In the round-up: Williams believes conducting tyre tests for Pirelli could give a team an advantage.
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Williams sees advantage in 2017 tyre testing (Autosport)
"It's not exactly scientific, but the fact is you've said you like those ones and someone else might have gone' I like those (different) ones' so things tend to go in your direction."
Haas wouldn’t block Grosjean to Ferrari approach (Crash)
"I don't think I'd ever want to hold a driver back. I think he is (happy), but if someone offered him a huge contract and was willing to buy out our contract and it was with one of those two front teams (Ferrari, Mercedes) he'd be crazy not to do that."
Nasr ‘convinced’ chassis is handling differently to Ericsson’s (F1i)
"He's been happy with the car since this car was built - and I had the chance to drive the car he's driving back in the test in Barcelona and was pretty happy, too. But since we built this second chassis we’ve been having these handling issues."
Why the Chinese Grand Prix is here to stay (Motorsport)
"Although the removal of old grandstands last year for safety reasons was viewed by some as a way of hiding lack of ticket sales, a three-day official figure of 140,000 circuit visitors was nothing to be ashamed of."
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Comment of the day
Jordo argues that the power unit aren’t what’s stopping genuine customer teams from being competitive:
What teams won under the 2009 rules package?
Brawn? Developed as a factory Honda with manufacturer budget, they couldn’t keep up with the development rate of other teams because they didn’t have the money any more. Red Bull? Can you say ‘money’? Ferrari? McLaren? Mercedes? They had huge budgets.
For all intents and purposes, these teams can be considered manufacturers. They had huge budgets, and all except for Brawn and Mercedes in 2012 were the main teams for their engine partners (Red Bull was the de-facto Renault main team, McLaren was the Mercedes main team).
There were three surprise wins. One from Williams, from a combination of Red Bull struggling at the beginning of the season and Hamilton being removed from pole for being under-fuelled. 2 from Lotus with Raikkonen. One at Abu Dhabi 2012, a win that was basically Hamilton’s until his car broke. Vettel had also started from the pits after being excluded from qualifying, which would have reduced Raikkonen’s chances. Admittedly, the Lotus seemed like a proper competitor in 2013, and with a bit of luck they might have won a couple of races more.
Still, that’s three wins from non-manufacturer teams in five years. It took a bit over three years for the first non-manufacturer win to happen, and it was in a period where the teams struggled to understand the tyres, rather than pure performance. And four years for a customer team to be reasonably competitive (at a season where most teams were already focusing on the 2014 cars, which must have had some influence in the results).
Lets go back even more, to the 2006-2008 era. How many customer teams won races? One. And that was Vettel in a Toro Rosso that was basically a Red Bull chassis, in a wet race that took most people by surprise. You might count BMW-Sauber too, but they were a manufacturer team, weren’t they? The 2000-2005 era? You had Williams, but they had BMW’s support, so does that even count? And Jordan, but they had a freak win in 2003 and could only beat Minardi in the standings.
So, even if you count Williams-BMW and BMW-Sauber as customer teams, since 2000 there have been 16 wins by customer teams. Out of 289 races. That’s a 5.54% of the races won by a customer, or roughly one every 20 races.
Now take out Williams-BMW and BMW-Sauber. That’s five races won by a customer (one Williams, two Lotus, one Toro Rosso, one Jordan). 1.7%. That’s one customer win every 58 grands prix. Right now, we are exactly 41 races into this PU formula. 56 grands prix have happened since Raikkonen last won for a customer team.
Now, the only change with these engines is that Red Bull hasn’t been able to procure a competitive engine. But we’re talking that Renault and Honda are capable of winning, so Red Bull will use one of those engines. Does anyone think that if the Renault or Honda engines become competitive enough to win, Red Bull won’t be there? Even if their engine isn’t 100% up to the latest specification?
Red Bull are playing the customer victim card. Poor them, they have no engines. Poor them, they can’t compete. The fact of the matter is that they, unlike Force India or Sauber, have an special agreement to receive more money than they deserve. They, unlike Williams, Force India, Sauber or Manor, have had the opportunity to become a full-fledged manufacturer, yet they chose to remain a ‘customer’. They chose to rely on another company to provide them with engines. And unlike the ‘true customer’ teams, they even had the power to influence (or at least try to) the rules so that a power unit supply would be guaranteed.
