Formula 1 Malaysia 2013

Don't Copy From This Blog...

This was a messy race. With the wet track at the start, and rapidly changing conditions, it was a slightly random result. There wasn't too much drama at this race, and it was a boring race to watch. With the faster degrading Pirelli tyres, pit stops decide the outcome of the race, and there is less of wheel to wheel battle.

The only wheel to wheel battle
we saw was that of Vettel and Webber for the lead of the race. Against team orders to hold position, Vettel attacked Webber, in a affair which will now be called "Multi 21-gate". Multi 21 refers to the order given to Vettel to hold position. Hamilton and Rosberg too fought it out for 3rd place, and it didn't end well. Hamilton ended up using too much fuel, and in the closing stages of the race he was coasting in 3rd. Rosberg meanwhile was 4th, and right behind Hamilton. Rosberg was also told to hold position, and after a lengthy debate on the radio, he complied.This meant that no one on the podium was happy. It was pretty tense. Team orders had decided the result, and this not only ruins the race for the fans, but also for the team-mates of the drivers who had benefitted. There will be a tense atmosphere at Red Bull and Mercedes for days to come.

Lotus had a terrible race, with Grosjean finishing ahead of Raikkonen in 6th and 7th respectively. Raikkonen had a nasty fight with Hulkenberg of Sauber, with the two touching. Hulkenberg barely escaping a penalty, finished 8th. Perez finished 9th for McLaren, while Jenson Button retired while en route to a podium finish. Both the Force India's retired on safety grounds after a problem with the wheel nuts. Williams had a horrid weekend, with Maldonado retiring due to a KERS issue. But Valteri Bottas hasn't showed any of the prodigious pace that was seen last year in the free practice sessions. But the car could be at fault.

Jules Bianchi is the best driver on the grid. He drove to the chequered flag in 13th, while his team-mate finished 16th. He was superb. Now Ferrari will probably snap him up next year to replace Massa. He's quicker than any of the rookies, or even the more established drivers. World Champion material. If he had been driving the Force India, he would've been a threat to any of the front running teams for sure.

Read More

Formula 1 2013 Barcelona Test Summary

Don't Copy From This Blog...

This was a very interesting test session. There is absolutely nothing conclusive that can be derived from the test apart from the fact that the top teams are still fast, and the slow teams are still slow.

@Sutton Images

Here are the pointers, as usual.

• Marussia replaced Luiz Razia with Jules Bianchi as Luiz Razia's sponsors didn't pay up. Jules Bianchi is about a second faster than Max Chilton, so this will not be a fun year for the englishman.
• Caterham did nothing interesting, apart from proving James Allison right by removing their illegal exhaust system.
• Torro Rosso, again nothing eventful. It's got average pace. Reliable.
• Force India confirmed Adrain Sutil as their second driver, hence Jules Bianchi went to Marussia. Smart move, as they get to keep Mercedes engine, and McLaren technical support. Bulletproof car, no issues, fast as well.
• Sauber has a fast car, but their reliability wasn't impressive as they suffered small technical glitches during race simulations. Esteban racked up the highest mileage of any driver.
• Williams has a very good car as well, and Bottas thinks they will challenge the front-runners. It's a bit optimistic, but with a Finn in the cockpit, anything can happen.
• Ferrari also has a fast car, the only glitch being that the front wheel fell off once. Ferrari claim it's no biggie. Oh well.
• Lotus has a good car, but concentrated on getting their rear wing stalling device working properly. Kimi had the least running of any driver, with gearbox issues, and food poisoning. He wasn't complaining though. They did a lot of sandbagging. It's a quick car, but their real strength lies in race distance pace, which was impressive. Romain looks a different man. He's much more mature. He will have a good year by the looks of it. 
• McLaren was hard to judge, as they took a lot of time to make setup changes. They're the only team to have a completely new car. Others have simply evolved their 2012 designs. It's definitely very quick, one of the fastest. Reliable as well. They claim to have some trouble understanding the tyres. They said that many times, repeatedly. Something fishy.
• Mercedes set the fastest time of the test, but they did it on a low fuel run, so it's hard to compare with the other teams. Their race simulation timings weren't that impressive though. Very quick in wet conditions though.
• Red Bull rewrote the rules of sandbagging at this test. It's by far the quickest car, and with the most downforce. Good race distance pace as well. But they deliberately hid the cars true pace, and would constantly try to hide their car from photographers. Vettel was frustrated by the lack of low fuel runs, but the team was adamant about hiding their true potential.

Read More

Mercedes CLS Shooting Brake

Don't Copy From This Blog...

