MJSpeed

That's an ETERNITY in F1! Keep in mind he caught up with Button and Massa (who, if you assume had a fully functioning car, had a hard time passing Button).

No prior to that he had set a couple of fastest laps of the race, (new tires on lower fuel) but shows he was pushing from way before that. Fact is he caught Button up from 4-5 seconds behind.

Minor? Really? Last time I checked no clutch/gearbox issues are not minor.

So you do agree with the original post by 9.5 Degrees.
Just fine? What? How the heck would you know? Please post the telemetry print outs that you're obviously reading from.

Here's a quote from Stefano Domenicali:
"Fernando drove an amazing race, given that right from the formation lap, he had a problem going through the gears. To drive under these conditions is impressive and he was able to stay in the fight for points right to the end."
That's one technique, but as you say it's not optimum which translates to slower. Making his drive evenmoreso amazing!

Again so you do agree with 9.5 Degrees, Stefano Domenicali and me; in that Alonso was amazing in defeat.

He not only caught up with him but had just made an attempt at passing him when his motor imploded.

Where are you getting your information from? Here is a quote from Alonso himself:

“This was a very difficult weekend. We made a big mistake in yesterday’s qualifying and today in the race, I had to retire with an engine problem. My race was an uphill climb from the start: I found I had a problem with the gearbox right from the start and I had to drive without a clutch for practically the whole race. Trying to look on the positive side, at least the engine failure only cost me two points: it would have been much worse if I had been in the lead! Seeing what happened in the previous days, it made sense to expect rain and so we made the first stint as long as possible, but unfortunately, it did not happen. Today, we gave Red Bull a little gift: if we had qualified in a normal fashion then we would certainly have given them a hard time. I am not worried about the engine failure, as our engineers have enough experience and ability to resolve this situation. Given everything that happened, we can be proud of what we managed to do in the race and we can look forward with confidence to the next Grand Prix, which we will be trying to win.”
Fernando Alonso

Oh and one other thing, it was the motor that gave up the fight not the gearbox.

My993C2

Interesting.

I must have been watching a different race than everyone else (maybe staying awake from 2 am to 4 am my local time caused me to be delusional).
In my sleep deprived state I could have sworn I saw a different result than everyone else. I thought I saw ...

1st Place: S. Vettel (RBR)
2nd Place: M. Webber (RBR)
3rd Place: N. Rosberg (Mercedes) hardly a "has been" finish.

Now watching the race on TV all I got from TSN (or should I say the BBC) as well as Speed TV was footage of pretty much Lewis Hamilton, Lewis Hamilton, Lewis Hamilton followed by more Lewis Hamilton and then no shortage of Jenson Button and tons of Alonso and Massa footage. Did I miss something here? I know the TV coverage is bias towards McLaren and Ferrari. Maybe I am in the twilight zone. Maybe Lewis Hamilton did win the race, maybe Button was second followed closely by Alonso and Massa. But I could have sworn in my sleep deprived state I witnessed Vettel, Webber and Rosberg cross the finish line before anyone else did.

MJSpeed

No, you're 100% absolutely correct. Oh yeah, that was also the boring side of the race, after turn 3.

ltc

Help me here.
If he had no clutch, then it would have been impossible for him to stop in the pits for a tire change and still get the car back out on track again, correct?
I was also under the impression that the clutch is not needed during shifts, at least not to the extent that a clutch is required during a pit stop.
So, did she drive with NO clutch or did she drive with a malfunctioning clutch/gearbox?

MJSpeed

She...that's funny...

Well that's one of the questions I had. How the heck do you pit and get going without a clutch.

As for not needing one, I believe you don't need to manually engage it with every shift but the gearbox does it for you on downshifts.

He stated that he did NOT have a clutch for practically the entire race. I don't think it had anything to do with the gears themselves as they lasted more than the engine did.

A.Wayne

He love's dem dat way .......

Hey .. remember Stool @ Benetton had no gears , stuck in 5th , yet he made a pit stop and moved off in 5th .. go figure it's F1 , when stool hit the curb at monaco they said it was a broken header that took out the suspension and last week it was vettel's brakes , brembo threw a fit and said " Not " .

what we know for sure was that Alonso's car was not 100% sounded like the transmission on down shifts , anything else is amigo speak ....

A.Wayne

You were , you are in Canada , liberals slant everything ..... Last year Brawn was the " one " this year they are a has been, you might see it different , dats OK ! wanna wager sumting? I'm all ears ....

