Lando Norris, McLaren, Circuit of the Americas, 2018

Norris: I studied Alonso and Vandoorne’s differences

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In the round-up: Lando Norris says he learned a lot from studying McLaren’s drivers closely this year ahead of his 2019 Formula 1 debut.

What they say

Norris was asked what he’d learned from Fernando Alonso while at McLaren this year:

I rate him as a very good driver. I raced with him at Daytona, I’ve watched him race obviously in all these Formula 1 races. We’ve done a lot of things together, we get along really well.

He’s a really nice guy and I think it’s good for me to see how much effort, how much work he puts into every race weekend. What things he does differently to Stoffel and Stoffel does differently to Fernando and work out all the good things about any driver. So there’s a lot of things I’ve learned from Fernando.

I got to know him at a much earlier point in my career than any other driver. [I’ve seen] what he does, how he acts, how he does life. He’s the first guy I’ve always looked up to within Formula 1, mainly because of joining McLaren and getting to know him a bit more.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Should F1 copy NASCAR by limiting how much data teams can use, or would a different change make the championship more competitive?

Make any data gathered public to all teams. Pure data in itself should not reveal any intellectual property or designs (but can offer hints), and offers the tantalising prospect that any data a team deems worthy of gathering can be picked apart by a competitor.
@Phylyp

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On this day in F1

  • Born today in 1924: Roberto Mieres, a Nico Hulkenberg of his time who scored three fourth-place finishes in F1 but never made it onto the podium.

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...

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24 comments on “Norris: I studied Alonso and Vandoorne’s differences”

  1. Smedley’s chat on Beyond the Grid was superb. Actually, all of Beyond the Grid episodes are superb but Rob was probably my favourite subject alongside Horner and Kubica.

  2. Thank you for the CotD, Keith!

    1. must be silly season :P

      Congratulations, @phylyp.

      1. @coldfly – it is the winter of our discontent :-)

    2. just went into the forum thread about suggestion for next season and wrote down: “don’t listen to @phylyp

      1. @johnmilk – have no fear, no one listens to me.

        1. I do, but probably that makes it worse

  3. Looking forward to seeing Lando and Sainz in the orange cars next year.

    Its a strong line-up, ironically considering that McLaren is the only team to field two drivers without a podium finish next season!

    1. McLaren is the only team to field two drivers without a podium finish next season!

      Was not expecting a fact like that; great find. @gitanes

    2. does that mean its a strong line-up? I think its a poor lineup, I don’t see Norris doing better than Vandoorne, and I don’t see Sainz doing better than Alonso. Its quite possibly the weakest lineup on the grid if the car is a dud like this year. Now if they were both driving a top of midfield Force India, I believe they would be a better pairing than Stroll/Perez

      1. Don’t see why Norris can’t do better than Vandoorne, the bar was hardly raised.

        What should be a worry for McLaren is Sainz, while Norris is an unknown quantity in F1, Sainz only managed to fair well against Kvyat, after RBR destroyed the guy mentally. Every time there was opposition on the other seat he looked average at best.

        I agree it is a poor lineup though, not because of Norris, which could turn out to be pretty good, but because Sainz doesn’t give a good reference point, especially being the “senior” one

  4. So, did Norris say anything specific about the differences between Alonso and Vandoorne? It sounds like a generic soundbite to me.

    Re: COTD @phylyp
    What would the public data, exactly, be? Would it be regarding “spec” components, such as tires (wear, lifespan, grip levels, temperatures, etc.) and FIA mandated tests like crash tests, or any data captured by (presumably) team-owned devices like aero rakes?

    Having access to all data won’t exactly help FWONK’s new mandate of reducing the costs of competition, as I’d expect teams to end up hiring more data analysts to sift through the additional information and more engineers to make sense of the numbers.

    1. @sundark – I was thinking of data on not just spec parts, but also team-specific parts. If a team puts a sensor on the car, its data is up for grabs. So a team that runs an aero rake – as you said – or a load sensor on their wings, will have that data available to others.

      In very simplistic terms, it is like how pit/car team radio is open – which means that comms in one team are picked up by competitors for their advantage.

      Yes, I agree that this will run counter to the goal of reducing costs, but I think that might be mitigated to an (albeit small) extent:
      a) it will force teams to rethink if they need as many sensors, and whether that gives up a competitive advantage (e.g. should they tweak a new front wing even more, or run the risk of revealing its performance?)
      b) the rich teams will probably increase their headcounts to keep tabs on their competitors, but the poorer teams might be selective in what data they choose to investigate – maybe the floor, maybe the front wing, or just the suspension sensors, and only in a period leading up to a specific development.

      It would be interesting to see if this data can also be meaningfully visualized for us viewers (via F1 TV overlays, or the app), given FOM are keen on growing this area.

      1. @phylyp Interesting idea, but firstly, what data should be shared? Is that include drivers responses (throttle, braking, turning), engine performance (rpm, energy recovery, setting) every milliseconds?

