F1 is held back by its tyre rules – Johansson

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In the round-up: Former F1 driver Stefan Johansson believes Formula One should move away from 13-inch wheels.

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Is Helmut Marko right when he says fans don’t understand the current power unit?

Obviously Marko is toeing the old Red Bull line. But seriously, relative to everything else in F1, the engine is fairly straightforward. I could explain it to a group of 12-year-olds and they’d probably gain at least a basic understanding of what it is, and how it works.

But if you send someone far smarter than me to try to explain to the same kids what a Y250 vortex is, and what all the little bits and bobs on a front wing do, and what a coanda effect is, you’d get blank stares from everyone except the physics prodigy who has been calculating stellar orbits around hypothetical supermassive black holes since he was seven.

I don’t see how it’s possible to keep a straight face and say it’s a problem that fans (apparently) don’t understand the engines, while working for a team which wouldn’t dream of arguing against the use of absurdly complex aerodynamics…
Neil (@Neilosjames)

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62 comments on “F1 is held back by its tyre rules – Johansson”

  1. COTD is very good. With the caveat that I’m not good at understanding the engines either.

    1. Suck, bang, squeeze, blow, zap.

      1. It’s actually suck, squeeze, bang, & blow. :D :D

        1. @subhashs – I think @philipgb was alluding to the hybrid PUs used in F1.

        2. @subhashs

          At least we know what’s going wrong with Honda and Renault then.

    2. COTD I can solve your problem.

      Tell your 12 year old its an upside down airplane and he will get the aerodynamic basics in no time.

  2. I agree with Stefan Johansson about making the wheels larger, Not necessarily because of the road relevance argument but just because I think larger wheels look better & would be more in-line with where other series have gone as well as what performance road cars & supercars use.

    The 13″ rims just look small & outdated to me & I don’t really equate them with speed or performance so I think it’s about time F1 moved with the times rather than sticking with 13″ just because its how it’s been for a while.

    1. Again with this crap, if bigger rims would add performance to the car. Teams would have been asking for them long time ago. The problem some people don’t seem to understand is that bigger rims are just for looks nothing else. It doesn’t make the car faster or have more grip on corners.

      1. I would assume that with less wiggly tyre the suspension gotta work more and even though that doesnt directly increase performance surely it has to increase the teams influence over the performance. With all the talks about the tyres small operating window less mass to keep in that window cant be a bad thing.

      2. It doesn’t make the car faster or have more grip on corners.

        https://www.autosport.com/fv8%203.5/news/116559/renault-evaluating-18inch-tyres

        The French manufacturer said the early results were positive and that the bigger wheels enhanced the cars’ cornering performance, with laptimes around Valencia a second quicker in the FR3.5 single-seater.

        1. @stefmeister, given that Michelin were the ones who demanded that the rims were changed to a larger diameter – and they admitted that a key driver was aesthetic grounds, since they wanted to create a stronger visual link between the FR 3.5 cars and their road car products – I would be inclined to treat their claims with a bit of caution given that they are unlikely to want to present data that showed the tyres to be anything other than a success.

          There was no context given to the claimed second improvement, with no indication whether the cars were being tested back to back or whether they were comparing with a test session earlier in the year, whether there were any differences in climatic condition or the condition of the track, differences in the set up of the car, which teams and drivers were being used to make those comparisons: the list goes on.

          I know that, when Motorsport Magazine were invited to try out the FR 3.5 car with the 18 inch rims, they noted that Michelin did not allow them to test the cars with the conventional 13 inch rim back to back with cars using an 18 inch rim – they only allowed people to test on the larger diameter rims (and the drivers in question had not tested those cars with the standard rim size before), nor did Michelin provide any direct lap time comparisons around their test circuit with a car using the standard tyre design.

          I have to ask why, if Michelin were prepared to go to the expense of paying for the hire of a circuit specially to showcase those tyres and to tout how much better they were to journalists, they did not then give drivers the opportunity to undertake a direct comparison with the standard tyres and with their proposed larger diameter rims if the difference is supposed to have been so clear cut?

      3. Carlos Alfonzo
        2nd January 2018, 0:13

        This, so much.
        Big rims are for posers anyway, looking at all the Opel Corsas with 18 inches that you can see through to look at their crappy drum brakes, or their way-too-tiny-for-the-rims brake disks.
        You need big rims for ONE REASON: you need bigger disk brakes. Nothing else.

