Ferrari tipped to finally abandon pull-rod suspension

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Ferrari is expected to follow the rest of the F1 field in using a push-rod suspension set-up this year.

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I can officially confirm that I will be using number 30 this year. #JP30 #F1

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Comment of the day

Philip takes issue with Adrian Newey’s claim Lotus voluntarily gave up exclusive use of the Ford Cosworth DFV at the end of 1967:

Well this is the first time I’ve heard this version of the story.

The contract with Lotus only guaranteed exclusivity for the first year, and Chapman fought hard to try and maintain exclusive use. That business plan would make no sense for Cosworth or Ford, so he was politely informed that from ’68 onwards it would be available to other teams.
Philip (@Philipgb)

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41 comments on “Ferrari tipped to finally abandon pull-rod suspension”

  1. F1 + cobbled track = Pirellis exploding all over the place? I haven’t done any research but I’m guessing they are not resurfacing that bit so could be fun or maybe even dangerous (or first one then the other)!

    1. It is going to be resurfaced, according to another Kravitz tweet.

      1. Makes sense @jackysteeg, @bigwilk F1cars running over cobblestones, that’s not likely some their suspension handles.

        1. I can’t imagine the local politicians would allow ancient cobble-stone to be paved over?
          That seems crazy…

          1. I believe that they are going to pave it in a way that allows the tarmac to be ripped up after the race, similar to how they lay the Race of Champions tracks in sports stadiums.

          2. Formula E are doing the same with the Paris circuit. Lay down temporary tarmac over cobbles, rip it up after the race.

  2. Is that the last remaining link of Alonso’ period gone from Ferrari or anything else remains?

    Too much hype of Ferrari giving the chase to Mercedes this season. Going by their form in the recent years, wouldn’t be surprised if they come third at the end of the season.

    1. Ha!.. Exactly what I was going to say.

      Loads of hype, mostly by the media, but Ferrari themselves have been busy blowing their own trumpet. Will the get closer? Perhaps, but who’s to say that Red Bull or Williams won’t as well? What if Hondas 230 hp gain is real?

      Merc will win again.. But I think the fight for second will be close.

      1. @jaymenon10 I don’t really see this “Ferrari blowing their own trumpet” part. All they say is that their target is to improve on their 2015 situation which is a reasonable and expected thing to say. They want to be closer to Merc, have more wins. No F1 team has ever said “our target is not to fall back and remain roughly 7 tenths behind Merc”.

        As for the media, well of course they have to hype Ferrari since that’s the most likely team to challenge the Merc domination. They have to build up intrigue ahead of the season, and they can’t do that with expectations of further Merc dominance

        Finally, you say Ferrari is over-hyped and at the same time you mention the wild Mclaren fantasies. Go figure

      2. I can’t imagine for a second that Honda really are going to add 230Hp to their engine. If they did, they would be getting well over 1000Hp. This figure seems concocted, or misleading. Hondas problem wasn’t peak output; it was that the electric power ran out too fast.

        1. QuadQuantum, and that seems to be the mistake that most people are making when quoting that power increase. The actual increase in power is around 60bhp, but what Honda have also done is to improve the efficiency of their energy recovery systems, reducing the likelihood that the batteries will be flat by the end of the straights.

          There will therefore be a few instances where the battery systems will be operational where, in 2015, it would have otherwise been flat – in those limited instances, the car would behave as if it had 220bhp more than last year (i.e. the 160bhp from the electrical systems operating where they would otherwise have shut down, plus the 60bhp increase that Honda have found).

          It is, as you say, a fairly misleading figure – really, we should be talking about a 60bhp gain around the majority of the lap (which is still a fairly healthy improvement), which is going to feel like to the drivers around the majority of the lap.

    2. True! If at the end of Australian GP, Vettel is closer to the Williams or Red Bull behind than to the Mercedes in the front; all this blowing of your own trumpet would come back to haunt Ferrari.

  3. If there is any Nordic country that deserves a GP, it is Finland. A Swedish GP would be nice but no Scandanavian country should have a GP before Finland. And besides, the last Swedish GP was in 1978- which was that race with the Brabham fan car. The Anderstorp circuit was in the middle of nowhere 2 hours from Gothenburg and a much longer drive from Stockholm. Visitors often had to stay at other people’s houses there- there were no hotels of any kind near the track.

