Melbourne F1 Grand Prix

[Studley 2436]

Like you say Fred it is time for him to show something better. Mind you the last two years with Williams and nothing much happened there. Williams do that time to time go through a patch where everything is falling off etc.

I was thinking on Friday Weber doesn't have much of a car, Saturday he did a top job to get it up the pointy end, Sunday they might have gambled on the set up and lost. Cars don't spin in the pit entrance unless something is pretty wrong with them. See what they can sort out for Malaysia. Mostly I think we want to see him get some track time while they are on the away races. They have to get back to Europe to be able to do terribly much with the thing.

Studley

[martrix]

Hows the head today Martrix ?

Head is OK now, but the sunburn is giving me grief. Went again yesterday in a seat in the grandstand on the last corner looking up the final straight.
Great position but the seating sucked. I would have been mighty pi$$ed if I had paid for those tickets. Seats were packed together literally like sardines. Could not sit back in the seat as shoulders would touch next bloke and had to perform Yoga to let anyone walk through to the aisle.
Had to sit forward all day and felt like I nearly got DVT .

Had my Fix of F1. Never going again unless its a Corporate catered box.

I wish Mark Weber good luck in getting a better team, but he is running out of time. He almost made a massive fool of himself entering the pits. ..To much curry on the small corner in pit lane and he did a full 360° spin and narrowly missed a big bunch of tires protecting the pit wall.

[Daddles]

Unfortunately, the aussie media painted Webber as the next Alan Jones - the Champion Alan Jones that is, I actually feel that there is a lot of similarity between the two. Maybe with the right car he could be WC. But the expectation to be World Champion before a wheel is turned was always going to be too much. Webber is a darned good driver and one of the best drivers out there, but he's not a Kimi or Schumie or a Prost (mind you, Kimi may not be a Schumie or a Prost either - this is his season to answer that one). BUT, Webber is a damned good driver ... with an uncanny ability to choose teams going backwards. Who'd have thought going to Williams was a negative career move? But good old Mark managed it. He's like DC and Reubens, very good, very fast, but not good enough to take a dog and make it run like a greyhound. Drivers have won the World Championship with less talent (Damon Hill and Jaques Villeneuve spring to mind), drivers with more talent have come no where near it.

So let's take the pressure of expectation off Mark Webber and just enjoy him doing the best he can with the cars he's got. The Great Aussie Hope will have to be someone else I'm afraid.

Richard

[fred.n]

So let's take the pressure of expectation off Mark Webber and just enjoy him doing the best he can with the cars he's got.
Richard

[Studley 2436]

Nailed it on the head there Daddles

Prost and Schumacher are drivers that belong on a pretty tiny stack, won races and championships in the second best car, although Schummi was lucky that Hill was the guy in the best car. The thing I always noticed with Prost is that he went to a team and got the most out of it. Renault won races with Prost and went back to the middle of the field when he left. When he left Mclaren Senna still won a few races but the car was getting to be off the pace by the end of the following year and so on. That is pretty rare stuff I think Michael had it too, after all who else might have been able to get Ferrari to win? They were the Collingwood of F1 before Michael.

So if Weber was going to be one of those it would have happened allready. I'd like to see if he can be competitive win a few races etc.

Studley

[dazzler]

Hi

The pressure that the media or the public could possibly exert on Mark would be infinitesimal compared to that of his sponsors, financial backers and team directors.

We could paint the harbour bridge with "we hate webber" and it would still pale compared to that.

Formula one is one big computer show with the drivers simply another megabyte. The more the driver can interface with the car the better the outcome. There is very little difference in talent btwn all the drivers (they are all unbelievably hand eye co-ordinated)

There has been very little actual racing since Senna died and if we cast our minds back remember how they hated him actually "racing".

cheers

dazzler

[Daddles]