        1. While I agree with you regarding silly hatchbacks with oversized rims, various drivers have commented that the brakes on F1 cars are currently a little at odds with their new speed. They do need bigger brakes and we could well see drivers with more confidence on those do or die lunges. It’s at least worth looking into as part of the overtaking research and possibly on safety grounds too.

    2. Have racing tyres ever really been relevant to tyres on road cars? I’m no expert, but I don’t think so, and I don’t think they ever will be.

      I don’t think tyre suppliers are staying away from Formula 1 because of lack of road relevance, but rather because it’s too expensive, and results in negative press. The tyre size isn’t going to fix these issues.

      If you look at a scenario where Formula 1 has multiple tyre suppliers, the press can be more positive, for the more successful supplier, but it becomes even more expensive as the different suppliers get into an R&D spending war. For the non successful supplier it can be downright painful (remember the 2005 US Grand Prix).

      I say stick with the 13 inch wheels, as the current tyre size makes a open wheel race car look like an open wheel race car.

      1. Exactly, unless there is some lunatic going around with slicks.

        The only Pirelli managed to achieve, is that I tend to stay away from their tyres.

        1. It’s the compound; not if/how they are groovy.

          PS tyres are so durable nowadays that I struggle to get even 1 tyre pit stop before I sell my car.

        2. Well, they make some of the best tyres on the market today…

      2. @formulales, Michelin have been starting to push more heavily for a range of motorsport series to start moving towards something that looks more like a road tyre for their marketing material. Having pushed Formula E to adopt an all-weather grooved tyre, they have indicated that they might start pushing for the WEC to go down the same route as well because they want to create a stronger visual link.

        As you say, in reality most race tyres will have very little practical benefit for most road tyres, and arguably a road tyre is probably more complex to design than a race tyre – when designing a tyre for the average track, some issues that exist for road tyres are not an issue in racing (such as noise emissions). Quite a bit of the time, what might be optimal for performance is nevertheless overridden because the chief designers are more concerned with aesthetics rather than performance anyway.

        @johnmilk, I recall a tyre designer for a major manufacturer mentioning that, for most road vehicles, it really doesn’t matter which manufacturer you choose – people might believe that there are larger differences, but in reality there aren’t that many differences and most people probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if you removed all visual clues to what was fitted to their car.

      3. @formulales The current rim size is fine with me too. In the current ‘tires that are designed to degrade rapidly’ era it’s impossible to have multiple competing tire manufacturers, because they will produce very fast tires that can easily complete the whole race distance, which is likely to produce static and boring races. Therefore I’m reasonably happy with the Pirelli tire monopoly.

    3. The major (performance) reason for bigger rims is to allow larger brakes.

      Having lower profile tyres, IIRC, can lead to slightly better cornering performance (due to less flex), but this is normally outweighed by loss of traction (as the tyres aren’t as good at absorbing bumps, forcing the work onto the suspension which has a larger moving/unsprung mass).

      So, from a pure performance point of view (which is the only one we should be thinking of for F1) as long as the brakes are up to the job the current rim size is correct.

      If you want good looking cars, look elsewhere.

    4. 13″ rims aren’t outdated – the relatively high profile of the rubber is deformed laterally by G-force when the car is entering high speed corner but when it’s speeding out of it, the tyre deforms back and literally throws the car back into the optimal line which allow them being much faster on the second half of the apex. Check the chase footage of faster cars in corners – they almost touch the tail of the slower car in front entering the corner but can’t do much when the car ahead is blasting through the second half of the apex.

  3. The COTD presents a false comparison imho. Explaining what an engine is is not the same thing as explaining what an Y250 vortice is. The first one is very broad and understandable term whereas the other one is extremely complex and specific feature of aerodynamics. In engine terms the correct comparison to Y250 vortice is something like homogeneous charge compression ignition, multi-modal fuel strategy or stratified charging. Not any of those things is important to understand how f1 works. Aerodynamics is downforce, engine is speed, tires is grip. If you want to know more listen to the commentators during the race or go search the internet.

