Ferrari quicker than Mercedes on race pace – Vettel

F1 Fanatic Round-up

Posted on

| Written by

In the round-up: Sebastian Vettel believes Mercedes are still the team to beat in qualifying but Ferrari are faster in the races.

Social media

Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:

Comment of the day

If F1 is going to introduce new race formats, should they be for non-championship races only?

The non-championship races could be renamed as one off championships like the one-day classics in cycling. they could be geographically based, for example we could have the European Cup held at an old European circuit that doesn’t have a current slot on the F1 calendar. this would be way more marketable and attractive to attend/race than a “non-championship race” (which is basically an invitation to demure).

in fact to take the cycling analogy further we could have the one-off races have a special focus, like street circuits, fast tracks (Monza) or even artificially wet races (don’t kill me).
@Frood19

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Macleod, Josie Maunders, Bob and Bob!

If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is via the contact form or adding to the list here.

On this day in F1

Jim Clark died on this day in 1968, during a Formula Two race at the Hockenheimring.

Author information

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...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

28 comments on “Ferrari quicker than Mercedes on race pace – Vettel”

  1. A non-championship F1-race in another race format is as needed as a football friendly with 3 teams and 3 goals on a triangular field.

    1. I don’t think it should be totally dismissed as a promotional idea. What if they were staged using the previous years cars and reserve drivers, 100km races, no tyre changes (wets and punctures excepted ) as support races for other series? Difficult ? yes, impossible? no.

    2. Neil (@neilosjames)
      7th April 2017, 12:42

      I’d probably be more interested in watching that than a normal football match…

      But then, I like the non-championship race idea too.

  2. Strategy appears to be more important than a slight power deficiency, so getting a good race grid slot is important to getting a good race result.

  3. Will Buxton – One race into the season and Fernando seems destroyed. I’ve never seen such resignation in him. How much longer can he endure the struggle?

    Fernando Alonso – Everyone (acts like they are) close to me and it’s like I have a depression, and it’s not like that.

    I do sometimes wonder how much of what we read is due to editorial deadlines (or filling Twitter these days), rather than being actual news.

    Nice comment about Lewis from Fernando in that article, comparing him to Schumi as one of the best out there, and a driver you want to beat. I really do hope something changes soon so we can see them racing against each other with more equal machinary, it’d be a great shame if we never get to see a proper Alonso vs Hamilton battle in a race (dare I say Championship ?) again. Ideally for me, that would be with Fernando in a fast Honda, if such a thing can be built sometime soon.

    1. It won’t be the first time F1 journalists have seen ghostly apparitions. One thing about Alonso, is his unbelievable will power. With some journalists, there is no clear distinction between, imagination, wishful thinking and reality.

    2. clear example of Buxton (acting like he is) close to Alonso ;)

    3. To be fair to Will Buxton, if you saw the interview he did with Alonso you would struggle to come to any other conclusion but that @beneboy. His China “Paddock Pass” show is on YouTube if anyone wants to have a look.

      That said, we all know Alonso is a clever guy and is good at playing political games. I am sure he is adopting this dour, depressed demeanour solely to send a message to Honda that the PU they have produced is unacceptable rather than being an accurate reflection of his state of mind or his motivation because when he is in the car he is still very much on it.

    4. @beneboy – Buxton is a goose. All emphasis and no content or insight. Classic example of a horrible broadcaster. He’s had it out for ALO for some time and will take every opportunity to put ALO in a bad light.

      I would say in general though that F1 talking heads are pretty horrible. So much bias on Sky and NBCSports dumb everything down to a ridiculous degree. Not sure about other languages or broadcasters…

  4. Non-Championship races are something that I can’t really see happening as I’m not sure the teams would ever agree to it.

    Firstly it’s extra cost’s for them & depending on where you have it, It’s either going to impact on there preparation for the start of the season, Interfere with the ongoing season or at the end of the year be something that none of the team personnel want to do as it has an effect on there post-season break & affects the preparation for the following season.

    It also poses the risk of damaging equipment which could impact on the actual championship season.

    There is also the risk of injury to crew or driver. Teams are already reluctant to let there drivers drive other cars or do other races, Look at what happened to Robert Kubica while doing a pre-season rally event or what happened with Pascal Wehrlein at the race of champions earlier this year.