I'm reminded of something Enzo Ferrari said - good drivers always go to the team with the best car. He mumbled a few other things (we are talking Enzo here) but you gained the impression that a certain no hoper named Juan Miguel Fangio had the talent of knowing before the engineers did which car was going to do well the next year ... and chose to drive it, thus helping the poor machine achieve its potential. There's a lot of subtlety in that but I think it flows through F1 history. Yes, there were freak drivers who took cars and made them win, but how did they know which cars to pick? Some inner instinct perhaps? Webber clearly doesn't have that. People rave about Alonso, yet he's only made the best car on the grid perform like the best car on the grid while benefiting from Ferrari's lack of reliability - did he win two championships or did Michael lose them? (I favour the latter) Kimi is probably the best driver on the track and people argue that McLaren let him down badly, which they did, but maybe he lacks that insight that Fangio and Michael had, the ability to know which car could be great, then making sure it happens. I really laugh at the prospect of the Ice Man, come biggest party animal on the grid working with a team that is now nearly totally Italian - remember the nineties when Murray Walker used to refer to the 'Italian temperament' ?

I hate modern F1 - with all the driver aids, the car is so much more important than the driver and real drivers find it hard now to exploit the brute they're given to drive. Sadly, while Max "I hate overtaking" Mosely has control, we're stuck with high speed computer games. Do I sound bitter? Yes? Well, I can remember the good old days when ...

Richard
resident grouch

[Studley 2436]

Yep I am with Richard. They should ban radios and the telemetry. They should really go savage on downforce, get rid of all the add on bits that are there only to increase downforce. Like the mirror wands are there to increase downforce! Might do well to get rid of sidepods as well. What about all the launch controls amongst other things?

Teams like it this way but I reckon the entertainment value is pretty poor. I seem to remember spending my youth in an idealistic dream that we would have passing, this was the Turbo era when there was a bit of passing. mmmm Prost and Senna won 15 of 16 races in the last year of turbos and the guy that reached the first corner first won in every race.

Before that we had Ground Effects, you really have to be old to remember when the a good driver had a chance to get more out of a car than it had and even himself up with the guy in a better car.

Would be nice if it happened but don't hold your breath.

Actually I found the qualifying pretty good watching. See what happens lots of pretty fast cars cross fingers we get to see some good racing.

Studley

[rrich]

The aero solution is simple. Allow ANY aero modification desired within the allowable dimensions of the car. Then require that the car's suspension permit the chassis to be capable of reaching a depth that is 3cm below the plane on which the tyres ride. (i.e. 3cm BELOW the surface of the road.) Permit any spring and or shock (damper) combination that is not controlled by an outside device. Finally, in race trim, hang a specific weight from each corner of the car and the chassis of the car must ride 1cm lower than the plane of the road surface. The size of the weights will govern the allowable of downforce on the car.

BTW - Did the rain this weekend help with your drought problems?

[Studley 2436]

You are a smart cookie Rich. Actually that is dead simple and would work, too much downforce and you just grind the belly of the car into the track.

Of course then they would be in a race to make the cars as slippery as possible once they achieved maximum allowable downforce.

It has come a million miles from the cars they were racing in the 80's when I started following it, which were agricultural by comparison. Although that BMW with 1500hp was pretty amazing.

Studley

[martrix]

Here are some pretty average pics, too much free drink to be had to do anything better.

Also if you've got 5 minutes to waste, here is a little video I took with my digital camera....heres the catch: a greenie to the first person that spots Sam Newman, Rob Gel and Dougie Hawkins in the video.

F1 Melbourne Grand Prix video.

[Studley 2436]

well the guy with the backward baseball cap and light blue top looked suspiciously like sam but OMG there is no way to be sure

That is the bluriest looking piece of video I have seen

Studley

[RETIRED]

Maybe that's the way Matrix was seeing it too?

[martrix]

well the guy with the backward baseball cap and light blue top looked suspiciously like sam but OMG there is no way to be sure

That is the bluriest looking piece of video I have seen

Studley

Ha ha, good one Studley. you got it. It was shot from my cheapo digital camera on "movie" mode , and then lost some more quality when I uploaded it.

Maybe that's the way Matrix was seeing it too?

yeah, pretty much. You try and resist free Belgian beer whilst being waited on by a hot tanned French-Algerian waitress.

Footage wouldn't have been any better either if you gave it to Sammy...... geez, doesn't mind the DeBortoli Rosè.

[rrich]

Here are some pretty average pics, too much free drink to be had to do anything better.

Actually those are some rather nice seats!