    I think the comment misses the mark completely. The main thing about aerodynamics is that once you put it on the car everybody can see it. Everybody can try to analyse the shapes and airflows and there are many blogs in the internet who do very good job of that. And you can find different things in every car in every race. The engine is completely in the dark. Unless the teams tell you what they are doing there is no way to get any kind of information. And all the terms are complex and not understandable unless you know your engine engineering.

    F1 is the most technical sport on earth and none of the things are simple unless you simplify. But at the same time anything can be easy or hard to understand depending what terms you cherry pick for your comparisons.

    1. @socksolid

      The main thing about aerodynamics is that once you put it on the car everybody can see it. Everybody can try to analyse the shapes and airflows and there are many blogs in the internet who do very good job of that. And you can find different things in every car in every race. The engine is completely in the dark. Unless the teams tell you what they are doing there is no way to get any kind of information.

      The availability of information seems to be the core of that problem, yes. I don’t think any technology can be too complex for an F1-fan, quite the opposite, we love it. It feels like reading science-books as a kid, there’s this sense of wonder and awe as we dig through everything that helps us understand how this or that tech works.

      However, even with engines there was a time when information was far more readily available, paradoxically before the dawn of the information age. We knew when someone was developing a V8/V10/V12 with 60/72/90 degree banking, we knew when turbos were developed, we knew when the first sequential gearboxes were introduced.
      Lately, we didn’t know Merc was using split-turbo until mid-season. The teams have become ever more secretive, and as it is in their direct sportive interest to not let their competitors know what and how something in their PU works differently than in the others, us fans don’t know either.

      The solution is not about changing the engines, but for the FIA to publish what it finds inside the cars during scrutineering. As a side effect, this would also help closer competition, as strugglers could study a working concept.

      1. In the early 70s the engine was still exposed and you could see the heads, carbs, exhausts, gearboxes etc. There was little left to guess about.
        The current PUs are invisible, and even if they were exposed they are packaged in a way that hides most of its components.

        The Y250 vortex is only there because the central part of the front wing has to be neutral by regulation.
        The teams made the best of it, putting it to work to improve the airflow ahead of the mid section.
        It is a blessing and a vice, as when it drops away in the dirty air behind another car the whole aero package loses downforce. Just doing away with the neutral front wing section could bring back close cornering and improve overtaking.

  4. Well, 21″ custom spoked wagon wheels with about 2″ tall sidewalls tires seem to be road relevant to a lot of people. Maybe F1 should try those? I call that the Conestoga look.

    Of course, when I was 17 years old I had a 1966 Ford Mustang bought from my uncle. He had slotted chrome wheels with Michelin radial tires on it. I took those off and put US Indy Mags with fat Goodyears on it because they were cool and looked good. So, what do I know? LOL

  5. I’ve heard about how little F1 tyre compounds have in relation to road-car tyre compounds and I believe it (lifespan is a notable outcome of these differences). So I have trouble trying to understand how 18″ rims would suddenly make the tyres road relevant.

    Likewise, I’m pretty sure the construction is also not very road relevant – we hear about how F1 cars repeatedly braking at corner entry have shifted the tarmac and made those areas bumpy. I’m pretty sure we’ve not heard of those sort of forces being transferred onto the road in even the most heavily-trafficked highways/motorways (yes there’s tonnes of load, but most of it is pointed downwards).

    I thought the whole reason for tyre companies to participate in F1 is marketing, seeing as how Pirelli’s name and its rainbow spectrum of tyres are plastered around various parts of the track. And there’s no shame in just admitting marketing as the reason (if indeed it is the reason), or giving a bit more technical detail around how larger rims would make F1 tyre technology more road relevant.

    1. @phylyp havnt you notised roadbumps are more common at start and stop places like red lights? Its very clear on the roads where i live.

      1. @rethla – That’s interesting, I wasn’t aware and hadn’t noticed :-)

  6. On goes @LewisHamilton‘s @Twitter purge.

    I hope Lewis isn’t heading for a nervous breakdown.

