Manor “still nowhere near quick enough”

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In the round-up: Manor’s Dave Ryan admits the team’s cars still need to become much quicker.

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Comment of the day

Was Felipe Nasr right not to pull over for team mate Marcus Ericsson when he was told to?

I partially understand Felipe Nasr’s attitude and behaviour. In Brazil there’s a lot of pressure for drivers to be more like Senna and less like Barrichello. The audience don’t want drivers taking orders, and Rubens is not very well respected due to him giving way to Schumacher whenever the team wanted.

Having said that, Nasr is not Senna, he is not fighting for wins either, and Sauber needs points. Ruining the race of both drivers is not helping the team nor his career.
@Lubhz

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33 comments on “Manor “still nowhere near quick enough””

  1. Re “Now we simply need to make sure that robust procedures are put in place to cover any given scenario.”
    I think Ricciardo has made to much fuss about this. If he makes a mistake then he and the car can easily be out of the race. How much apologising is he then going to do? In this case there was a mistake that delayed Ricciardo and the car, and yes, they lost one place, but then they were back in the race. In terms of mistakes, this was a minor mistake. In another situation they might have lost quite a lot more places in the time taken to remedy the situation, so to loose just one place was a very minor consequence.

    1. OmarRoncal - Go Seb!!! (@)
      3rd June 2016, 4:25

      @drycrust but seeing how hard it is for another team which is not Mercedes to score a victory, losing that chance is unforgivable. If Dan had crashed and lost just one place, make sure everyone would ve bashing him just the same way as Red Bull is being criticized now.

      1. @omarr-pepper No, it isn’t unforgivable, it is frustrating, and if one individual was at fault then they will feel the pain much worse than everyone else, but everyone would have felt the pain.
        Yes, this was probably the best chance Ricciardo has had this year to win a race so far, but you can’t hang everything on the point of leaving tyre choice to the last minute, that “just in time” deciding on the choice of tyres is what you need to do if you want to win. At another race making a decision earlier than that might also have resulted in a second place and not a first. How would Ricciardo have reacted then?
        At the end of the race Red Bull walked away with 18 points and Ricciardo being third in the Drivers’ Championship.

    2. Duncan Idaho (@)
      3rd June 2016, 4:35

      Seriously?
      10th to 11th is minor.
      1st to 2nd = 1st to 22nd = major.

    3. I’m sure if there was a robust procedure they could put in place to stop Ricciardo making a mistake and losing places they would also. To expect an F1 team pumping millions and millions of pounds/euros to just sit back and go “oh well we only lost one place, never mind guys” and move on, rather than actively trying to avoid making the same error, is baffling.

      This was almost entirely a procedural error, certainly not the sort of thing that should be losing you a race. If someone misjudges a corner trying to gain an extra tenth, that’s unfortunate but it’s racing. If someone loses 15 seconds because the tyres are still in the back of the garage _after the driver has been called in_ then that’s bad practice.

      You are right in that he only lost one place, but on another day it could easily have been ten. Losing any places over what would seem one of the simplest parts of a pit stop (actually having new tyres available!) is not something any team would be happy about. I’d suggest it particularly would eat away at Red Bull considering the pit stop speed records they’ve set and the pride they seem to take in that area of their operation.

    4. “In terms of mistakes, this was a minor mistake.”

      Can’t tell if you’re being facetious, or not understanding the embarrassing levity of such an error. How often do you see a car sitting in a pit box with the crew just standing there doing nothing… Even at the smallest team. You just don’t see it at this level, even at the lower professional levels.

      This was a huge mistake, there is no doubt.

  2. Fritz Oosthuizen (@)
    3rd June 2016, 3:21

    If you work for any company you follow the rules of the company that pay your salary. Or the team your sponsors pay for you to drive. The Sauber drivers did not listen to there boss and Daniel is unhappy with company performance. Even changing teams will not be a solution the change of the mentality of the drivers will.

  3. “At my first attempt to tame that track with an F1 car in 2010 it almost cost my life – and now 2016 I was on the podium!”
    Hang on a minute, that was in 2011. Pérez wasn’t even in F1 in that year! I guess for him it’s all a blur trying to remember that weekend, either that or a typo mmm

    1. In fairness, that time was such a blur for Sergio that he had to pull out of the race after Monaco 2011 (Canada) due to concussion. Though mis-speaking/typo is, as ever, possible.