    1. Well, we are building a FIA Grade 2 KymiRing with the reservation to upgrade to Grade 1 built in the plans, once the economics make sense.
      The reality is that the Scandinavian GP will have to be a multinational effort financially, Norway is the only one capable of doing it own their own.
      NORGES , the state oil fund actually owns part of F1 (and everything else you can imagine, they have investments in EVERYTHING) , so the sanctioning fee for the Scandinavian GP is not an issue if they really wanted to put one on.

      1. Would there be lots of local interest in Scandinavia to attend? I would presume there would be due to the large Motorsport interest in that area.

        1. Not really. Motorsport may be very popular per capita just like Ice hockey as an example but Scandinavia is very sparsely populated so it doesnt add upp to very much.

          As a one time off there might be interest for it but to have a sustainable yearly GP in scandinavia it would have to be done like the oilstates. Some rich dude pays for it all and its 90% vip seats and 20-30000 attendence. That is however the modern F1 formula so who knows.

    2. I’d love to see Rudskogen in Norway get used for a race. But I guess it also suffers from being in the middle of nowhere with no hotels. Although that doesn’t stop Spa does it, bring a tent!

    3. Any country can have a GP just show Bernie the money.

  4. I can imagine that the locals will not like the removal of the cobblestone, nor the cars being so close to such historic structures.

    1. ColdFly F1 (@)
      31st January 2016, 7:44

      Taking into account the late starting hour, it will probably look something like this!

    2. @mike No one will be removing the cobblestones. A special kind of asphalt will be put over them every year then removed after the GP. Historic structures, yeah someone might be upset about that but it doesn’t really matter as Azerbaijan is not a true democracy

      1. @montreal95 Thank you to you and mr anon, I didn’t know they could do that.

    3. They don’t have much of a choice.

    4. @mike, well, as others have pointed out, the Mayor of Paris has decided that it is acceptable for the cobbled pavements around Les Invalides to be temporarily covered in tarmac in order to accommodate the Formula E race in 2016. Other locations have introduced similar temporary measures to protect a surface in order to accommodate a race, so it is not an unprecedented move.

    5. The historic structures will be fine now the Pastor has announced he is leaving Renault.

  5. I am definitely looking forward to 2016! Marchionne and Arrivabene have high expectations!
    Mercedes seem extremely worried of Ferrari’s threat!
    And Sebastian Vettel is as motivated as ever!

    #Bringon2016

    1. I am looking forward to 2016 too @fish123, tho if I were a Ferrari fan I think I’d be worried that the entitlement and expectation coming down from the top might create more fear than positive motivation in the team. It reminds me of Montezemolo and the attitude that everyone owed him the victories.

      Once you have fear then it’s only a small step to departments beginning to point fingers at each other, which is why in general we don’t get these messages from the successful teams. I can imagine Allison quietly doing his nut at those comments. He knows where results actually come from, being a student of Brawn.

      1. I think you’ll find the new top talent at Ferrari thrives under pressure from above.

        That pressure struck fear in the old crew, which is why they are gone.

        1. Hmmm…hard to say how ‘fear’ played into things since we are not flies on the wall to have really seen and felt the atmosphere and it’s effects. Suffice it to say when they failed to produce a car quite good enough for FA to use to defeat SV, ‘fear’ and ‘heads rolling’ and ‘big internal overhauls’ became terms associated with Ferrari.

          But now those changes have occurred, they seem on an uprising and of course still are the most favoured by F1 in terms of extra millions and veto power, so I really don’t see anything but a positive vibe coming from them right now.

          I don’t envision a team failing to produce a dominant or winning car then having management instill fear in them to try to eek out more from them. Rather, these highly professional teams do their best and when they fail to win a Championship year after year, some of them will naturally start to fear that they may be asked to move along as changes are obviously needed and talk towards that ramps up. Ie. if any fear comes into play I think it is only after a team has under delivered for a time, not because a team’s principle gravitates toward that tactic day 1, without real cause out of some desperation.

          1. Lots of people were positive when Mattiacci started @robbie. But Andy Cowell refused to go because of the blame culture there. They kicked out Aldo Costa then Brawn put him in a cohesive team and now look. We only get these straws in the wind of course but teams don’t all work the same; the way people are organised and how they work together – or don’t – is a massive part of F1. It’s a very difficult, subtle business to get each individual motivated to work for both themselves and the team, with that motivation being aligned, and all the departments too.

            So personally I am quite encouraged to see these demanding comments from on high ;))

          2. @lockup

            My guess was mattiacci was brought in to do one thing, fire Alonso. Once this was achieved he received his exit bonus and the real team building started.