  7. Ever have that friend who would start to date a girl/guy, but would get really nervous and try too hard? They end up being so self-conscious that it gets creepy, and they get dumped. But if they would’ve just relaxed and been themselves, it would’ve went well. That’s what F1 feels like to me right now. I have no idea why. What’s with the low self-confidence? People are worried that F1 isn’t relevant, that it’s not entertaining enough, taking every opportunity to say ‘pinnacle of motorsport’ over and over and over and over, like they’re trying go convince themselves of it….. Why don’t fans like it? Do they understand the engines? Are the tires okay? Is it because I spend too much time with my friends? Should I dress nicer? Am I coming across as too eager? Blah blah blah. Relax!! It’s just a sport!! But all of this self-conscious obsession is starting to make things awkward. I just want to kick back on the couch on the weekend with some beer and enjoy some time with my girlfriend. I mean…. watching the race.

  8. I don’t agree with Stefan Johansson about having tyre war and his proposal of bigger rim to gain longer braking distance is contradicted his preference of having more overtakes. Everyone would be ‘the last of late breaker’.
    But there was a great line that picture what’s wrong in the current formula perfectly:

    F1 has been nothing more than a glorified spec series since the introduction of the latest engine formula. The rules a written so tight that each team has an extremely narrow window to work within, both on the chassis and the engine, hence all the cars looking and sounding exactly the same.

    1. Short memory @ruliemaulana?
      The previous engine formula was ruled by equalisation! You won’t get it any ‘specier’.

  9. Adding power and cutting downforce with the current engines does not work. The main issue is that the current engines are so electronically controlled that every driver can get good run out of corner exits and maximise their straightline speeds. If it was just a ic engine in the car then this would be different as the drivers would need to control the engine power with their right foot when driving out from corners. But with hybrids the electronics do all the work. Adding more power just makes slipstreaming even less and less possible due to the way power is deployed in the hybrids.

    F1 braking distances are so short that even if you double them you still don’t have enough. The key for better racing is to get rid of the hybrids and electronics, make the cars lighter, give them tires that can be driven hard and take away some 30-50% of the downforce and remove drs. All this means the slipstreaming starts working again and we see actual overtakes and defending.

    Something like a V12 with 700-900hp would be so good for racing. No electronics, full horsepower at every gear at every corner. No computers to give always the right amount of power. Car could be 100kg lighter with the same safety equipment. Cars would be harder to drive, we would see more mistakes, driver skill would show through bad equipment better and it would be much harder to build dominating engines and hold the sport hostage as long as you want to keep winning. Instead of two engine manufacturers we could have 5 teams fighting for wins (mercedes, ferrari, red bull, mclaren, renault) with all the rest close behind. Engines would be cheaper so in a good day sauber could challenge for podiums because there is more money for the teams to build their own stuff instead of having to spend it on getting 2nd rate parts from someone else who has monopoly on performance.

    But mercedes and ferrari like it how it is so things won’t change.

    1. +1

      And manual clutches too. But, we’re not going back to the 70s. Does anyone know how to heel and toe anymore?

      1. @jimmi-cynic The current clutches are manual as well. The only difference is that it’s hand-operated rather than foot-operated like in most four-wheeled vehicles, but manual nevertheless.

        1. Yes…but not really. I meant a proper foot clutch and five…er…eight on the floor. In the old days the good drivers had to operate a foot clutch, grab the shift lever and steer with one hand all the while waving furiously at a competitor.

          1. @jimmi-cynic, you mention “going back to the 70’s”, but back then designers were trying to get rid of a foot clutch.

            Chapman tried to do so with the Lotus 76 back in 1974, which had an electronically controlled clutch (though the technology of the time meant that it was not hugely successful), whilst Forghieri had developed an experimental paddle shift system that was intended to be used for the 1980 season, but had to be cancelled because of a lack of funding – even though a fairly crude and overweight test hack fitted with that transmission was around two seconds a lap faster around Fiorano than a car with a conventional H pattern gearbox.

            As for socksolid’s post, it’s the same predictable rant about how everything will miraculously become competitive in this fantasy motorsport utopia that he keeps wishfully thinking of, even though such a thing has never happened before.

          2. “it’s the same predictable rant about how everything will miraculously become competitive in this fantasy motorsport utopia that he keeps wishfully thinking of, even though such a thing has never happened before.”

            +1000

            So many hark back to some “golden era”, when if you actually look at what things were like then you see that they are using their rose-tinted specs again. Note this does not only apply to F1.

