Red Bull and McLaren against 3-month shutdown plan

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Red Bull and McLaren are against moves to extend F1’s December and January testing ban throughout February next year.

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What is the root cause of F1’s recurring tyre problems?

If this whole concept of high degradation tyres is to blame for tyres that are more prone to suffering cuts and Pirelli cannot make them any more resilient then they need to speak up and say that’s the case and insist that F1 move away from artificial degradation to spice things up.

If the amount of cuts are not down to the high-deg concept and Pirelli are unable to do anything to improve things then clearly they need to step aside and let somebody else have a go.
@Gt-racer

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On this day in F1

Victory for Al Unser Jnr in the CART IndyCar race at Vancouver 20 years ago today meant Jacques Villeneuve had to wait until the final round of the season to discover if he would be champion. Unser was awaiting the results of an appeal against a disqualification earlier in the season at Portland – his win was ultimately reinstated.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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36 comments on “Red Bull and McLaren against 3-month shutdown plan”

  1. I’m not fond of the idea of such a long break. I don’t care so much about the winter news, but I think the testing and development are absolutely necessary to ensure teams are getting the most of their concepts. There are already so many limitations regarding development (testing, tokens, etc) already in place, any more feel just overkill.

    1. Exactly! Tokens, reduced testing. Its just not F1. Should a team want to work around the clock and spend whatever money they have, then go for it! Its up to the teams how they sort their staff, money etc.

    2. Agree. Teams that have the resources and inclination to test should be allowed to do it. We need the other top teams to close the gap to Mercedes.

      I just don’t understand why such a ridiculous decision was made

  2. So, @keithcollantine how are you going to fill this blog for the three months when F1 is completely shut down?

    1. @tdog
      If Lewis can generate dozens of articles in the media during a two week holiday, just think how many there’ll be to discuss during a 3 month break !
      Keith will need to buy some more server space to deal with the fallout from that in the comments section.

      1. @beneboy New series “What to wear when you’re a F1 world champion and are on holiday.”

        1. @xtwl We could have polls!

      2. I think it’s unfair for Lewis to carry all the burden of keeping F1 in the news during the breaks. Bernie needs to cajole other drivers into wearing silly outfits and posting pics of celebrity jaunts. Maybe he should book a seat for Kimi at next year’s VMAs so he can look unimpressed next to people we’ve never heard of.

    2. OmarR-Pepper - Vettel 41 wins!!! For Jules (@)
      3rd September 2015, 3:02

      @tdog maybe the same way the “on this day in F1” has been covered today – which is not bad, BTW, as Villeneuve is part of F1 history, this video is somehow linked to F1.
      I mean, I woudn’t mind reading news about other series during winter time.n (Summer here).

  3. @keithcollantine – Bacheta’s tweet was hilarious, but was it a coincidence that the next tweet was from Martin Brundle? :)

    1. Check the times on each tweet and you’ll find that they’re not intertwined

    2. Generation gap. Speaking of Brundle, he must have caught either a Syrian cabbie (or any inexperienced taxi driver) or someone trying to stretch the fare, who knows maybe it was a flabbergasted fan.

    3. @fletchuk Completely unrelated! Don’t know who he’s referring to, he does race in a Pro-Am championship though.

  4. @gt-racer has it right, a pity his entire comment(s) on the subject was not included, we need much better tyres to allow the drivers to race and it would be better for comparative past and future lap times if teams could choose from the products of 2 or more tyre manufacturers, just ban exclusive supply contracts to avoid a totally tyre dominated championship.

    1. I disagree. High Deg tyres mean that the tyres have narrow working windows, this doesnt make them any more flimsy. They can be hard or soft, you are confusing them with wear.

      ANd no, Pirelli does not need to “getup and go”, Michelin, the only other alternative too messed up 10 years back. It’s more important to find the root cause of the blowouts and improve the tyres, not to change manufacturers..
      Admittedly, I’m not satiafied with Pirelli either but the negativity is unfair.

      @gt-racer @hohum

      1. High deg and narrow operating temperatures aren’t necessarily the same thing, in fact the tyres only became so temperature sensitive after the first season when Pirelli changed the profile and construction for 2012. I remember reading at the time that the new construction was cheaper to make but the 2011 tyres were high deg and had reasonable operating windows.

    2. @hohum, what exactly do you mean by a ban on exclusive supply contracts? If that is simply preventing a tyre manufacturer from partnering with a single manufacturer, that would be ineffective – there were no exclusive tyre supply contracts in the past, but tyre manufacturers were heavily biased towards certain teams nevertheless (Michelin was biased towards Renault to cash in on the French market, Goodyear was biased towards teams like Ferrari and Williams in the past and Bridgestone was unashamedly biased towards Ferrari).

      I also don’t see why it would make any difference for comparing past and future lap times if there was more than one tyre supplier either. Would you say that the times from 1992 to 1996 inclusive are no good for comparative reasons because Goodyear was the only outfit prepared to supply tyres to teams in that era? Or from 1959 to 1964 inclusive when Dunlop was the only tyre supplier? There have been periods when the sport has seen an effective monopoly on tyre suppliers and nobody raised a question about comparing past and future lap times.

      1. @anon (do you check for replies?), more competition leads to improvement, ie faster laps. Sure there will be cooperation but ensuring that any team can use any tyre will prevent the total domination from being any worse than it is now with the MB engine, (RB-AMG anyone) and teams now have to adapt to the Pirelli tyres so working out how to get tyre X to work on their car would be the same.

