Spain (Circuit de Catalunya) 2018: Pre-Race News

Will be very interesting to see how this new surface has begun to mature and the Pirelli tire choices reaction.

 

Would have to think Mercedes is the favorite given testing and pirelli's tire help for them

 

I would still like to see some actual evidence that Pirelli and Mercedes are doing anything in cahoots.

 

From what I read a "suggestion" came from Mercedes to pirelli. Pirelli then made the same suggestion to fia and the alteration was made. Seems somewhat hinky to me. Why can't Mercedes just get their car to work with thme tires properly. No one else suggested any changes to tires. Maybe I'm being overly suspicious but it screams something is going on to me. Hopefully Ferrari will out perform them - as they have essentially all year - regardless and not get ****ed by the safety car

 

That assumes each team was testing the same variables in the same way. Thus far after 4 races there is no evidence that the pre-season testing results of Mercedes supports any conclusion that Mercedes is a favorite.

 

McLaren transporters look smart--better than the livery on the cars.

 

Is your source credible? Where does the “suggestion” come from? I don’t mean to jump on you and be critical, but I would genuinely like to know if there is some credible source that is telling this story...

To my eyes, this whole rumor started when some person tweeted a picture of a Mercedes with shredded tires and an accusatory, but cryptic blurb about alterations...

That immediately turned into an Internet rumor...which we all know after four hours becomes fact.

I have not seen anything but internet opinions since.

 

Here is one source (citing a German paper). Note the quotations from perelli (we would have done it anyway, which I don't personally believe). Whether the whole thing is faked I can't say. I suppose lots of bullcrap "news" out there in general these days.

http://www.planetf1.com/news/pirelli-agree-to-mercedes-tyre-demands/

 

Thanks...that’s at least something. IIRC, the original tweet I mentioned was quoting a German source, too. They walked it back a bit, so it remains quite murky.

 

Having credible facts on this would be great...but I highly doubt either Mercedes or Pirelli would openly come out and say that they’re collaborating to help Mercedes recover from high tire degradation.
They should know that putting tweets out on their official twitter accounts with even a veiled suggestion that they’re working together to solve a problem would be very highly scrutinized. Maybe they did know it and F1 is now WWE and they wanted Mercedes to be the foil. That’s actually worse in my mind then them actually colluding. Means we’re all getting played.

 

Pirelli made a press release confirming that on the request of Mercedes the tyres for races from Spain onwards would be changed in compound. This followed many many Mercedes tyre shredding incidents during the first couple races, and it was announced (I think) in the pre race period of Bahrain. It’s been discussed here at length, and the question is why Pirelli feel one team of ten can cause the change of compound when likely a change of suspension setup would also work, but of course, Mercedes don’t want to compromise their cars (they’d rather the other nine that make the current tyres work perfectly well change theirs). CHEATS

 

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/23420288/red-bull-driver-problem-unlikely-go-away-soon

 

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Just got the phone call from my buddy to meet him there. Just bought my plane ticket. Super pumped!!

 

Hammy needs all the help he can get....

 

When you don't have to make room for those pesky sponsors, one can really concentrate on neatness.

 

Ferrari was having similar problems a few years ago.

My guess is that it has to do with the extended wheelbase. The lone WB lowers drag, and makes the CoG point extremely important.

 

Will this man make F1 great this weekend ?????

https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/44030471

 

LOL