    2. @socksolid ”The key for better racing is to get rid of the hybrids and electronics, make the cars lighter, give them tires that can be driven hard and take away some 30-50% of the downforce and remove drs. All this means the slipstreaming starts working again and we see actual overtakes and defending.”
      – They already have tyres that can be driven hard, and the amount of downforce isn’t the problem, but how it’s generated.

      1. It is not possible to generate downforce without creating dirty air (unless you put a fan on the car). The more downforce a car generates the more sensitive the aerodynamics are for dirty air (generalization) and the more downforce a car generates the more dirty air it creates. There is room for both reducing downforce levels and making the wing shapes such that they are less sensitive to dirty air (reduce the number of elements and increase minimum element size). And try to limit design in such way that the wings can create less dirty air.

        That being said this is a problem that will never go away. F1 cars will always generate lots and lots of downforce. Dirty air has been an issue ever since the first cars in ’67 had wings. Taking all the wings off the cars could be fun to watch but it would drop f1 below all other single seaters so it probably won’t ever happen.

        The 2017 cars cannot be driven hard regardless of what tires they have because they need to save so much fuel during the races. Every time you try to attack and try to overtake you need to spend more laps coasting to save fuel.

        1. Isn’t the term ‘dirty air’ actually usually applied to turbulent air only? Downforce is not proportional to it. You can still have high downforce with (partly) laminar flow coming off the wings presumably, rather the intricate vortex generators, etc.

          In summary, the term ‘dirty air’ is perhaps too generic?

        2. @socksolid Just stop being delusional and living in denial already.
          ”The more downforce a car generates the more sensitive the aerodynamics are for dirty air (generalization) and the more downforce a car generates the more dirty air it creates”
          – Like I stated ‘the amount of downforce isn’t the problem, but how it’s generated.’ The way to minimize the impact of the dirty air effect without reducing downforce is to generate most of it if not all via the floor rather than the wings. You’re just one of those who just can’t accept being in the wrong, i.e., who thinks they’re always right. Furthermore, here’s a quote from Paddy Lowe regarding the fuel-saving aspect:
          “While people complain about drivers having to fuel save in the race and so on, we’ve always had to fuel save because it’s never optimal to drive flat out and the degree to which we have to save fuel in the race is not excessive in my view. It’s just mildly more than it used to be and is becoming less because as we make the engine more efficient, we have to do less fuel saving in the race.”

          1. Paddy lowe says right there that the current cars need to save the most amount of fuel. But whatever. I’m delusional and in denial even if you just proved I’m right.

            Also you are wrong if you think downforce via ground effects is some kind of magic bullet. Ground effect is super sensitive to ground clearence and if you go too close to the car in front you lose little bit of downforce which lifts the car up which causes you to lose more downforce. Dirty air in general means more than just turbulent air and ground effect is not magical bullet.

        3. @socksolid ”Paddy lowe says right there that the current cars need to save the most amount of fuel.”
          – No, He doesn’t directly imply that.

          If most of the downforce was generated via the floor/underbody of the car rather than wings then following another car closely wouldn’t be as hard as it is with the current method of producing it as the former method is less sensitive to the dirty air of another car than the latter, i.e., the way of generating most of the DF via the underbody is less dependent on clean air than the wings, so that’s why many, not only me, but many others as well have pointed out towards underbody/floor dominated DF (GE-style, but not necessarily to the same extent as in the distant past) in favor of wing-dominant DF.

          1. F1 cars already generate about half of their total downforce from the floor.

            Also because you are not providing the source of that quote I just have to read it in its own context:
            “While people complain about drivers having to fuel save in the race and so on, we’ve always had to fuel save because it’s never optimal to drive flat out and the degree to which we have to save fuel in the race is not excessive in my view. It’s just mildly more than it used to be and is becoming less because as we make the engine more efficient, we have to do less fuel saving in the race.”

            “It’s just mildly more than it used to be”. Compared to 2016, 2013, 2005, 1984?

            Here’s opinion from Coulthard:
            http://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/33060280
            So worse than that, according to your own quotes…

        4. The 2017 cars cannot be driven hard regardless of what tires they have because they need to save so much fuel during the races. Every time you try to attack and try to overtake you need to spend more laps coasting to save fuel.

          You do realise that most of the cars aren’t “brimmed” for most of the races, don’t you?

          They start with less fuel than they need, because this results in a faster overall race pace. This has been the case for a long time, since looong before the current engine formula.