So when people call Red Bull a customer team, they should think twice. Red Bull have more in common with Ferrari and Mercedes than with Force India or Williams or Sauber or Manor. They are not the ‘small guys’. They are part of the ‘big guys’ that screw the ‘small guys’.
As long as the huge budget difference remains, we won’t see customer teams winning races outside of freak events. Red Bull can call themselves a customer teams as much as they want, they are not.
Everyone seems to blame the PU rules, but the numbers show this has happened with three different engine specifications, through countless rule iterations. If customer teams aren’t winning, it isn’t because of the engine.
Jordi Casademunt (@Casjo)
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Iosif (@afonic)
24th April 2016, 0:24
There is a story floating around the last couple of days that Ferrari will bring upgraded power units in Sochi. Any idea if that’s true?
Jimmy Price
24th April 2016, 6:26
Not sure about that specific story but as I understand they’ve yet to turn the PU up to 100% at any race. Not even in testing were they running at peak. This is primarily for reliability purposes.
Perhaps they are confident they can turn up the power or as you suggest they have a new spec PU as well.
Vettel has hinted that something big is coming. He’s not one to make things up like that.
Neel Jani (@neelv27)
24th April 2016, 7:18
Indeed @afonic
http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferrari-considers-bold-engine-update-plan-for-russian-gp-689198/
Todfod (@todfod)
25th April 2016, 7:27
Nice find. Look forward to seeing what they bring.
Andy (@andybantam)
24th April 2016, 1:00
@Casjo
Bang on!
Patrick (@paeschli)
24th April 2016, 7:27
Does Red Bull builds it’s own engines? No, Renault gets the upgrades first.
Therefore they are a customer team – one that receives a lot of money from Bernie and likes to screw other customer teams – but still a customer team.
Andy (@andybantam)
24th April 2016, 10:35
A customer team with better facilities, more money, more staff and a more fruitful driver academy than Renault in it’s current form.
Red Bull is a different kind of customer team.
Strontium (@strontium)
24th April 2016, 1:47
The Haas team has hardly said anything negative, or anything one would disagree with since they arrived. They seem so focused and chilled, it’s s delight that they are in F1.
Todfod (@todfod)
25th April 2016, 7:32
Yeah they are a breath of fresh air. It’s also because they have gotten off to a better start than expected, nonetheless, they are a whole lot more positive and focused than either Marrussia, Caterham or HRT were.
I also like their relationship with Grosjean. He really seems to gel with the team, and is really delivering the goods! I honestly hope that he gets the Ferrari drive next season. I think his positive attitude will be welcome in the Ferrari garage, and he’s definitely got the speed and consistency to better Kimi on his current form . I also predict him to be tough competition for Seb, and it would be interesting to see how he fares against him.
EF1
26th April 2016, 0:20
>>> Kimi on his current form….Eh? You mean Kimi that was faster than Vettel all weekend at China before his teammate took him out in the 1st corner? Ok. Way to ignore reality and go with a generalization just for the sake of it.
Park
24th April 2016, 6:49
They were totally free to test in 2015, just like their wind tunnel/CFD time.
grat
25th April 2016, 13:59
Right, because they had a 2016 spec chassis and engine lying around the shop.
That’s a bit like saying I’m free to test an F1 car this year– while technically true, it ain’t gonna happen.
Unicron (@unicron2002)
24th April 2016, 7:10
I very much enjoyed your COTD @Casjo, spot on
BasCB (@bascb)
24th April 2016, 8:09
yup, good read.
socksolid (@socksolid)
24th April 2016, 9:33
The cotd is just baffling. None of the logic makes sense. Red bull is a customer team with big budget and they are not winning because the engine is bad. That’s a fact. It is not impossible to win with bad engine as they proved in 2014. But in 2015 the engine did hold them back. Renault did not even bother to develop it because they were planning to leave at the end of 2015… By the logic of ctd a customer team is not customer team if they invest tons of money into chassis design? That’s not how it works…
The whole cotd is based on false dilemma. Whether someone is a customer team (you can define it in as complex and nonsensical way you want) doesn’t make a difference. It is not about that. Problem is that you need to be engine MANUFACTURER to be able to compete. Not even engine partner like honda/mclaren but truly a team owned by the brand that designs the engines you run. That way you not only get the best engines but can sell bad ones to your competitors (or refuse to sell).
