2014 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne

[danielk]

As I suspected would be the case red bull hVe bounced back. And by a considerable margine. They are 4000 kilometers testing behind a few teams yet are only 6tenths off the pace at most. Note Vettel set his fastest time and then went on to do 5-6 more laps after that. At the minute they look like the second best team, and that's without testing! I think I remember many people on this forum laughing at people saying red bull will be on the pace and not to count them out.............

[CHT]

1:25.9sec (2013) vs 1:29.6sec.

So we are around 4 sec slower this year.

[danielk]

Last year was super soft tires so take a second of that

[gandharva]

Seems like this weekend is going to be a walk in the park for Mercedes. Very impressive performance of RedBull. Didn't expect them to catch up that fast.

The sound of the cars is soooooo disappointing.

[gray41]

Mercedes ahead with a battle behind potentially with RedBull, Williams, Ferrari and McLaren.

[Sevach]

The sound of the cars is soooooo disappointing.

I hate the environment
Bring back the gas guzzlers!!!!

[ROBERTKO]

Any one want to try and predict the first race 1 to 10, still working on mine it is going to be a great start!!

[Kiril Varbanov]

FIA is to address the ugly noses in 2015, while the sound of the engines is put behind (for now). The liveries aren't that important, tires running durably in the background, while everyone is biting their lips whether the cars will make it to the end of the lap.
Those are the initial reactions from the figures running around with team wears.

I think it was foolish to write-off Red Bull - this is a team who has won 4 titles and has $300 million budget. I did not expect them to sit and whine about the lost testing mileage.

The main question remains: who is going to finish the race? My personal inference is that the testing was way too little for such large regulation change, and there will be hordes of disappointed people.

[myurr]

Don't forget the sound comes via FOM and Bernie is against these engines. They could well be deliberately not recording the best sound possible as they do sound quieter and with less ICE noise than the fan recordings from the tests. They could easily boost the volume on feed if they wanted to.

[atanatizante]

1. In a prospect for a Sunday`s wet race what effect has on fuel economy? 25-30% less fuel?
2. They have this year also a overall brake balance like they used to last year?

[BorisTheBlade]

About your first point. That heavily depends on the amount of rain - the more rain the less consumption. But I doubt that it could peak out at 30%. My suggestion would be 10-15%at most (out of thin air).
They can still change the brake balance if they want to. But because of the complexity of the bake by wire system "what you see might not always be what you get"

On another note:
I'm heavily impressed by RBR's turnaround! Congrats to them.
So excited to generally see how all of the teams will perform under qualifying and racing conditions.

[atanatizante]

About your first point. That heavily depends on the amount of rain - the more rain the less consumption. But I doubt that it could peak out at 30%. My suggestion would be 10-15%at most (out of thin air).
They can still change the brake balance if they want to. But because of the complexity of the bake by wire system "what you see might not always be what you get"
...

1.With a prospect of ~80% wet race I`m the only one who is thinking that RB is gonna gamble with an under-fueled car?
2.And regarding the BBW, this system it`s a kinda :
a) bias between the rear brakes and MGU-K (when acts like generator)
b) it`s just a bias balance between front and rear brakes now?
c) or does both a) and b) actions?

[gandharva]

Does any website have longrun times from FP2 already?

[thedutchguy]

I've been watching the on-board channel during most of FP2 this morning. Some observations from what I've seen (starting with some non-technical ones):

On-board footage does not appear as 'fast' as in previous years. I guess this is mostly due to the audio, the new engines just don't sound like proper F1 engines imo. Also the corner speeds are visibly down and during long runs (Rosberg) you can clearly see short shifting and early throttle releases.

Top speed at the end of the straight is about 305 kmh for the fastest cars.

The Ferrari engines sound strange from on-board. Lots of (turbo?) hissing going on, both on acceleration and during braking. Note a pleasant sound to listen to. Mercedes sounds crisper and actually quite nice, Renault quite OK

There appears to be a LOT of difference in gearing between the teams. Most of them run more or less linear gearing, but some team appear to have a very long 7th gear. Also the RPM which teams run on when on the pit limiter in 1st gear differ a lot. Williams runs at about 7000 rpm on the pit limiter, whereas I've seen others run as high as 9000+.

All teams seem to be running their engines up to about 11500 - 12000 rpm at the moment. Perhaps they'll get up higher during qualifying

observations per team:

WILLIAMS runs quite short gearing. Easily gets into 8th gear on the straight.
MERCEDES: longer gearing, does not seem to go up to 8th gear on the straight, certainly not during longer runs
LOTUS: Very short gearing. The lotus gets into 8th gear even on some of the shorter straights. Interesting to see how they'll manage on faster tracks like China.
RED BULL appears to be geared quite short up to 6th, with a longer 7th and 8th.

I'll post some on-board video later this morning.

[kooleracer]

Does any website have longrun times from FP2 already?

http://en.mclarenf-1.com/index.php?page ... 20Hamilton

Here you go m8. Mercedes looks even more dominant in longrun pace. Red Bull 2nd quickest funny enough.