    3. If I remember correctly, Renault were actively insisting for these turbo engines to continue with their F1 programme. I guess they must be happy too.

    4. Downforce is a necessity because of the open wheels used by F1 cars. If you put a rotating cylinder into a moving stream of air then you will get a force generated that is perpendicular to the flow of air. So an open wheel will generate lift as the vehicle it is on moves along the road. Aerofoils and ground effects are the currently used techniques used to counter the lift generated by the wheels, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear there are techniques or ways that would reduce the lift itself, thereby reducing the need for aerofoils and so reducing the dirty air behind the car.

      1. Only reason f1 cars have wings is because more downforce means faster lap time 95% of the time. If the rules banned wings and floors and all other downforce generating parts then F1 would run just fine. The cars would suffer from aerodynamic lift which would be bad from purely technical perspective but that is how they raced half a century before wings. Lift and downforce are numbers. You can have little or lot of it.

        F1 car does not “need” downforce. But it is not really good idea to take all of it away either.

        1. Downforce aint a problem but the undersized engines are.

          1. @rethla these ‘undersized’ engines are some of the most powerful in f1’s history with mercedes talking about there 2018 engine producing over 1,000bhp.

            with regards to downforce and wings…. if you took the downforce/wings away f1 would immediately go from the fastest category in the world to one of the slowest and i would not want to see that. only way i would be for them removing the downforce/wings is if they could guarantee performance stayed at around current levels because the speed and cornering performance of an f1 car is a big part of why i care more about f1 than the many other series around.

        2. Here is a video showing a man lifting with one hand a 40 pound wheel on the end of a pipe rotating at 2,500 RPM. A standard F1 wheel is rotating at 2,500 RPM at 315 km/h. The wheel in this video is much thinner than the standard F1 wheels, so the lift generated on an F1 car will be greater. I don’t know if the lift generated is strong enough to lift an F1 car.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRPC7a_AcQo

          1. Hey Stephen, actually there is no lift generated by the spinning wheel, what is happening is that the torque on the shaft that would be applied to balance it when the wheel isn’t spinning is no longer necessary as the precession from the rotation of the spinning wheel about the axis (holder’s body) balances the usual torque necessary to balance the shaft. The wheel, spinning or not, weighs exactly the same. Notice that the demonstrator initially rotates the spinning wheel about his axis, causing the prescession. The force needed to boost it over the head is exactly the same, spinning or not, it’s just easier to do as the balancing torque on the handle is no longer needed. The faster the initial rotation about the demonstrator’s axis the more balance torque precession will be generated lifting the wheel higher; slower and it would not be possible to lift it overhead. So no lift is generated by a spinning F1 wheel, except possibly by some aero forces. Also note that the spinning wheel of an F1 car is NOT precessing, it’s going straight ahead.

        3. “If the rules banned wings and floors and all other downforce generating parts then F1 would run just fine.”

          I for one don’t want to see laptimes 10-15 seconds slower than it currently is. I’m still recovering from the atrocity that was 2014, where the cars were nearly as slow as GP2.

          This would be a fine way to rid F1 of all of its fans.

  10. I’ve seen several post here over the last couple of days including the COTD of people simplying the power units and pretending that a large fraction of the fans understand them fully or sufficiently. I don’t think that is the case at all – I would go as far as saying that the very people who write these statements aren’t sufficiently knowledgeable on these units to fully grasp what’s going on. Otherwise they would not underrate the complexity.

    That said, I don’t think complexity and the fans in-depth understanding is the main issue to worry about anyway. It’s the implications of the current regulations that are the main issue: Uncompetitiveness of two of the PU manufacturers, costs, penalties and lack of thrill (sound). Personally I think if the issue of competitiveness would be solved, most people would be happy.

    1. Agreed. Even teams who work with them, highlight that they’re too complex.

  11. I fail to see the ‘looks’ argument when it comes to the wheels, the cars look ridiculous with those large rims, like those old wagons you see in western movies.

  12. Massa left on such a high that Williams thought they would be letting him down by keeping him in their mediocre car for another season so were deliberately reticent about his 2018 prospects so he could retire on his own terms at his peak. Or something.

    Come on Smedley, who are you kidding….

  13. Tell me about it Rob.

    Seeing Massa win another grand prix would have been amazing.

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