to be honest what i find worrying there is that you can take the wheel off without the engine stopping, sooner or later, just because the more impossible something is the bigger chance of it happening and despite all the safety features etc someone is going to have not clipped their wheel on properly and it's going to come off, the only way a wheel should be able to be released is if the engine stops automatically or, in the event of a faulty wheel that needs to be changed, there's a switch elsewhere in the cockpit that the driver must hold down to keep the engine running whilst his mechanics change the wheel.

having said that it's a bit of a poor show to have a parking bump with an F1 car

too early for me to make a decision yet,

senna and chandhok are too close to tell, understandably HRT favoured senna at first just because of the publicity factor, chandhok impressed me just by the way he accepted this.

di grassi and glock are in such a poor car that it's quite possible they are both at the cars limits puely because the limits are so low,

hulkenberg is doing ok, i was hoping for more on tracks he knows but rubbens is currently enjoying himself and it shows in his confidence and driving.

kobyashi is doing well but it's hard to tell as he's got an experienced driver who's out of practice with him, is de la rosa fast or just passing his time?

petrov is up against a driver who a lot feel has the most raw speed in F1 so his performances can look poor yet actually be ok, what renault need him to do is to stop trying too hard and let the times come with experience, if he listens to them, and he appears to be doing so now, he may end up being quite impressive this season.

what i find more interesting is who's the best returning driver this year, schumacher or de la rosa?

is the driver with the most championships really unable to adapt his style to suit a car that doesn't behave the way he wants or is he just gererally slow or is rosberg driving far better than we give him credit for in a car that is slow and schumacher's actually doing ok?

is de la rosa just driving at the pace we all expected or are he and kobyashi actually driving out of their skins in a car that has no right to be where it is in the pecking order?

the one year sky had the f1 coverage available as a pay to view, the coverage was fantastic with the different cameras / coverage/ telemetry etc. i actually found my self watching it on a large screen from quite close with the menu screen so i could watch all the feeds at the same time

re jake best thing i saw was in the reprt on the auitosport awards with steve ryder saying jake was making it look too easy after jim rosenthall had done his best to make the job look completely impossible !

Last edited by tinvek, Mon, 12 Jul 2010 06:12.

Quote from tristancliffe :

I don't currently own an iPhone 4 as I'm waiting for T-Mobile to release it here, as they are the only provider with decent reception in the UK.

i'm not getting involved in the whole i love / hate iphones debate but thats a bit of a sweeping statement to make tris. what you probably mean is they give the best reception in the places you want it, similarly orange are best for me as they're the only service provider that has a strong enough signal to enable me to make calls etc inside work and they're the only one that i can get a signal at home without either hanging out of the bathroom window (vodafone ) or placing the phone on the end of a broom handle and pointing it as high as possible above my bedroom window (O2 ), not that i've tried the second but a builder found he had reception when replacing the ridge tiles there. t mobile, by their own coverage map, don't have reception within 200 yds and in pracitce it's more like 300

exactly, in F1 you'll always get teams trying to find an advantage over each other but a single manufacturer series has no excuse for going down an aero route that results in cars that have issues when following each other

i've being trying to resist this but i give up

Quote from mr grady :

anyone surprised by the sauber passing alonso at the end of the race?

Alonso i asume

Quote from tristancliffe :

You'll be very unlikely to see anything exciting at the FoS. I've been twice. I won't bother for another decade (and only then to see if it has changed).

horses for courses tris, not been to goodwood but at it's northern equivilent (almost a sister event given how much the 2 lords work together) the chomondley pageant of power i'm quite happy just walking round taking the oportunity to have a real good close look at the cars and talking to the mechanics / drivers. in the last 2 years i've had a nice long chat with dereck bell and the driver of the XJ13 plus had a chance to have a nose under the body work of a lot of great cars. seems strange but i found the 1978 williams more scary than some 60's F1 cars just becasue everything round the cockpit sides above the driver's waist was just fibreglass, totally illogical but a thin metal skin seems safer, especially when you look at the williams witht he bodywork off.

actually the XJ13 driver made a good point about goodwood becoming too big and organised and how cholmondley is still at the early "fun" stage. also from my point of view, apart from the distance factor, cholmondley has the advantage of other attractions which keeps my son amused, especially the tanks (also if you're into bentleys they come out of the woodwork there )

anyway if anyones up north, here's the web site

http://www.cpop.co.uk/

Quote from Storm_Cloud :

1 car can pit per team per lap. Bingo. The order will get nicely shuffled as strategies will be split.

trouble is then you could have, for example, webber being just behind vettel with 15 laps to go but driving much faster because vettel has damaged his car, red bull call vettel in first and then webber has to come in second lap and is shuffled behind all those cars that pitted on the first lap the pitlane was opened including possible 1 car from each of the new teams, then everyone accuses redbull of only wanting vettel to win the championship. at least with cars waiting he'd probably only loose about 8 places not 13 and almost certainly he'd still be ahead of any of the newcomers.

better solution might be that you can't change tyres unless they are punctured, during a safety car period so the pitlane is effectively closed apart from repairing damage to the car, and by only allowing the punctured tyre(s) to be changed no one would be tempted to cheat as they'd stil have to come in to change the unpunctured (is there such a word?) tyres when the pit lane opened

one thing to remember about alonso making all this fuss is that it does distract from the fact he got passed by kobayashi in a sauber with a ferrari engine in it.

biggest problem with safety car was it shouldn't have come out in front of anyone but the leader, as i posted earlier, the running order should be frozen at the start of the previous lap, same as when a race is abandonded and waved yellows should be sufficient to slowcars down to a safe speed until they reach the safety car and until that point the leader should act as a virtual safety car and be responsible for the speed of the filed. the rules say you can't pass under yellow so no one would have an excuse for passing the leader once he slowed. if the drivers can't / won't slow sufficiently then they should be penalised, sadely these days drivers seem to be able to get away with the slightest of lifts in F1 when there's a yellow flag.