        1. We have also seen substantial evolution in lap times during period when we had just one tyre supplier in the sport, so I would have to disagree that it invalidates the comparative aspect.

          Equally, just because a team could switch to another tyre manufacturer doesn’t necessarily mean that all will be well. If anything, I would think that it would reinforce the dominance of a particular competitor given that we have repeatedly seen tyre manufacturers, both within F1 and in other motorsport series, focus on a narrow group, or sometimes even just one team, with the intent of maximising their success – and therefore the publicity value – over the wider interests of other teams.

          Other teams could buy their tyres, but they’d often be shut out of the development process and receive considerably less support from the tyre manufacturers too. In that sense, it would not be the same as the current situation now – whilst Pirelli is offering the same level of support to all teams, in the past it was not uncommon for some tyre suppliers to offer just the minimum level of support required to the smaller teams, whilst offering substantially more support and information to the larger teams.

          If you were to create a new tyre war now, I would bet that Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari – the three most marketable teams – would be receiving favourable terms, whilst most of the other teams, as in the past, would be marginalised as they are of no value to the tyre manufacturers.

  5. I’m pretty sure that this idea of a 2 month no track action shutdown was at first taken with delight even by RBR. Horner was bemused with the condensed calendar but everyone said the big winter would warrant all teams enough time to come up with something, and perhaps for once make a difference in the yearly hierarchy of f1, at least allow the top teams to run together. Yesterday I wrote about how Ferrari was wary of the damage done by working on new projects with little to no time. I think RBR’s plans must have changed from a couple months ago when the provisional calendar was first announced.
    I suspect it has to do with the Renault stand-off.
    In my view it appears to be a beneficial measure for F1, the only slight itch is that the F1 brand will be dormant for a quarter of the year, this affects more the brands involved, than F1 itself. I think Honda above all is worried with not having enough time to act or react upon the March tests. Since the season is starting in late April, many PU and gearbox components will have undergone production well before the 1st race, this occurs due to their specific manufacture processes. Someone in Honda’s position just needs as much time as possible, and a couple miracles.

  6. Lovely double account of what happened in that race between Fittipaldi and Martini.

    1. ColdFly F1 (@)
      3rd September 2015, 8:40

      @bascb – ditto.
      We should have a poll which story is most believable.
      They seem to agree on one thing though: Fittipaldi talks about a trash can, and Martini has put a lid on it.

      1. As they say the truth is in the middle. Martini did make a move to block the guy because he didn’t want to be overtaken but at the same time his gear story is probably the truth and he never actually lifted his foot off the gas.

  7. I think F1 mean low drag wing, not low downforce lol.

    1. They could have meant that, but it is quite possible that they are correct with the “low downforce” line. With the teams running a significantly smaller rear wing, the front wing needs to be trimmed out to a comparable degree in order to maintain a similar balance, so the front wing will be in a lower downforce configuration.

      Whilst most teams simply reduce the wing angles, some, such as Red Bull, would also remove some of the cascades, with Ferrari modifying the overall shape of the wings by changing over the flaps.

    2. *claps slowly*

  8. longer break in winter is fine if they get rid of the stupid summer break.

    The summer is when the weather in Europe is good & the kids are off school. This means families can go the races.. that is how new fans are made, die hard dads take their kids and boom you have a fan for life($$$). Even not at the track the kids can watch practice etc on tv as they are off school. Everyone keeps banging on about how you get new fans, well its pretty obvious. Race in the summer & make the racing available to the kids to see.

    1. Bernie says that kids have no money, so why involve them in the sport? They are just an unnecessary distraction.

      1. Bernie won’t be alive when kids grow up so of course they’re not going to impact his bottom line.

        I think a Summer break’s fine as long as the weeks leading up and after it are packed with good races which may as well be back-to-back European circuits.

        The real reason Bernie doesn’t care for Summer races is that TV ratings are lower in the Summer and his business model is centred on selling TV ratings and exposure.

    2. q85, and many of those who are on the road throughout the year in order for the cars to run would like to have the opportunity to actually see their own kids in the summer. Whilst the idea was to cut costs, it also acts as a release valve for those who work within the sport to be able to relax and enjoy life once in a while, rather than being betoken to the public all of the time.

  9. One thing they could do in the winter is show the onboards. You can’t record them being on the red button, so they’re largely wasted.

  10. I had to do a double-take, as when I skimmed the tweets, I thought that said Luca Badoer and not Bacheta. Meant it read quite a bit different in my head!

  11. There’s another angle of the 1993 Fittipaldi flip at Monza in the FOM archive taken from a camera on the Minardi pit wall. You have all the crew standing waving the cars across the line & then you see the celebration change to shock/horror as Christian’s car goes flying past in the background.

    I don’t believe it was shown on the world feed at the time & i’m not sure it was ever used in the season review or anything since?

  12. Already there is just too little testing in F1 now they want to shut F1 down for 3 months. How is that going to be implemented and what is that supposed to achieve.
    Is it a complete shutdown like they do in August, or just the driving aspect. Will teams be able to work on their cars.

  13. It’s now obvious what’s going on. The goal isn’t to get rid of the smaller teams– it’s to get rid of the manufacturer teams with budgets.

    The goal here is not to level the playing field, but to *raze* the playing field.

    F1 has turned suicidal, and is trying to kill itself.

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