  4. Red bulls new procedure… when your driver is pitting take some tyres (a matching set of four would be belpful) out of their blankets and walk to the pit box with them, take the old ones off, bolt the new ones on, send driver back out. Radical i know… but it just might work!!!

    And theres a stating the obvious award in the post for the manor still not quick enough article!!!

  5. Saward’s article is somewhat ignorant, obscene, grotesque and as a result is riddled with false information. First of all- drivers (and riders, for that matter) are contractually obligated (hence forced) to race in all rounds pertaining to the championships they are competing in. If they decide not to race- it may be the last thing they ever do for that (or perhaps any other) team in regards to motor racing, or otherwise. In F1 terms- gone are the amateur (and spectacular) days of people like Fangio, Moss, and Clark (and before that) when there was no sponsorship on cars and no outside parties to satisfy with television exposure. There are too many outside forces penetrating F1 for a driver to say, “I’m not racing, because it’s too dangerous.” The safety is managed better than ever these days- with the exception of open cockpits still being around- and if a driver like even Alonso does that- that would be a black mark against him, for sure- he wouldn’t be able to do that twice. I don’t think it’s a good idea to start the race behind the safety car in wet conditions- even at Monaco (maybe…) and I think F1 in general really lacks spectacle and variety of circuit types (not enough slow or fast circuits, too many mid-speed circuits these days) but Saward, being the experienced F1 journalist he is has produced IMO a truly polarizing article- some of which I can agree with- but the rest is- to coin a truly English slang phrase- absolute rubbish.

    1. i wonder how many funerals of racing car drivers he has been to, not many I suspect. They are there to race and to thrill us, I have been to more than a dozen GP’s and with or without the safety car or run off areas, its great to see these guys dicing at 300kph into a braking zone, or trying to hold the car in one piece through Eau Rouge.

    2. I’m not sure about standing starts in the wet but they really do go way, way too long behind the safety car.

      1. Agreed. I can see a lap behind the safety car to provide a rolling start, spread the field out a little so there isn’t a predictable pileup in turn 1… but driving around until it’s dry enough for inters before starting the race is just silly.

    3. “I don’t believe that races should ever start behind Safety Cars.”

      I actually agree with this sentence, although I haven’t read the full article.

      In my view, if a race is too dangerous to start without the safety car, it is too dangerous to start full stop. The race can be delayed. If they need to cars to circulate to clear water, there could be a procedure to send them out in VSC conditions, maybe, but not counting as race laps. I’m not sure on this one, but it seems reasonable on first thought.

      I would actually go one stage further: There is no need for a safety car full stop. They would be better off red-flagging a race, and having everyone line up on the grid, than have endless laps wasted behind the safety car. It would be both safer and would end up with more racing laps. They also have the VSC now for more minor incidents.

    4. Guys, please remember the safety issue is visibility. The authorities have to ensure that the sprays wouldn’t be enough at the start to cause accidents especially so, when the cars are close. It’s not about a standing start.

    5. mfreire, what I find oddest about Saward’s article is when he uses the line “we should ensure that the sport is safe enough, but not to the point of becoming anodyne”.

      In the past, he has written quite strongly against individuals who have complained that the sport had become “too safe”, complaining that that attitude had resulted in a number of drivers being seriously injured in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s – such as, for example, Laffite being forced to retire after shattering both of his legs – and that people had become too complacent, to the point where the fatal accidents in Imola in 1994 were almost inevitable due to that sense that the cars were safe enough.

      Similarly, he had argued for year before Bianchi’s crash that, given that around 20 years had passed with no fatalities and with serious accidents having become markedly rarer, that a number of figures within the sport were making the same mistake of believing that the sport “too safe” and were creating the sort of scenario where a serious or fatal accident could occur because people no longer believed that sort of thing could happen any more.

      Seeing him therefore say that the sport should satisfy itself with just being “safe enough”, therefore, smacks of rank hypocrisy – he is condoning the very sort of attitude that he has previously lambasted for making, as he saw it, the dangerous assumption that “safe enough” was “good enough” for the sport.

    6. Sorry mfriere, I stopped reading at your comment that Fangio Clark & Moss were “amateurs”. Now surely that’s REAL rubbish…

      1. I don’t think that he meant to imply that drivers like Fangio, Clark and Moss were amateurs, but instead referring to the general era and the prevalence of amateur and semi professional drivers and teams who would enter races on one off occasions with second hand cars, or sometimes cars that weren’t even classed as F1 cars but were allowed to race anyway.