    There’s zero benefit to teams in non-championship races, It’s a part of why F1 & actually most other categories stopped doing them.

    1. There would have to be either an obligation (that doesn’t make sense though) or a serious amount of money in it for the teams (but will the likes of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull really be motivated by money?)

    2. well, if you keep using the term “non-championship race” then obviously no one will be interested. but if someone like Liberty media introduces a new type of race, with prize money, sponsors and then invites teams to race, why would they turn it down? it could be mega publicity. we need some new ideas and i think a lot of people have got too used to ecclestone’s way of running the sport.

      a street race through london? or new york? it could follow a similar format to a GP, but maybe condensed. so you could have a free practice period in the morning and the race in the afternoon. maybe it could be on a saturday to distinguish it from the actual GPs.

      other sports hold events which are not part of the standard calendar (the masters in snooker does not award ranking points but it’s one of the most prestigious events to win). the touring cars used to do the Tourist Trophy at donnington – it didn’t count towards the BTCC but they all entered because it was a good race.

  5. Great to see that Pirelli are still working to make F1 even worse than they have already made it and confident they will achieve the result Bernie wants.

    1. @hohum it isn’t just Pirelli, the problem comes from FIA as well.

      This is from the article:

      This is quite a normal relationship between stress on the tyres, and degradation. So we will have higher numbers for degradation in the second part of the season, but still in the range of the [FIA] target letter.
      “The degradation numbers were set in the target letter, and at the moment we are a bit lower compared to the numbers. The numbers are very precise, and it’s difficult to have exactly that number.

      “For example, the delta lap time [between compounds] in the target letter was 0.9s, but it’s an average, because then you have different circuits with different lengths, with different situations. So it could be 0.7s, it could be 1.1s.”

      They have to stop with this non-sense of mandating degradation, just let them do the best possible tyres.
      At least it is better than the blackberry marmalade things we had last year.

    2. I was really hoping that Pirelli and FIA had solved F1’s major problem: @HoHum complaining about tyres. :p

  6. I kinda wish Alonso would quit McLaren, just to say enough is enough, but I don’t suppose he will. It’s really only dawning on me now just to what extent Honda’s botched return is taking on galactic proportions. Very poor form for a historic manufacturer, certainly from a PR standpoint. How much longer will the bosses back in Japan think that continuing the project is a good idea?

    1. I wonder if his comments are a dig at Webber?

    2. Alonso is making $40m this year. He’d be mad to walk away from that just because McLaren are not in the points.

      Now, his contract runs out after this season….

  7. THe espn video was very interesting. What Ricciardo said goes along what I’ve been saying both of us refering to the onboards, the rear of the red bull is a bit loose and the car looks like it’s down on downforce. The RB is also noticeably shorter than the Mercedes and a little bit shorter than the Ferrari. What I had no idea about is that RB changed the construction of the bulkhead. On motogp changing the chassis from one of the multiple arragements of aluminium constructions to carbon (Ducati) is a major change I wonder if that’s the same for F1.

    1. @peartree the main problem is that they cannot run as much down-force as they want, the Tag-Heur needs some winding

      1. @johnmilk Horner said they lack pretty much the same lap time from both car and engine. This morning on sky (fp1) Horner said they are losing on “minimum speed” “straights” and he said high speed (corners) was “ok”

  8. angelic (@angelicdarkness)
    7th April 2017, 3:51

    And so the bragging starts. I was kinda impressed by their focussed attitude prior to this. Meh.

    1. Somebody commented after just reading the headlines.

      1. You don’t really expect people to be literate in the information age, do you?

  9. I don’t know if the Chinese promoters forgot that they had a GP weekend. It isn’t just that problem with the Ricciardo’s name on the asphalt. I saw an image of the Sauber garage with Werhlein written on it, no 94, but with the Ericsson’s helmet on it.

  10. MrF1GuyV12POWAHHH (@)
    7th April 2017, 8:49

    A Red Bull with little downforce, did not expect that.

  11. Prashanth (@)
    7th April 2017, 23:31

    What a ride. Well done young man…
    Vettel looked a bit shaky though after the break.

Comments are closed.