            Nobody can say for fact that Alonso quit – as none of that was disclosed publically, but vettel has hinted his pre contract was signed well before Alonso’s public announcement.

          3. @Mr. X

            I don’t think Mattiaci was brought in with just one goal of firing Alonso. Although, he was brought in to change Ferrari inside out. He was supposed to be rid Ferrari of anyone who was a negative for the team. Inexplicably (at that time at least), he decided it was Alonso who needed to go. No one understood that move from Ferrari. Not the pundits, not the fans.
            But he clearly knew what he was doing. I hope he is doing well in whatever career he is pursuing now.

          4. The bits and pieces I saw, Mr X, were that Monte talked about tweaking Alonso’s ear, had a go at Domenicale before walking out on the team at Bahrain, then had to appoint Mattiacci in a rush when Stefano walked. Matticacci finished off alienating Alonso, who’d decided Ferrari were never going to change.

            Luckily Seb came free at the right time. Now they have a smoking guy running things with Mr Hardcase looking over his shoulder. Fascinating!

          5. @sumedh

            Many people understood why Ferrari would get rid of Alonso, especially when you’re replacing him with the current benchmark of drivers.

      2. I don’t believe there is any fear in the Ferrari Garage ATM. From what I can see, (Vettel driving, testing tyres), he’s at one with that team, said he was “addicted to winning”, they are all raring to go.

        I’ve read/seen clips saying how different Ferrari is to other teams. Jackie Stewart said SV was in for a “culture shock” when he went to F. In what way? (I’d love to be a fly on the wall at Maranello.) I hope SV has got more respect for the bosses at F than in the past at RBR, and has learned to grow up a bit, (I’ve read Webber’s book and realize the tantrums described are more than nasties by Vettel haters online).

  6. Big year for Ferrari, as despite all the praise the new boss got last year much of the work and the reason it was a good season was done long before him.

    He has been riding a positive wave but if they don’t challenge merc that positivity will be gone in a flash and it will be interesting to see how he deals with it. He hasn’t had any real challenges as Ferrari boss(yet)

  7. About ferrari and hype, I would like to say that things have indeed change ever since alo was there. Allison is more than capable of designing the 2nd best chassis on the grid, he has done so for a long time, mind i remind that allison oversaw the 2015 chassis it’s not his design, as there were a lot of areas to improve on this years 4th best chassis. I’m more worried about the PU.
    Speaking of push and pull, Scalabroni said the centre of gravity is improved with push because the weight is considerably reduced, considering the weight and ballast situation and the new requirements for the shoulder impacts, ferrari couldnt keep defying convention. Arrivabene is a true leader and a rational man, the right man but he isnt made of steel, he’s as italian as you can get. this year he’ll have to prove his worth.

  8. The problem with a Scandinavian GP is that there is no track at the moment that could host a Grand Prix. The only possibilities are Rudskogen in Norway and Gotland Ring in Sweden, but those are both very short, barely 3 km. I believe the minimum length for an F1 circuit is 3,5 km with Monaco being the only exception. There are only a couple tracks longer than that. The longest are Anderstorp in Sweden (a former GP track) and Botniaring in Finland, both just over 4 km long and currently neither of those are capable of hosting a race.
    The most logical choice would be alternating a GP between Kymiring, if it gets upgraded to FIA Grade 1 and Gotland Ring when the southern loop is completed which would make it 7,4 km long, longer than the allowed 7 km.

  9. Well there is a lot of Ferrari hype this year. Last year they just came out of a small revolution.

    First multiple leadership changes at the top, technical changes, driver changes, now will be a first year of current team in place. Something Mercedes enjoyed for years. So atleast they should be better than last year. And slowly Mercedes will run out of things to improve…

    So hype is real, what about results? We laughed when Arrivabene said 3 victories last year… So far this team delivers results. Now anything can happen and it usually does.

    Then who will beat Ferrari? Williams would need an allmighty engine package from Mercedes, Mclaren get hyped 230 import ponies?

    Onlyone who can defeat Ferrari is Ferrari.

    1. Oh another thing… Why oh why they used that front layout. It was not giving them a massive advantage, while others obviously with better chassis have different layout?

      Reminds me of Ferrari going for less powerful engine to gain aero advantage… In an engine power dominated formula.

      In tire dominated formula.. They go for aero layout, that hurts tires. Just because Alonso wanted his car to have a funny frontend.

  10. A change to the regulations that might make Ferrari more competitive, what a surprise.

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