Webber: "2014 is right up Sebastian's alley. Perfect for him."

Look at how well he's managed to get speed out of the Pirelli's while managing them. That skill will be even more valuable next season.

 

They have repeatedly said that SV would break MS records. It appears in typical F1 style that this is what is being arranged.

 

I doubt that the FIA technical gurus sat together and said "Sooo, how can we extend Vettel's domination in F1?". RB sabotaging Webber for Vettel to win was already a more than questionable theory, but FIA designing rules just for them? Seriously?

 

+1

 

I think that the changes coming in are far too numerous for anyone to claim that any driver is going to have an advantage.

Yes, Vettel is exceptional at getting the best out of the tyres, but that has been in cars whose chassis balance and power delivery have suited him perfectly.

F1 drivers are quite fickle creatures and it doesn't take much to throw them off their game (Case in point: Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes. Now Lewis is no mug when it comes to racing an F1 car, and he's one of the most naturally gifted drivers on track. However, no matter what he tried this season, he simply couldn't get the Mercedes to work to his liking).

There is no guarantee that the 2014 car is going to suit Vettel and it is feasible that he could end up like Hamilton did this year, struggling to get to grips with the car.

Vettel is a talented driver, but he's not that much better than Hamilton that he can make any care win regardless!

Even Vettel himself has said that until they actually get the 2014 cars on track, nobody really knows just who the cars will suit the best.

I think that's a big part of al of his: "These are the days we must savour guys!..........Enjoy it while we've got it!..........make the most of it because you never know when it might end!", radio messages at the end of the last few races.

1) It's a general reality check because history has shown that these sort of runs of success never last forever (as Ferrari and Schumacher eventually found out).

2) He's not sure if the 2014 car will be to his liking and wants to give the team a reality check that it might well not be so easy to win in future.


At the other end of the scale, we have Kevin Magnussen claiming that the new regulations will work in his favour as every other driver will be learning the cars from scratch as well, as if it almost completely levels the playing field for him! ( Kevin Magnussen boosted by regulation advantage in 2014 at McLaren | McLaren | Formula 1 news, live F1 | ESPN.co.uk ).

Personally, I think he's going to be quite surprised how quickly the established stars of F1 adapt to the new cars and he'll still have a lot of catching up to do!

 

This whole notion that it's 95% car and that you can, for instance, put Alonso in the RB9 and just assume he'd go undefeated is nonesense. It's not just the car, I believe it's mostly what a driver can do with the car.

We see in MotoGP that you can take the best riders and put them on other manufacturers and they simply don't do as well while some are able to win championships on either. I think F1 is similar that way.

For all we know, SB may end up not as capable with the new powertrain. He could eat up tires, he could lose a 10th exiting the corner... you never know. As sophisticated as F1 is, I firmly believe it's a package deal: car, driver, team, management. I'm not sure which ones or how many you have to be the best at to lead, but RB showed they understand that the last few years. With all the changes, who knows if they can be at the top which each category.

With changes come disagreements. I think the emphasis now is on management and how those conflicts are managed to the benefit or less detriment to the progress of the team and development.

 

Great post. All bets are off next season, totally different driving styles and throttle control requirements will be required next season. Saying any one driver will be definitively better than another is preposterous.

 

Helps when the rules are changed mid season to favor his team.

 

I wonder if Pirelli blew up all those tires on purpose just so that they could help RB win the title?

 

Indeed they did!
In collusion with the worldwide conspirisy determined to destroy all that is good.

 

Of course they did! Its got nothing to do with Ferrari not developing their car effectively at all. Its just the tires that ruined Ferrari's effort LOL why think otherwise lol

 

Not Pirelli's fault teams were running air pressures that were not approved by Pirelli, using extreme camber angles and moving tires around.

I worded my post wrong, I know the rules weren't changed exclusively to help Red Bull, but they were changed, and all those trying to act like Vettel was some tire management artist must have forgotten the start of the season when Red Bull struggled with tire wear thanks to the sheer amount of down force produced by the car. Vettel's tire management was quite average and nothing to write home about. Red Bull complained to the media after Seb's four pit stops in the Spanish Grand Prix.

All those wins at the end of the year on the new tires must have clouded your memories. Good old F1 fans struggling with that goldfish memory problem.