Now go back in your history and see when was the last time in f1 when a manufacturer team was not winning.
Let me answer to you:
2016: none
2015: none
2014: 3 red bull
2013: 1 lotus, 13 red bull
2012: 7 mclaren, 7 red bull, 1 williams, 1 lotus
Not that rare after all!
When you look at the numbers you notice that with the new engine rules only one non-manufacturer team has managed to win 3 races in 3 seasons. And even that was a team that was heavily backed by the engine manufacturer (but not owned by it). How much more proof you need that the engine regs have failed? The field is more even than ever yet we still have one manufacturer team winning everything followed by another manufacturer while the rest can’t do anything about it because they can’t build their own engines. For those teams it is not a choise, it is simply not possible. F1 has never been about building your engines. It is about building your own cars so asking teams to start their own engine programmes to become competitive is just nonsensical.
You could argue that redbull/renault was almost manufacturer when they were running the renault branded engines. They had a good deal which allowed them to get the engines relatively cheaply and had advertising deals on top of that. Just like mclaren with mercedes red bull with renault could be seen as manufacturer team. But they were not manufacturer teams. They were customers. Primary customers but custmers still. But there is a crucial difference between a manufacturer and a customer. If you are a customer the manufacturer can at any time start their own team and start selling second rate engines to you while keeping the better ones for themselves. When you are a manufacturer you control everything.
The engine regulations have been complete failure. One more thing that was not mentioned in the cotd was how the costs of the engine effect car development. The more the engines cost the less the teams can afford to invest into chassis design. This gives another performance benefit to the big manufacturers. Not only are the engines merc and ferrari selling worse than their own but the high price also limits the chassis design of the customer teams. Merc and ferrari know this and want to keep the price high to keep the competitors from catching up. Merc and ferrari have their positions 1-4 locked down and only team that can challenge them is red bull who is rich enough to invest similar amounts of money into chassis design after paying the insane engine costs.
I don’t think red bull is choosing to be a customer. It is just bonkers trying to insinuate that red bull should start building engines because they have money. By the same logic force india and manor “choose” to be customers as well. After all it is just so easy to start making engines in 2016 after you find your engine supplier has failed… Red bull should just get on with it!
In the end f1 is all about using political advantages to get a performance advantage. Red bull, ferrari, mclaren, mercedes etc all do it as much as they can. But even then the clear fact is that in this political engine war mercedes has won, ferrari has kinda won and everyone else have lost. Non.manufacturer teams have lost the most. The mercedes and ferrari engine performance advantage is unquestionable, the biggest the sport has seen in a long time and no matter how the average f1fanatic commenter seems to hate red bull they are the only one that can compete for wins in this environment. Nobody is innocent and everyone is kinda evil.
ColdFly F1 (@)
24th April 2016, 10:32
No, they can’t. @socksolid
GT Racer (@gt-racer)
24th April 2016, 13:00
@socksolid “Not only are the engines merc and ferrari selling worse than their own”
Not true, With the exception of STR all the customer teams are getting the same spec engines as the manufacturer team.
The only time the customers are supplied with a spec that isn’t the same is when the manufacturer’s introduce updates & don’t yet have enough of the updated components to supply themselves as well as all there customer teams & that fact is something thats been around F1 since the very beginning. Even the customer friendly Ford DFV gave the newest updated components to the factory backed team (That been Lotus) before they made them available to the customers & in some cases the smaller of the DFV customers were several specifications/years behind what the factory backed teams had access to.
The way the engine supply chain now is literally no different to how its always been & the advantages of been a full manufacturer outfit or a factory backed outfit (Like McLaren are) over been a full customer are also the same as they have always been. The only thing that has changed is fan perception of what they feel it should be which tends to be something its never actually been.
socksolid (@socksolid)
25th April 2016, 10:35
Toro rosso is not exception. Engine manufacturers can sell old engine spec they want to teams. Toro rosso is prime example of how it is done.
https://www.racefans.net/2015/12/02/ecclestone-and-todt-given-new-power-to-address-f1s-pressing-issues/
“Power units homologated in previous seasons may now be re-homologated,” noted the FIA in a statement. “Previously no manufacturer could supply more than one specification of PU.”