        Drivers like Fangio, Clark and Moss might have raced for manufacturers and established privateer teams, but you also had contemporary figures like Mike Parkes, a man who was still working for the Rootes Group as an automotive engineer when he began a part time career as a racing driver and was entered in a Formula 2 car – at the time, the sport permitted teams to enter F2 cars into F1 races – for a race. It is that sort of behaviour that he was referring to as “amateur”, rather than figures like Fangio, Clark or Moss being “amateurs”.

  6. Hei I don’t agree to such comments he is coming close, improving day by day and will be a champ soon

  7. Re comment of the day, if that fence was any bigger it would split you in two !
    He should have moved over.

  8. “I did not say no, I did not refuse any order”.
    No, I just chose to ignore the order, which is different…

    1. Or had convenient radio interference…

  9. So here’s comes the pressure to Riccardo: Marko says that the opportunity for Sainz will come…he doesnt know when but it will come. Horner says that the pole position on Monaco was down to the increased power by Renault…. sooo nothing special for Ricci than…they are already refering to him as the new Mark Webber

    1. @yllib You’re joking right?

  10. @ CotD:
    ‘Having said that, Nasr is not Senna, he is not fighting for wins either, and Sauber needs points. Ruining the race of both drivers is not helping the team nor his career.’

    Very true. However, I get the impression that the blame is being distributed rather unfairly (in the CotD as well as in general). Nasr’s attitude didn’t help the team, no objections so far, but the one driver who destroyed Sauber’s chances was Ericsson. There is simply no justification for going kamikaze against your own team mate.
    Attempting an overtake would be justified, of course. But dive-bombing your team mate into one of the slowest and tightest corners from 10 metres back – that’s just past it.

    1. Furthermore Ericsson being one of the worst drivers on the grid and the track being Monaco, I doubt he would have succeeded in anything.
      Another reason was that the swap was supposed to happen at turn one. He would have moved maybe if the team insisted but we’ll never know.

    2. If I’d been the boos, and had the money in the team to do it, I think I’d have benched the pair of them – simply to help them cool their heads!

  11. I agree Saward. I believe that F1 is losing its risk factor. Yes saftey is super important and that F1 drivers shouldn’t die in a crash. But F1 isn’t supposed to be a safe sport. It’s a sport where you take risks like passing at Eau Rouge sometimes they can be spectacular other times you aren’t rewarded. Starting behind the saftey car in the rain at Monaco makes the drivers look like amateurs. If the drivers can’t start in the wet and make it into turn 1 than you shouldn’t be in f1. Especially if you go almost 10 laps behind the SC.

  12. Whilst starting any race behind the safety car is hugely frustrating and devoid of any first turn/first lap excitement, I think it was the right choice in Monaco. The morning’s support races had taken place in better conditions than the start of the F1 race, and this is what happened:

    – The Porsche Supercup had multiple crashes which resulted in countless laps behind the safety car, and otherwise saw very little action.
    – The Renault 2.0 Eurocup had multiple crashes and was red flagged just over halfway through the race. They chose not to restart it.

    Then the heavens opened and it rained consistently until pretty much 2pm local time, when the F1 was due to start. The track was saturated. At this point I guess the three options were:

    – Start the race normally and inevitably endure a pile up at turn 1
    – Delay the start until the track dried out enough to ensure a safer start
    – Start the race behind the safety car and bring it in when enough of the standing water had been cleared by the x-wet tyres

    As exciting as the first option might have been, it could have been very dangerous for the drivers and would have resulted in either a red flag or multiple laps behind the safety car. If there had been any injuries, there would have been serious questions as to why the race was started in such conditions, and given the ongoing investigations into Suzuka 2014 it’s no surprise that the Grand Prix didn’t start normally.

    Delaying the start of the race was a more likely proposition, but even by the time the race actually finished there were still puddles off the racing line which indicates we could have been waiting a very long time and would likely have been forced to start it in wet conditions later in the day anyway due to time constraints.

    With the forecast of further rain (which did actually arrive around 4pm local time, just as the race finished), I feel like it was the right decision to start the race on time and behind the safety car. We lost out on the start and 8 or so laps where we’re likely to have seen very little overtaking even if there were differences in pace (see Rosberg/Hamilton), but given that the top 4 on the grid were all still in contention, and the fact we still got to see a battle of strategies on a drying track, I don’t think we were too hard done by.

  13. It was such an embarrassment to start the Monaco GP behind the Safety Car.

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