The Mercedes Benz CLS was simply amazing to look at.

The Mercedes Benz CLS Shooting Brake is even better to look at. It is simply jaw-dropping. This is probably the best looking wagon ever. Makes practicality look incredibly sexy. And the AMG version just makes it better, with 518 bhp.

Read More

Kim Dotcom and Kimi on the Nurburgring.

Don't Copy From This Blog...

A video uploaded on Youtube is proof that fat men are fun. Kim Dotcom, with $175 million and a lot of good cars visited the Nurburgring in January before he got arrested by the FBI for copyright issues related to Megaupload.com, which is, quite frankly silly. Everyone downloads 'copyrighted' stuff off the internet. Up-to and even, I'm willing to wager, Barrack Obama. So why arrest the guy who makes it all possible?

So in January, he, and I quote, "The production involved 30 cameras, 100+ crew, 2 helicopters, 2 camera cars and one fixed wing aircraft." to shoot a dream video of him racing around the Nurburgring with his mate Finn Batato, and Kimi Raikkonen with three(!) modified Mercedes Benz AMG CLK DTM's. The CLK DTM's are rare and reportedly only 200 or so were made. The modification is what appears to be nitrous injection. So a 582bhp 'standard' CLK DTM with nitrous injection. And rear wheel drive. With tires that look suspiciously thin. Around the Nurburgring. Yeah, you definitely need F1 drivers to handle that. But then Kim is a "street racing legend".

Kim wanted "I used to play Forza and Need for Speed on Xbox Live. Those games inspired me to create a video that looks like the replay of a perfect lap on the Ring. I know it isn't perfect, but I tried." and he has somewhat achieved that videography. It's an epic video and is a perfect example of what rich men should do with their money and free time. This video was made for only for the fun in making it. "I DID NOT WIN against Kimi. I never could. We had to remove the air from his tires to keep up. And even then it was impossible :-)" He was just mucking about, having a good time, and in the end he even got a great video out of it! This is exactly what Bruce Wayne should be doing instead of pretending to be a superhero. The cars were named "GOOD"[Kimi Raikkonen], "AND"[Finn Batato], and "EVIL"[Kim Dotcom]! Ha! Kim even calls himself a 'street racing legend'. Whether its true or not, I have no idea, but he sure is a 'playboy legend'. The video wasn't even the final edit! The final edit is on the hands of the FBI. This video is a testament to the CLK DTM and the Nurburgring, but most important of all, it proves that Kim Dotcom sure as hell knows how to have fun!

Read More

Overtaking in racing; hatke style.

Don't Copy From This Blog...

Racing in essence, is all about overtaking the guy ahead of you. And some pit-stop strategy. With a dash of technical wizardry. Like the F-duct on the Mercedes F1 2012 car. Well played.

However, after some lemonade and light thinking, I hit upon two new ways to overtake.





For the DTM drivers. Especially for those guys who have exhausts on the side of the car. DTM cars run V8's which heavily tuned and undergo a lot of stress. Often the engines de-stress by throwing out a bit of fire from the exhausts, on a trailing throttle or a sudden downshift. Actually it is quite a lot of fire. So why don't the cars with exhausts on the side, instead of having them at the back of the car, burn the flipping tyres of their opponents right off? I think it's quite possible if you're persistent. With good planning I think it's possible to set fire to those super-soft tyres in a few laps or so?

Fire!!!

Flamethrower.

Right. Now F1. Why can't the teams have alliances and stuff. Like, for example, "lets all screw Schumacher or some other poor sod everyone happens to hate at that moment" by overtaking him with planned teamwork. Like, a back marker such as Massa, and a front runner like Sergio Perez, or Kimi Raikkonen can overtake, let's say Webber by blocking him on the left and the right on the pit straight and then shutting the door on him before the first corner. Drivers should have the capability to radio each other mid race, plan their moves and overtake other drivers. There will be copiously epic amounts of overtaking, and not only because of the DRS activation nonsense which is extremely partial to the front runners. Seeing Narain Karthikeyan pulling a move on Vettel would be epic, and there'd just be so much unpredictability in the racing. There wouldn't be any Rosberg style pole-to-victory nonsense like in China anymore. Creativity and drifting will you earn you extra points. Of course, for proper racing fans there could be a ban on this stuff, say in circuits such as Spa and Monza. But nearly everywhere else, Kobayashi could very well get more points than the race winner even if he finishes outside the top 10 because of his drifting.

Something like this. Massa shutting the door on Webber while Alonso takes advantage. There could be inter-team overtaking as well.

What say Bernie? 

Read More