I don’t think the dfv is any good example at all to use as an example on how to govern the engines in 2016. Another example from engine rules in f1 is 2007 when the engine development was frozen. You can find all kinds of examples in the history of f1 and the more recent examples you want the more and more balanced it has been. Until we got the current engines. If you want a competitive engine sales system you probably like to mention the dfv engines. I’m sure toto wolff would mention it too. If you wanted more balanced engines you’d mention the 2007 engine freeze. Toto would never mention that either.
The way it is now is pretty much how it was before the v8s and also also before the latest v10s. It is like how it was when the new v10s came out. If “it is the way it is” is a good analogy in your example then surely the revenue distribution in f1 is fine as well because “that’s the way it has always been”? Using the same logic “has always been this way”. V8 engines solved a lot of these issues and now the issues are back. What we have is a downgrade on all areas. Worse engines, more expensive engines, bigger gaps between engine brands and specs and power struggle where the top richest teams are fighting a political war to keep their performance advantage intact on the track.
Eoin (@eoin16)
24th April 2016, 14:56
Renault brought an engine upgrade to the Brazilian GP last year for Red Bull so it is completely wrong to say that Renault stopped development on the engine last year
socksolid (@socksolid)
25th April 2016, 10:41
Brazil is the 2nd last race of the season. Proves my point. And the update itself was barely worthwhile. So yes renault did stop development which made red bull mad (a valid reason to be mad). The only reason why renault did eventually continue was because it decided it wanted to be a factory team.
duncan
26th April 2016, 6:26
The ‘upgrade’ they delivered in Brazil was the last drop from a dripping tap – wasn’t it slightly less powerful than the previous engine?
Sonics (@sonicslv)
24th April 2016, 16:10
@socksolid Most of your arguments hinged on the manufacturer can sell different (worse) engine to their customer than they used themselves which is wrong. One of the reason of homogolation is to prevent this happening, and FIA ask for inspection anytime if they feel something wrong. Also your argument of the manufacturers rising the cost to hampers their customer chassis design is also wrong. FIA imposed maximum price to the engine and its actually believed that the manufacturers sold the engines at a loss.
And teams has playing this “building your own engine” game since long time ago. Do you think Ford just wake up one day and building DFV to sell to F1 teams? No, a team asked Ford to build an engine for them, just like Sauber asks Mercedes (which in turn asks Ilmor) to build F1 engines for them. Why else do you think Ron Dennis immediately search for new engine partner when Mercedes making their own team?
anon
24th April 2016, 19:23
@sonicslv, it is worth noting that Horner himself explicitly stated in 2011 that Red Bull were the “premier factory team of Renault Sport” – their own announcements make it clear that Red Bull thought of themselves as a “works” team and as an equal partner with Renault, instead of just a customer entrant. http://www.crash.net/f1/news/173061/1/red-bull-racing-now-the-factory-renault-team-says-horner.html
In the past, we know that Renault offered Red Bull a number of performance advantages that were unique to them because they were designated as their factory team, ranging from customised engine maps through to redesigning ancillary components of the engine (such as the alternator) specifically in accordance with Red Bull’s instructions. Newey has also claimed in the past that the relationship was a two way process, claiming that Red Bull developed both software and hardware components for Renault’s energy recovery systems.
The relationship that Red Bull had with Renault was far closer than just a few cheap engines and a bit of sponsorship – Red Bull had their own staff integrated into Renault’s factory (and vice versa), and the level of technical support and bespoke development parts they received from Renault was considerably greater than any customer would normally receive. They might not have made their own engines, but they were much closer in structure to a manufacturer than a customer team.
That same relationship also existed between McLaren and Mercedes for an extremely long time – even when he announced that he was going to work with Honda, Ron Dennis held Mercedes to their contract for as long as possible to force them to provide McLaren with a degree of support that they otherwise would not have been entitled to. I very much doubt that Ron Dennis would agree with the assertion that McLaren were “just a customer team” to Mercedes…
socksolid (@socksolid)
25th April 2016, 10:42
If you are not owned by a manufacturer you are a customer to them. It is really that simple.
GT Racer (@gt-racer)
25th April 2016, 12:56
@socksolid There are 3 team/engine supply categories.
* Full manufacturer team like Ferrari, Mercedes & Renault which are teams fully owned by the manufacturer.
