(photo: David Morecambe)
Results look awfully familiars, don't they? Aside from the oppressing smog cloud shrouding the Shanghai circuit and the complete lack of human beings on the stands, I found two tidbits of interest in this clip of Jenson Button's car:
Mclaren are running grills on the brake ducts, something I don't remember noticing before. Presumably, this is to keep that rolled up Pirelli rubber everyone seems to be (at least publicly) in denial about, out of the rotors.
Also from the relative ride height of the tea tray vs the sidepods, one might assume Mclaren it trying out Red Bull's raked set up.
font class="pre">
Pos Driver Team Time Laps
1. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 1m37.688s 34
2. Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1m37.854s + 0.166 22
3. Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1m37.935s + 0.247 31
4. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m37.943s + 0.255 34
5. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1m38.105s + 0.417 29
6. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m38.507s + 0.819 36
7. Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 1m38.735s + 1.047 35
8. Nick Heidfeld Renault 1m38.805s + 1.117 26
9. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1m38.859s + 1.171 31
10. Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 1m39.327s + 1.639 33
11. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber-Ferrari 1m39.538s + 1.850 33
12. Pastor Maldonado Williams-Cosworth 1m39.667s + 1.979 37
13. Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m39.771s + 2.083 18
14. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m39.779s + 2.091 17
15. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m39.828s + 2.140 25
16. Rubens Barrichello Williams-Cosworth 1m39.925s + 2.237 32
17. Sergio Perez Sauber-Ferrari 1m39.953s + 2.265 30
18. Heikki Kovalainen Lotus-Renault 1m40.476s + 2.788 30
19. Jarno Trulli Lotus-Renault 1m41.482s + 3.794 32
20. Narain Karthikeyan HRT-Cosworth 1m42.902s + 5.214 25
21. Tonio Liuzzi HRT-Cosworth 1m43.850s + 6.162 3
22. Jerome D'Ambrosio Virgin-Cosworth 1m44.008s + 6.320 35
23. Timo Glock Virgin-Cosworth 1m44.747s + 7.059 12
All Timing Unofficial
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Funny you mention the raked set-up. I observed it @sepang and wondered if it was my eyes playing tricks on me. oddly enough not much has been written about it including @scarbs.
ReplyDeleteAmazing how low that undertray is, while never quite touching the road. Also the Pirellis look to have quite soft sidewalls, both in rim movement during cornering and bump supression.
ReplyDeleteWow I never realised those sidewalls were that soft, last time I saw that much flex was on a v8supercar which weighs about 800kg more than an f1 car.
ReplyDeleteAmazing how hard the suspension is, makes it looks as though the suspension is doing very little work and all the roll that you can see in the car seems to be solely due to the sidewall flex.
Well I just made a cursory glance through some photos and it would appear that there is a step down to get to the level of the tea tray from lower edge of the sidepod bodywork which would skew that a bit.
ReplyDeleteAlso, imagine the engineers are taking apart the brakes after the last race, and there's a huge ball of rubber clogging most of the cooling duct. I'd imagine the screens are just a hedge against complete component/cooling failure
ReplyDelete