SRF in my experience does overheat it's tyres with a lot of the setups, especially if it's being slid a lot. i use what options there are to dial out as much of the lift off oversteer as possible.

also iracing does take inot account were the fuel tank is situatated in relation to the car's centre of gravity and any effetcs differing levels have on the COG and polar intertia etc so some cars do change their handling quite a bit as fuel runs down. the problem with the SRF of course is that since there is no fuel fill option, you can't try it with differing fuel levels unless you just pound around to burn it off

heard something interesting on BBC radio 5 this morning on way home from work.

due to a historical quirk, football rules are decided on by FIFA and England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

when they were debating goal line technology, England and Scotland were in favour but FIFA, Nothern Ireland and Wales were against it. since a majority would have prevailed it's obviously either the Northern Irish or us Welsh that are responsible for England loosing

all they need to do is pass a rule thaat if the safety car comes out, the running order is frozen at the end of the previous lap and then shuffle the cars whilst they're behind the safety car to make sure everyone is in the right place.

since we don't have refueling anymore they can keep the pitlane closed till the order is established and then open it as the safety car passes the pit lane before starting the last safety lap. if you have to pit for damage before the pitlane is open then you serve a drive through under green.

sure there would be the odd looser but at least it would stop bad luck regarding who the safety car picks up altering the race result

Quote from Töki (HUN) :

Too bad we're living in the present.

and thats from a supporter of a team who have got extra money for being in F1 because of their history. presumably you feel ferrari shouldn't get more money than anyone else and since history doen't matter that ferrari are a less succesful team than brawn/ mercedes, mclaren or redbull, all who finished higher then ferrari last year ?

i'd say RIP but i suspect it'll be a while before there's any peace concerning this story but condolences to his family


http://msn.foxsports.com/motor ... motorsport-dies-sm-062510

Quote from PMD9409 :

Nice 3id V8SC skin in their TV show.

and a peak at a night race track in the background

loved this chap's comments on thescundri.net

"I hope we simply dont copy updates from other teams....rather comeup with something innovative like the wheel fairings and gill slits.."

before going on to say

"Wonder if they can run a pullrod suspension...like RBR..."

well make your mind up, do you want them to copy other teams or not?

Quote from 5haz :

Interesting, rather like this I suppose.

thats the one renault introduced them first in 1983 then they fell out of favour ove rth eyears but appear to now be back. three problems with them are that they increase the already noticable pitch sensitivity of the diffuser so any pitch change can really screw with your grip, grip also alters radically between being on full throttle and being on trailing throttle. finally they can produce severe heat problems given the required routing of the exhaust.

given that ferrari etc are introducing this on a street circuit, it'll be interesting to see if they feel the second problem requires them to use the throttle to maintain grip whilst braking and what effects that may have on brake and engine temperature over a race distance, red bull of course having the advantage of using it from the start of the season.

i'd suspect it'll be hard to tell how efffective the ferrari solution is this weekend as low speed corner traction is already a strong point of their car and other teams were expecting them to be competative without the update.

apparently ferrari are the first team to get a version of the red bulls exhaust onto their car, whihc is supposed to be worth 0.5 secs a lap. basically all red bull had done is ressurect the "blown" diffuser from the 80s so people are now copying it. mclaren are planning to introduce it at silverstone. naturally at least one team will find it doesn't work as planned.

what will be interesting is which type of car is the most efficient at utilising it, it may be that the red bull's compramises forced on it by the low suspension and emphasis on upperbody downforce limit how much it gets out of the idea and the other teams are able to gain more. of course it may turn out that the red bull gets the maximum out of it already, and the other teams won't be able to achieve any better results with their layout

according to BBC mclaren are worried about ferrari's latest update, in which case we could have a real battle with a lot of hard chargers on a street circuit. wouldn't surprise me if they all take themselves and each other off and either massa or button win

im growing to like the skippy even though it doesn't really suit my driving, the spec racer is fantastic if you're with a bunch of drivers you trust and balance it with the setup, the fun races at wakins when it was released were some of the best i've ever had

which is why F1 designers have the best cared for gardens in racing

Quote from Seb66 :

Just bought the V8, Mosport and Watkins glen :| God help me

I'm glad of this auto renew thing.. It means I don't have to keep asking my dad for more money... "Honest dad, I didn't know!"

don't forget if you accidently sub for 12 months when you " try to stop it auto renewing" you get $30 in iracing credits to buy content, just make sure you try to cancel that auto renew before the end of june

it's likely given the rotating design chief system they have / had in place, this may be a result of how far off the pace his last project, the 2009 car, was when it was launched

i'm guessing that ferrari will have to be ultra careful to ensure there's nothing on next year's car that could possibly have come from mclaren, not so much because of the previous between ferrari and mclaren as the general feeling that renault got off very lightly about using mclaren info and the probability that the next team won't be so lucky

like all the cars it's geting better as people understand it's setups more. you'll never eliminate the power off understeer or the power on oversteer due to the locked diff but the real cars are similar if you read any magazine tests of them, it's just they look smooth from the outside

i haven't spent much time with it but the series seems well attended with good racing