M758

BINGO...
Alonso complaining about "no clutch" is not the samething as "no clutch". It F1 terms it could have been a clutch problem, but hardly not clutch at all.

Also from the in car video you can clearly hear that the up shifts sounds spot on perfect. The down shifts however is where the problem was. Maybe it was the clutch causing that, but for some reason the box was not downshifting right. It sounded very much like it would not engage a gear (one of the lower ones) on down shift and dumbed into neutral. Of course when that happen Alsono lost the engine braking effect which these cars rely on. So it cause him to have longer braking distances. That really hurts when trying to "out brake" another car, but has less impact on lap times.

Remember the Ferrari was a fast car and has been all year. Alonso did masterful job with it, but Massa showed it was much faster than Button's McLaren at that particular point in the race. So Alonso manhandled the car to a few fast laps. Great. His talent and skill have shown well however who is to say another driver might not have done the same?

Also the engine letting go is almost certainly related to the gearbox issue. It could be that something failed in the box and allowed a mechical overrev on downshift or it could be related to abusing the engine in an effort to drive around the gearbox issue. One thing about F1 cars is that you cannot abuse something for very long before it breaks. They just don't have the margin build into the parts to allow for that. So all those dumps into neutral probabyl did nothing to help the motor.

In the end we will never really find out what went wrong F1 teams just don't share that information willingly.

500

I think Alonso meant "no clutch" the same way someone might say they had "no brakes" when they had suffered a bunch of fade... technically they still HAD brakes, just not very good ones. I just assumed this is what Alonso meant.

I can't see his drive as anything other than very good.

I know a lot has been made here about Alonso's alleged character flaws, and even suggestion in this thread that he is probably throwing hissy fits at Ferrari already. Trouble is, he has been a solid performer from the first race and I have yet to hear him whine about anything. The bigger story to me is that Ferrari does seem to be suffering its own reliability challenge and this might add a wrinkle into the championship story this year.

A.Wayne

Joe,

Alonso was almost 2 sec a lap faster than Button when he caught up to both Massa (same car) and Button, you have to get over it , faster , . OK and faster than Massa from day 1

M758

Massa was behind button. Button had older tires and they were the hards. Both Massa and Alonso were on the fresher tires and were on the softs. It was clear that the softs were faster. At least for a time. Massa used up fast soft laps in traffic and when he had more fuel. Alonso pitted later for his tires so when they were fresh he had less fuel. So naturally he would have a faster car with no gearbox issues.

When Alsono caught button he was faster, but the gearbox problem really hurt him badly. There is no question on this. I just don't think the problem was that bad when running alone. The reason was that he could compensate and only lose a few tenths a lap. A few tenths is alot in F1, but not so much this season in the middle of race given state of tires on each car and ever reducing fuel loads. The difference pace between hards and softs is more than few tenths and comparing ideal softs to partially worn hards the gap is probably 1+1.5 seconds a lap. We know the Ferrari is fast to start with it should not be shock to see it run fast the first few laps after the last set of softs get put on the car. The Red bulls may have been faster, but they had no need to push that hard since they each had gap and probably want to conserve some just to make sure they finished. Alonso on the other hand was probably drive 11/10th all race to keep up (I mean drive to the very limit and then some to get around the problem where as Vettel could leave a little on the table and still win).

So alot of factors going on here and it nearly impossible to assume Alonso is some sort of miracle worker as a result of this drive. The amazing part was that the box/car lasted as long as it did.

My993C2

Wherever did you get the impression that I supported the Liberal Party of Canada. Good grief ...

ltc

ALLEGED ? Surely you jest.

She is the Black Widow of Formula One.
Look at the trail of death and destruction left in her wake....

McLaren and the pit stop "incident", Stepneygate and Pedro deLa Rosa (what's a few thousand text messages between friends), the unnamed "cooperator" behind the FIA probe into the aforementioned affair, Renault, Flavio, Piquet Jr and the famous "I see nothing wrong starting 15th and light at a street race"...

If Sally Fields was unavailable to portray 'Sybil', then Little Miss Sunshine would have been the one accepting the academy award.

ltc

Oh wait, we have a flag on the forum field....let's wait to hear from the officials....


"Upon further review of the aforementioned post, it has been determined that the use of the phrase "alleged character flaws" is an illegal formation.

Alonso has no character, therefore it can not be alleged to be faulty.

10 grid spot penalty, replay the last 2 laps of the race.

A.Wayne

How was schumacher last weekend Lewis? sato?.............