2018 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, 22 -25 March

[Jambier]

f that is indeed true for FP2, then it would be the case in races too! That means, slower and boring cars. Except for one or two laps in Q3, we would never really see what the car can do over a long course of race

I fear this is what will happen.. especially for Ferrari and Mercedes who fight for title.

For teams like McLaren and RBR it will be different. I'm sure if they are competitive on a particular track, they will go flat out in order to win / make a podium, even if it means using 5 engines a year.

[iotar__]

Ehem...really? I think that everybody know who is the number 1 in Mercedes, even Bottas sounds like a n2 driver. No intention to criticize Mercedes, its pretty obvious that Lewis is the winning horse.

In general (team approach and betting including team orders) it's true. In performance same as with Red Bull pair it's very different.

While Bottas and occasionally Ricciardo are capable of near the top performance (best cars help, it would be and was different in mid-field cars) Raikkonen certainly is not. He hasn't been for 5+ years. Also quality of team-mates matters, "nr 2" would be winning if he were a chosen one in another team.

You can manipulate driver down but not up without touching the other. Fortunately Ferrari don't have to worry about that. They don't have to worry about Constructors Championship either or judging by the last two seasons any success at all. Who needs that while F1 is running on empty hype and $. Works both ways: it spares you embarrassment of team orders (almost: Monaco and some less obvious) but you won't get taking point from competition effect (secondary importance).

BTW I thought manipulated pseudo sport with results decided before the races are what people like about F1 ("I don't mind team orders for my pure racing fraud heroes") ?

[F1NAC]

Lockup by bottas. visualizing tyre wake

[Vasconia]

At least you can see the road from the T-cam. You can't see anything from this angle.

Onboard cameras look terrible now...

Haha woww that's dissapointing! Ok so we have a multi-multi-million dollar sport and nobody from FIA has taken the time to tell FOM where to put the camera's? sigh.. they'll fix it sooner or later with the 360 cam but I will miss the t-cam shots..

Yes, its one of those mistakes that I can hardly understanda, so many clever people involved but...

[Vasconia]

http://formula1.ferrari.com/en/2018-aus ... ctice-day/

23 Mar 2018
Kimi, Seb believe there’s much potential to be explored

Melbourne – The first day of practice at Albert Park saw both Scuderia Ferrari drivers go through an extensive job of data collecting and car set-up work. At the end of the day, Kimi and Seb had covered 62 and 60 laps respectively using all three available tyre compounds (Soft, Supersoft and Ultrasoft,) running various fuel loads.
“It was a pretty normal first day here in Australia”, said Kimi. “Everything felt a bit different from testing, but it’s normal when you are in a different place. The track itself felt much better than last year, in terms of grip. It looks like there are a lot of leaves, but this doesn’t really affect the driving. It’s not easy to find a good set up, but the start today was not too bad. We tried a few things and did our best to improve here and there. We are considering which way we should go and trying to figure out the best way to do that. It’s a normal story, especially at the beginning of the year. Let’s see what the weather brings tomorrow. Tonight we’ll go through all the work we have done today, we’ll pick all the positive things and see what we can do”.

Sebastian commented on his daily routine: “It’s been a rather dull day of work, like every Friday. We tried to chase the balance because I didn’t feel completely comfortable at first, but I’m not worried about that because I know that if we do everything right, the car should be in better shape. It looks like we are close, which is good news, so we should be able to do something tomorrow. This track is particularly tricky, in that if you don’t nail it at first, then there is quite of bit of lap time to be found, and I think we still have much potential to extract. The car is fine; it’s not where we want it to be yet, but if we keep on working, it should be ok. I really hope to make a bigger step than the others”.

[F1NAC]

+ 3 grid place penalty for Ricciardo

[NathanOlder]

oh jeez. He will probably put it on pole now, like Schumacher at monaco in the Merc.

[the EDGE]

This is truley sad for F1 I think. Okay safety rules are there for a reason, but if they admit there was no safety risk then surely a warning & points were sufficient

[bauc]

This is truley sad for F1 I think. Okay safety rules are there for a reason, but if they admit there was no safety risk then surely a warning & points were sufficient

Agreed!

[iotar__]

f that is indeed true for FP2, then it would be the case in races too! That means, slower and boring cars. Except for one or two laps in Q3, we would never really see what the car can do over a long course of race

I fear this is what will happen.. especially for Ferrari and Mercedes who fight for title.

For teams like McLaren and RBR it will be different. I'm sure if they are competitive on a particular track, they will go flat out in order to win / make a podium, even if it means using 5 engines a year.

- I see engine limit whining, fuelled as always by some teams (RB) shouting about it, replaced tyres as F1's bogeyman. Slower cars, engine limit, weight nor tyres that wear aren't responsible for boring races. There are some other obvious reasons and the whole 2017 is enough of a proof.

- Adding +1 at best not +2 (why not 20 if it's such an advantage ) engines over the season will not make you start magically winning against 3 engine teams. May be the opposite, if you can stay within 3+ it may be for a reason (better engine), failures can be random and performance-reliability trade off is not simple.

- I'm surprised you put Ferrari and not Red Bull fighting for titles but I guess that's because of Evil Engine Limit.
Your division is not "fighting/not fighting" but engine brand.

[NathanOlder]

So he got a penalty for driving too slowly under a reg flag ?

Drivers cant even drive slowly to wave at the home fans anymore!

[F1NAC]

So he got a penalty for driving too slowly under a reg flag ?

No he was speeding. I was a bit confused too with words minimum and above. He was below minimum time, meaning that time was faster than minimum XD

[sn809]

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/228 ... -home-race

From ESPN he was above the minimum time allocated.

[Mr.G]

Ferrari will be second, RBR can't fight with their engine.
On Melbourne why not, on another track not possible.

Haas also called Ferrabis continue to be quick. I think there will be some protest soon...

Sorry I don’t understand what you’re referring to? What will there be a protest regarding?

Regarding HAAS, teams like Force India that built their own car, or even other teams are angry with this situation.

The Haas is basicaly last year's Ferrari. They use Ferrari wind tunnel.
They are almost not a formula one team, and still get a very good car when private like FI or other have to make a car.

Sorry but why others have to make the car? There is no rule that stops FI doing the same as HAAS they just doesn't want to... It's they're choice... Wasn't others "laughing" about the Haas idea from beginning? And now when he got successful with his approach they are just jealous?

[PlatinumZealot]

These are times from FP2 2017. Having watched FP2 today, times have almost remained the same. In fact, FP2 fastest time by Lewis is slower than last year's FP2 time. Temperatures have remained more or less similar. What happened to all the development done to the cars in the last 12 months? Only Red Bull seems to have gone faster.

https://s9.postimg.org/p9acq9ezz/2017_aus_gp.png

Engines... Turned down much lower this year.