        Secondly, some article on how Mercedes make use of big data back then reveal that raw unformatted data from one week of F1 race could pile up to one terabyte. One full page requires about 2 KB, 500 pages equal 1 thick book, so 1 Terabyte data is about 1 million thick books. That’s why Mercedes didn’t like the idea of banning mission control room. They had been invest heavily in that area.

        So yes, processing that numbers would make other spend a lot more money to process them too. With everyone had access of other team data, the winner is still the one that already had the proper infrastructure and personel.

        1. what data should be shared? Is that include drivers responses

          @ruliemaulana – Good distinction. I’d think it should be limited to only car data (chassis/engine), and the driver data should remain private to the team (i.e. driver inputs).

          I agree that 1 TB of data is large, but crunching it is not insurmountable (I work in a related field). I think part of Mercedes’ set up is to process data in real-time, which would not be economically feasible for most teams. But an offline crunching of the data can still benefit a team. More so, with raw data in hand, the “poorer” teams can prioritize what they want to look at – e.g. Force India might look at RBR’s data in the corners, and analyse data with a coarser granularity (e.g. RBR might gather 10 data points per second, FI might use just two).

  5. Norris has interesting points there and an interesting COTD as well.
    – That image of a Delorean with Horner dressed as Marty Mcfly and Newey as Doc Brown, though. I didn’t see that coming.

  6. I think mentality played a part in Vandoorne’s struggles against Alonso. He seemed psychologically destroyed after the first few races, and especially so once it became clear McLaren was looking at the option of replacing him for the last races of 2018, let alone 2019. Vandoorne just never struck me as someone who was mentally capable of going up and challenging Alonso. Similar to Kvyat in some ways. Kvyat was better than Sainz in the junior formulas, and despite being younger, beat him to the GP3 title. But when they faced each other in F1, Kvyat seemed lost at times, and was comprehensively outclassed in races.

    1. @mashiat I think kvyat suffered from making mistakes at the wrong time. if he’d had a great weekend in russia in 2016 I don’t think red bull would have been so ready to ditch him mid-season, but they obviously knew verstappen was quite special so they were looking for any excuse. his whole career could have been better managed and the higher-ups at redbull (I’m guessing mainly marko) were certainly not doing it. he’s been treated as expendable (as have many on red bull program) at every turn and it is pretty remarkable that he’s back in the fold now. his 2015 season was ok (he actually outscored ricciardo, though he was generally performing at a lower level) but he was definitely promoted too early.

      people often laud the red bull junior program, but there is a very high failure rate. in F1 I think vettel and ricciardo are the only unqualified success stories (I don’t count verstappen because he wasn’t really in it until he joined toro rosso). sainz is a puzzler – currently I would say he’s no better than vergne – and indeed he’s completely out of the redbull scene now (perhaps a win for him!).

      1. The Red Bull junior program is great. Problem is they had to much talent on the same moment in time and to little places to grow further. So the only thing they could do is place those talents in different categories. Some burned their ships like Verne but some did it smarter and kept the lines open. With success i may add!

        1. I think one of Red Bull’s problems now is that other teams have followed suit with their driver academy model, meaning there is less talent for them to hoover up from the lower categories. You would certainly have thought that the likes of Ocon, Norris and Leclerc would have been Red Bull junior drivers, or at least on their radar, had the other teams not pickup those drivers up at such a young age. And now they’re left with a situation where Ticktum is maybe their only proven junior who is capable of stepping up soon enough. And even then I’m still not fully convinced by Ticktum’s ability to become an elite in F1.

      2. @frood19 Kvyat’s timing certainly didn’t help. I think more than anything, his problem was a storm emerging in the form of Verstappen, who was clearly Red Bull’s new golden boy. But even despite that, his performances were not necessarily of the calibre Red Bull were looking for. He did well to get some results, but on pure pace, he wasn’t really on par with Ricciardo. And this was a Ricciardo who himself admitted wasn’t performing at his best in 2015 due to being disappointed with the fact that he wasn’t fighting for the title like he expected.

    2. 1) SAI is the younger one, albeit with just a little more than 4 months.
      2) While KVY did beat SAI as teammates to the GP3 title, SAI beat KVY 3 times as teammates in Formula BMW Europe, Eurocup F Renault 2.0 and FRen 2.0 Northern European Cup.
      3) They had a draw in FBMW Pacific (only about half a championship) and FREN UK Winter Series (in the two races they raced each other). Both, again, as teammates.

      So I wouldn’t say “Kvyat was better than Sainz in the junior formulas (..)”.

  7. Lando Norris on Alonso, “I rate him as a very good driver.”

    LOL, understatement of the millennium. Alonso is a legend, he’s a bit better than “a very good driver”.

  8. I just hope Lando hasn’t started digging his hole…

Comments are closed.