the dyno room.

IIRC Bottles and Rosberg both had a engine failure in a race because they had to run the engine beyond the designed limits of that engine. I know of 250cc Motocross race engines that are built to last 2.5 hours run them 2.75 hours and boom that motor is history.

 

Can’t wait to see how the new Alfa Romeo / Ferrari partnership goes! I’m excited to see Alfa Romeo’s return to the track!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

Almost like the top fuel cars making 10k hp getting rebuilt after every 3 second run... lol

 

Motocross is great.

 

Everyone else had to have the skill to build the gap. Elton himself tells everyone about party mode, and tells us that that is the reason the Mercedes rules qualifying. Without it Vettel was fastest today.

That’s why they need party mode, because Elton was top four without it, press the magic switch and he’s P1. It’s congrats to the engineers and software writers, he just hangs on and points the car

 

So you stated its possible that gaps can be created by "driver skill"
Sounds like you are saying Mercedes has a "special switch " for qualifying, which is just another way of saying Mercedes has a qualifying mode. Other teams also use a specific mode for qualifying- aka qualifying mode. Why is Lewis faster in qualifying mode (including his team mate in q1&q2)than other drivers in qualifying mode?

 

The MERCEDES qualy mode is the most powerful of them all. Remember, bottas also qualifies at the front when he doesn’t drop it in a corner. Your argument doesn’t work matey


Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat.com mobile app