* Factory backed team’s who are not owned by the manufacturer (Although often the manufacturer will invest in the team) but get many of the benefits like McLaren Honda do now & Williams & Red Bull have in the past.
* Customer team’s who are simply buying the engines with no additional factory support.
Through history the top teams that were now full manufacturer’s always pushed to fall into the ‘factory’ category because throughout practically all of F1’s history (Including when we had the V8’s) that was the best chance you had to win. Been a full customer has always been a disadvantage, It may not have been as noticeable with the V8’s thanks to the freeze but it was still there.
Just a point regarding people pointing to Sauber & Lotus in 2012/2013 as proof customers could compete in the V8-era, Remember that in those 2 years the tyres were a massive factor & that those 2 teams had cars that were a lot easier on the tyres than any other team & that is where most of there results came from. In 2011 & 2010 when tyres were not a big factor they were nowhere near competing with the manufacturer/factory backed teams just like they were not for the rest of the V8-era.
grat
25th April 2016, 14:00
Post 2009, Red Bull *was* the works Renault team for all intents and purposes, just like McLaren was the works Mercedes team until 2010.
Geeyore (@geeyore)
24th April 2016, 12:44
I’m not sure I even understand the alleged “concerns” about customer teams. The entire history of global motorsport – start to present, all series, all teams, all racecars – is the history of racing teams obtaining anything and everything from external, third-party suppliers. Are F1 competitors “customer teams” because they have Brembo brakes, O.Z. wheels, and outsourced pistons? The entire argument is silly.
The difference with today’s F1 is that the PU/engine is so expensive, so overwhelmingly complex, that few third-parties are in a financial position to compete with corporate manufacturers, and the rules are so restrictive that teams are unable to improve their position without suffering 45-place grid penalties.
FIA continues to dither around their rulemaking farrago by – what? – adding more and more arcane and absurd rules to an already ridiculous situation. Someone needs to set the FIA rulebook on fire.
anon
24th April 2016, 19:53
@geeyore, whereas third party engine suppliers were able to compete financially with the manufacturer teams before?
I would assert that there really hasn’t been a strong independent engine supplier that could compete on an equal level with the manufacturers for decades, maybe as far back as the 1960’s. Cosworth had the financial and political musclepower of Ford behind it with the DFV (and ownership of the DFV design technically resided with Ford, not Cosworth), and a large chunk of the other engine suppliers in the 1970’s – Alfa Romeo, Matra, Renault – were also manufacturers too. In the 1980’s, Hart was really the only independent engine supplier to produce a somewhat decent turbocharged engine – really, it was the turbo era that drove manufacturers into the sport and lead to F1 being christened “the sport of corporations” by those in it.
By the 1990’s, Cosworth had effectively become an extension of Ford – in the late 1990’s they were bought out by Ford altogether – whilst Judd operated under commission from Yamaha and Ilmor was subsumed into Mercedes. Hart was wiped out when Tom Walkinshaw’s outfit collapsed in the early 2000’s, and you could argue that, around 2003-2004, there technically weren’t any independent engine suppliers on the grid (if you class Cosworth as a manufacturer entity given that Ford owned a controlling share of the company).
In the recent V8 era, meanwhile, most teams didn’t want engines from Cosworth – the new teams had to be forced to sign contracts with Cosworth as a condition of entry, and even then Caterham ditched them as soon as possible (even HRT, on the verge of bankruptcy, tried desperately to switch from Cosworth to Renault engines).
SauberS1 (@saubers1)
24th April 2016, 22:55
Nasr’s statements… It’s very boring.
Max Taylor
24th April 2016, 23:45
Red Bull spend most of their money on aero and chassis and want the best engine as cheap as they can get it. Then whinge because other teams have worked out the Red Bull strategy. Mercedes and Ferrari have to develop engine, aero and chassis, Red bull seek financial advantage by leaving out the cost of developing an engine.
EF1
26th April 2016, 0:24
Or true, and he’s stuck with a team that cannot even afford to give him a replacement chassis, and people like yourself saying they are sick of hearing him whine. Also the silly rules in place in F1 that prevent the simplest solution of all, each driver take the other’s car out in practice and see how they each go and what they say about the cars. Of course, not allowed, as too simple for the world of F1 it seems. And so the circus goes on…….