As predicted yesterday...

Heads Will Roll' After Ferrari's Title Loss:

If a head will roll at Maranello for Ferrari's 2010 championship loss, it will be Chris Dyer's, according to press speculation. "Some things will change and, sure, some heads will roll," said the authoritative Italian daily La Gazzetta dello Sport. The newspaper did not name Dyer - Ferrari's chief track engineer - but some Spanish sources did, claiming it was the Australian's decision to "cover" Mark Webber's Abu Dhabi race strategy that stranded Fernando Alonso behind Vitaly Petrov. "The only thing we can do is try to take a breath, recharge the batteries and push people to do a better job next year," team boss Stefano Domenicali said. Triple world champion Niki Lauda told the Austrian press on Monday: "There should be three days of mourning , then they all eat spaghetti again and forget the defeat." Fernando Alonso said the reason for the championship loss was the pace of Red Bull's car. "They had the best car, and Vettel showed with his 10 pole positions that he was the fastest. And that's not easy. "It's worse to lose the title when you have the best car, like we did at McLaren in 2007. This time it's clear that Red Bull were better," the Spaniard told El Pais newspaper.

 

Additionally, significant elevation changes combined with blind apexes and/or off camber corners would all help. End of the day IMHO sanitized tracks make for sanitized racing.

 

Too bad he was not thinking this when he gave Petrov the finger.

 

Looks as though Seb and Web seem to be ok with each other

 

Maybe the reports of Webbers demise are premature. One thing that I think is kept under extreme wraps is who exactly is the lead development driver on each team. In teams with an experienced shoe and a rookie, it is obvious, but in the case of say Webber and Vettel, who knows? Could be Webber can find the better setup, but Vettel can drive it faster. In that case, they are both valuable, and breaking them up to find another young'un would be counter-productive at this juncture.

 

What if Red Bull decided to ditch Webber, who would be the best candidate for the seat beside Vettel? Kubica? he's overdue for a top car? ....all hypothetical, of course

 

In a post race interview Webber said he would be back driving for Red Bull in 2011. As much as Webber wants to be #1, I think he also realizes he is in a top notch team who gives him his best opportunity to win races. Sure he could be the #1 driver at any one of the lesser talented teams, but he would not have a chance to win. As a fan of Red Bull Racing I don't want to see Webber and Vettel broken up. But if a new driver was to replace Webber, I would want it to be someone like Robert Kubica (even though yes there are rumors that Kubica may be heading off to Ferrari).

 

The track is not to blame for the lack of passing. Any track layout can be improved in one way or another, but fixing that track won't help any other. Brazil has a long straight into a tight corner too. If you make the corner a faster corner you can't pass due to aero push.

That is just whining. I agree that things need to be done to make it easier to pass, but that needs to happen to the cars not the tracks.

 

Exactly right. How many to cars are there on the grid capable of winning races?

1- red bull
2- McLaren
3- Ferrari
Outside shots
4- Mercedes
5- Renault
6- Williams

really Webber will not move Lewis out of McLaren and not move Alonso out of Ferrari. So What move Rosberg from Mercedes? He could move Schumie out of Mercedes, but will that gain him anything? Does it make sense to go to Renault?

So unless you want to lead backmarker second billing at Red bull is as good as it gets. Especially considering the lack of team orders this year. Webber did very well at Red bull and it was the best season in his career.

 

Interesting to see how the cars are set up, Vettel with the lowest trap speed of all the front runners...