 

Drop in a few more "LOLs," makes you seem really smart.

Ferrari's car was designed to work with the tires that they started the season with, tested with, and agreed upon for the first race. It worked quite well with them. When all that was changed, it screwed Ferrari and others over (Force India, etc.)

 

Of course it's just possible that RB solved the problem on their own. They are quite clever.

 

Possible, but the car became unstoppable with the new tires. It was entirely beatable with the old spec.

Just look at how much they were crying after Spain this year:

Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz says that F1 is no longer racing because of tyre issues | Mail Online

Here you have Horner moaning and moaning about 4 stops when you didn't hear a peep out of him after Vettel won at Spain in 2011 with four stops. Red Bull were worried about the original 2013 spec tires or they wouldn't have complained so much:

Four-stop races "is too much", says Horner - F1 Fanatic

Vettel: "We're not going at the pace of the car, we're going at the pace of the tires." The composition change allowed them to unlock their car and turn up the wick.

 

With KERS going to ERS and up to 160 HP, along with Sebs statements about using one area of the rules more effectively than everyone else (IMO using KERS to extract better power),
I think he's right.
Prepare for another snooze fest.

 

Every team was saying that the tires were slowing their pace.
As far as I can tell every team picked up speed when the tires were no longer such a limiting factor. I suspect strongly the RB just had more inherent pace from the getgo and were hobbled rather more then the rest.
RB wasn't given any advantage the others weren't. They just had more untapped speed to begin with.

 

I don't disagree, but I don't think the change should have happened at all. I thought it was a black mark on the season. My other point remains that Vettel was average at managing the tires with the original 2013 compounds. Anyone that says otherwise must have missed the first quarter of the season.

 

I wish the change wasn't needed but the way races were being run before the change was an utter farce.
Not the the FIA has anything against farce.

 

In fairness to Ferrari, they built their car specifically around the tires that were presented at the start of the year (according to internet reports). They really had nowhere to go but down once the tire constructions changed. They looked like geniuses when their car wasn't eating rears like Merc and Red Bull, but looked quite the opposite once that advantage was negated.

Why they couldn't adjust, I have no idea, but I think Ferraripilot stated early on that the car was launched with very little development opportunities.

 

Precisely. Their development could have been better but the tire change put them on the back foot.

 

Agree with this. I think that Webber is just saying that an over-tourquey, wild-reared car (potentially) is right up Seb's alley. That's just his sentiment, not a prediction based on a car that he's actually seen.

 

I don't know. Ferrari/Alonso ran Spain like a sprint, stopped a bunch of times, and won the race. Others got the strategy wrong trying to manage tires. Ferrari just went for it.

 

Pay Fry spoke about this recently(this week) ---http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/111773

Ferrari technical chief Pat Fry believes it was the upgrade that the team brought for the Canadian Grand Prix that sent its 2013 Formula 1 title bid off course.

Fernando Alonso had hopes of the championship early in the year after wins in China and Spain, but fell away from the increasingly-dominant Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull through the summer.

Asked by AUTOSPORT what happened when Ferrari started to drop off the pace around June and July, Fry said the issue was more about a particular development derailing the team's programme than the much-discussed windtunnel calibration issues.

"I am not sure that you can say it was down to windtunnel calibration," said Fry.

"I think through the winter we had a reasonable development period and a sensible development gradient.

"The first race upgrade package worked quite well, some bits better than we were expecting, and we understood that a bit later on.

"In reality, there was a different top body we took to Canada that we were unsure of, and then that gave us a few issues trying to understand that.

"If you would ask at what point did our development start rolling over, it was around that time I guess.

"When you are developing, if you have one thing that is not performing 100 per cent as you are expecting, what do you do with it? Because by then the windtunnel model has progressed and moved on and is four to six weeks ahead.

"So when you try to back out of something like that it gives you a load of other problems."

Fry admitted that Pirelli's change of tyre construction for the second half of the year had also been a hindrance, mainly because the original tyres had coincidentally played to Ferrari's strengths.

"[The Ferrari] has been light on tyres and warm up has been a struggle, and if you get a tyre that is overheating that just helps us out so much more," he said.

"That is not a clever bit of design or simulation or anything, that is just the choice of the tyres. And as things changed, we dropped away because of it.

"But it is for us to try to make the car work with what we have got."