Robert Kubica, Williams, Bahrain International Circuit

Kubica pleased by return of “big racer” Head to Williams

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In the round-up: Robert Kubica backs Williams’ decision to bring back long-term designer Patrick Head in a consultancy role.

What they say

I don’t know exactly what will be amount of Patrick’s presence. I know he will be kind of consulting.

For sure he’s a big racer so I assume if he took this job for us or this role for sure he will not be the one who counts the hours and says ‘no, no, this is my hours, I’m not going to do more than whatever it is’.

He did a massive amount, good job with the team, everybody has huge respect, in the factory and in here. So I think he can give only positive input. Apart [from] technical knowledge and everything as a person he can be very strong input to our team, and valuable.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Does Daniel Ricciardo’s experience at Renault show how difficult it is to change teams?

It was always going to be difficult for Ricciardo to “step down” into the Renault. He’ll get there though, he is good enough to get the job done.

I think us fans underestimate just how different the cars are from team to team, so these transitions are tougher than we give the drivers credit for. Quite a few of the drivers who changed teams this season are struggling relative to their team mates, the standout exception to this being Charles Leclerc.
@Geemac

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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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37 comments on “Kubica pleased by return of “big racer” Head to Williams”

  1. Obviously Prost, Forghieri and I are all suffering the sort of age related delusions, don’t listen to us, let the computers decide.

    1. Sigh.. *the SAME sort of age……..

      1. Difficulty expressing speech can also be age-related :)

        1. Just another senior moment, I never made mistakes in my youth.

          1. It can also cause memory loss :)

      2. I like it as ……the SAME SANE sort of age.

    2. What did Prost say to upset you to call him delusional? He said nothing delusional but rather said something a lot of people will agree with

      1. @kpcart, When I say it I’m told I’m just a deluded old timer looking through rose tinted specs. Perhaps those people are the ones that are deluded, not me and Prost, it’s hard for my tired old brain to decide who to believe.

      2. Self-mocking sarcasm should be easy to spot, @kpcart.

  2. Prost has been screaming for more mechanical grip since the 80’s, but as long as guys like Brawn are running the show it isn’t going to happen. They know what to do, but have yet to do anything to fix the aero dependency.

    1. @darryn Completely untrue and unfair comment. Since Liberty took over that is a huge amount of the work they have been doing. They can’t be blamed for having to wait for contracts to run out that they could not affect, and at the same time for giving the teams time to consult and negotiate for the new era of 2021, which is the soonest any entitiy that was going to take over from BE would have been able to affect things. It is not Liberty’s fault that they inherited cars meant to inhibit close racing. And we’ve seen what they have in store for 2021.

  3. I agree with COTD, although I feel I have to digress a tiny bit from it: what RIC is experiencing right now is exactly the kind of step down VET went through at 2014, whereas LEC is experiencing the exact kind of step up RIC had back then.
    Will RIC ever catch a break if he end up with a season as bad as that one?

    1. @niefer I think the more interesting parallel of VET/RIC in 2014 is whether Vettel is going to be shown up by a young challenger again in 2019, perform poorly through the season, and then move to another team.

      It’s only two races in, so too early to say, but worth considering.

      1. I think he will just retire, if young gun seriously outperforms him over a season.

    2. I don’t agree with it for two reasons. First we are on race 2, nothing conclusive can be taken from that sort of sample. And then there are only 3 drivers in comparable situations, Ricciardo, Gasly and Leclerc. So neither one of them is a standout situation for me. By mid season we will have a better of idea regarding that particular situation

      Sorry @geemac, this must be the first time I disagree with you if I think about it

      1. Well @johnmilk, Kimi seems to cope reasonably well with his Step down

        1. @mrboerns definitely he is being showing some good performances, but his teammate is new to the team as well. So not comparable

          He does seem as though he found himself in a place where he enjoys racing. Ferrari doesn’t have a continuous supply of ice-cream surely

          1. Aaah i thought we were focusing on the step up/ step down/ better car/ worse car aspect here

  4. I enjoyed listening to that RBR video.

    1. robinsonf1 (@)
      10th April 2019, 9:25

      @coldfly

      I was just thinking that. I was never against the V6 turbo hybrids but hearing that V8 really makes me miss that classic F1 sound! Bring back the noise!!

      1. @robinsonf1

        hearing that V8

        that classic F1 sound

        Understandable, since you’ve only started following F1 in 2008. But the V8 were never ‘classic’, they were essentially the neutered, watered-down and frozen (in terms of development) descendants of the V10 engines that used to be the predominant engine layout from 1989 to 2005. And I always thought they sounded horrible compared to their ancestors. Audibly underpowered, glitchy, and worst of all, rev-limited. The older V10s could be revved up to 21,000 rpm or more, and there was no hard limit for that. The V8s were capped at 18,000 rpm, and cars were bouncing off the limiter all the time, making them sound even worse and making slipstream overtakes much more difficult if the overtaking driver’s gear was too short.
        I never missed these misbegotten engines for a second.