Qualifying Session Speed Trap

POS NO DRIVER__________ KPH
1 17 J. ALGUERSUARI _______317.6
2 16 S. BUEMI _____________317.4
3 12 V. PETROV ____________316.2
4 14 A. SUTIL ______________315.0
5 23 K. KOBAYASHI _________315.0
6 21 B. SENNA_____________ 314.8
7 3 M. SCHUMACHER ________314.7
8 15 V. LIUZZI _____________314.6
9 4 N. ROSBERG____________314.4
10 22 N. HEIDFELD _________313.9
11 7 F. MASSA_____________ 313.2
12 9 R. BARRICHELLO _______313.0
13 8 F. ALONSO ____________312.9
14 2 L. HAMILTON __________312.6
15 1 J. BUTTON ____________312.6
16 18 J. TRULLI ____________312.5
17 11 R. KUBICA____________312.4
18 10 N. HULKENBERG _______312.4
19 19 H. KOVALAINEN _______311.8
20 20 C. KLIEN _____________311.7
21 6 M. WEBBER____________ 311.5
22 5 S. VETTEL _____________309.7
23 24 T. GLOCK _____________308.5
24 25 L. DI GRASSI__________ 308.1

 

world champion Niki Lauda told the Austrian press on Monday: "There should be three days of mourning , then they all eat spaghetti again and forget the defeat."

 

I hope we don't start blaming the circuit layout for Alonso not winning the World Championship. As difficult as it is to pass on the circuit, it is hardly the only one in F1 like this. The teams know this and they must race accordingly. Like all fans, I wish every circuit was as great as Spa or Suzuka.

A Championship season is built up of results from every race. EACH driver has had to put up with bad luck, difficult situations and overcome mistakes. Sure, it was not a lack of skill that lost Alonso the world championship on Sunday, but then again, had he not made that mistake in Monte Carlo (for example) he probably would have won it all. Then again, if Seb's engine hadn't blown in Korea... etc... You can ride this merry-go-round ad infinitum. Does not change anything though.

 

What Monday quarterbacking...

Easy to blame Dryer now that we know what happened but focusing on Webber at the time wasn't that dumb. Although I'm not surprised Italian media blaming the lone Aussie in the team...

BTW, with all of this negativity against Ferrari and then "screwing up" Alonso's race, where were all you guys when I was raising a question earlier in the season regarding Ferrari's lack of creativity etc. and got a huge backlash and braise for Ferrari's brilliance?
I disagree, all Tilke tracks, except Turkey, suck and completely lack passing opportunities.

Look at races in any past 5 years at Spa, Silverstone, Suzuka, Brazil, Australia and Monza too and they've always provided great races with passing where on the other hand these new Tilke "designs" and they all look nice, have pretty Architecture and all but they all lack passing and provide VERY boring races.

These new tracks have single handedly screwed up Formula 1 more than any other reason IMO.

And I'm not complaining about Abu Dabhi, couldn't be happier about that race and Vettel's WDC but already before the season when the 2010 calendar was published and AD was the last race instead of usual Brazil, I thought it was a dumb idea because AD produces boring races.

 

The biggest problem with that circuit is that there is way too much concrete runoff. all of the runoff should be grass or sand, keeping the drivers on the track. also adds some pressure to them not to push to the absolute. You could see Alonso towards the end trying everything to get past Petrov, Alsonso went off track many times and didn't penalise himself as going off that track doesn't loose you time. If it were grass on the other hand Webber would have been straight by, or Maybe Petrov would not have been able to push his car as hard as he did knowing that if he touched off track he would loose position. Way too much easy driving at that track

 

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2010/11/666.htm

November 16, 2010

New Passing Rules for 2011 Formula One Season proposed by the FIA

Paris, France

The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile stewards have just completed their first round of meetings to enhance passing amongst competitors in the 2011 season. They have submitted a first draft of three key recommendations to the Executive Council for rule change consideration prior to the 2011 season.

A summary of the proposed changes is listed below

i. Integrated rear blow diffusers are to be eliminated to reduce wake turbulance behind the cars and enhance passing.

ii. KERS horsepower allowance for 2011 season to be doubled to 120 kW (163.2 PS, 160.8 HP), but the time limit per lap will be reduced to 3.33 seconds to keep the overall system weight similar to 2009 specs.

iii. A point to pass system (per a team Scuderia Ferrari recommendation) will be implemented whereby if a cannot maintain a minimum 0.25 second time gap the lead driver must give a clear point and a lift on the next available straight section that runs for a minium of 800 meters

More details available here....

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_RMd68u5Rud...00/sucker1.jpg