        1. Magnus Rubensson (@)
          10th April 2019, 15:27

          Although the Cosworth V8’s were sort of classic if you go even further back to the late 60s and 70s.
          Honourable mention to the BRM V16 from 1950 – absolutely ear splitting! :)

          1. Mark in Florida
            11th April 2019, 2:19

            @magnusrubensson Yes that BRM V16 will make the hair of your neck stand up! I used to have that engine sound as it ran at Donnington as a cell phone ringer. That motor made you feel an emotion not like the hybrids do now.

        2. robinsonf1 (@)
          10th April 2019, 16:28

          Aye the V10s were nice indeed. But anything with a proper ‘NEEEOOOOWWW’ will do for me ;)

      2. This is how I feel when they crank up that ’98 Tyrrell 2-seater!

  5. I agree with the COTD but disagree with Prost to an extent.

    I immediately recognized the Juan-Pablo Montoya references on the helmet. Nice to see those colors back even if only for a single race.

    Isn’t Matteo Bonciani at FIA anymore? I’ve been wondering that as I didn’t see him either in Australia or Bahrain unless he somehow managed to stay away from the cameras.

  6. robinsonf1 (@)
    10th April 2019, 9:41

    I wonder how much this “1000th F1 race” stuff is going to get at @kiethcollantine knowing how much of a stat man he is.

    1. robinsonf1 (@)
      10th April 2019, 9:43

      **@keithcollantine (sorry spelt it wrong)

  7. Is Russel paying tribute to Montoya?

    1. quite possibly the ugliest Helmet in 1000 Grands Prix

    2. scrap that, i repressed the Helmets Red Bull started pouring on us some years later with the Liuzzis and Speeds and all the other nonames in Toro Rosso.

      1. and I assume you are repressing pretty much every helmet that is on the grid currently right?
        Even Vettel managed to spoil a simple design with weird colours and fluorescent horses

        1. it is 1999, right? riight???

          1. sure, why not?

          2. I sure hope Ferrari allow Irvine to race Schuey

          3. want to bet that Eddie finishes ahead of him in the championship?

  8. Prost could be somewhat right but I think the biggest issue f1 has is the constant talk about road relevance. I think there is some sort of misconception about how more money transforms a motorsports. No matter how tightly you regulate the technical side of the sport more money will always find more ways to get spent. Look at nascar. Even if their 5.9 liter pushrod engines are pretty ancient compared to modern engines it still takes very high level of technology to get 800hp at 9000rpm without failing out of those engines. Not to mention the science that goes into aerodynamics and chassis design even if those have been heavily regulated nowadays. But even with their limited rules nascar teams used like 4 different cars per season just to get the aero perfect for different tracks. Money will always find a way to get spent.

    Tech level of a sport is not decided by how technically complex the cars are. The tech level is decided by the amount of money in the sport. You can create a racing series where the car shape is just a cube with 50cc moped motor and if it grows into multibillion dollar motorsports you will have multibillion dollar tech programs to make the cars. The teams at the front will have the cubes with the most sharpest edges and flattest sides and they spend billions inventing new tech to make the cubest cubes.

    And I think here lies the problem. Many people see that only way f1 can be road relevant is to make the cars road relevant. Which is wrong. It is not about the cars but how they are designed and made. That right there should be the road relevance part. Not the cars but how they are made. Everybody knows the end game for road relevant f1 is computer driven electric cars. That is how the road cars will be in near future and that is what the manufacturers will eventually push in f1. It is a dead end.

    The hybrids were already a step in the wrong direction which is proved by its failures at all fronts. High cost, manufacturer domination on-track and off-track, fake greenness with oil burning, locked down competiveness levels and heavy cars which has increased the reliance on downforce to unforeseen levels. It is super rare that f1 would go to such lengths to increase the downforce as it did for 2017. Every single time before that the goal was to reduce corner speeds and engine power. But because the hybrids were so slow f1 went all-in to pander the manufacturers to make the cars faster. More than doubled the downforce, massive increase in tire size.

    Nowadays we talk about 1500hp engines because the cars “need to be faster”. Put a 100kg lighter engine into the car and you can halven the downforce levels and you can still put on grooved tires and match the current lap times. That’s how the lap records were done. Fuel saving is not succesful formula for f1. Road relevance should be about how the cars are made. But for some reason it has been dumbed down into this idea of taking existing road car tech and putting it into f1 car and then bastardizing it into total misrepresentation of the original ideas just for marketing slogans. “Fuel ecficient” when the cars burn more oil than a tractor during a race. And then adding more downforce and bigger tires to try to offset the weight penalty that is also called the hybrid power unit. It is just another dead end. The more heavier engines f1 keeps putting into the cars the more downforce and bigger tires it needs to get that lap time penalty back.

    That’s why prost is wrong. F1 has so much money that it is impossible to reduce the tech levels with any kind of rules. Only rules that can reduce the tech and increase the ingenuity is by limiting the money. Not the tech because in the end money is technology. And f1 is going the opposite direction. Which is a dead end. Maybe the hybrid engines would work if you had an engine development cost cap. A lot has been said about cost caps for teams but weirdly absent from this discussion is cost caps for engine manufacturers. Probably because ferrari and mercedes don’t want anyone else to enter into f1. They have spent billions of dollars of getting that advantage and they’ll never give it away. They love it when they have total control of the sport because it allows them to push more and more ridiculous ideas and take f1 step by step towards its road relevant destination. Which is a dead end.

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