F1 Fanatic round-up: 14/3/2010

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It’s race day everyone! In a few hours’ time we’ll know the winner of the first race of 2010.

I can’t wait to find out. Make sure you join us in the live blogs today starting around one hour before the race.

Links

FIA using “Spy in the Garage” cameras (Speed)

“This weekend sees the debut of a new F1 parc ferme system implemented by the FIA, one which sees the governing body ‘spying’ on any illicit activity in each of the team garages with a network of 24 cameras.”

Why F1’s exciting new dawn may have to wait (Will Buxton)

I saw the GP2 Asia race as well and it seemed the new section served to force the cars to run line astern and diminish the opportunity for overtaking.That said some drivers had a go – notably Alexander Rossi.

Any cooling opening will do in the desert (F1 Technical)

“BMW Sauber already had louvers last year in this area, and this time around it’s Force India and McLaren that have extended on this concept. At both teams, the car is fitted with an extra cooling opening on both sides of the cockpit.”

Comment of the day

I agree pretty much entirely with Salty’s take on the 107% rule:

Re-introduction of the 107% rule would be pointless and harmful to these guys who are trying to breath some new life into our sport. By Monaco they will all be inside 107% anyway, but the threat caused by re-introduction of the rule would undermine the credibility of the new teams and damage their sponsorship options, thus chance of remaining in the sport. Why stop at 107%? Perhaps 103% next so if you can’t race a car 5km within a second of another – you’re out! Daft isn’t it?

I don’t want Formula Ferrari or Formula Red Bull etc. This is a team sport. New teams are good – applaud them.
Salty

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Patrickl!

On this day in F1

The last South African Grand Prix to date was held on this day in 1993 at Kyalami.

Since then the track has not had much use for international-level single seater racing, the main exceptions being the now-defunct Grand Prix Masters and A1 Grand Prix series.

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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23 comments on “F1 Fanatic round-up: 14/3/2010”

  1. Terry Fabulous
    14th March 2010, 0:42

    Happy Birthday Patrickl

    Have a good day mate.

    Long may you stir up the readers with your forthright and passionately held views!

  2. I disagree about the 107% thing, I think your view is slanted by HRT’s performance yesterday. This rule wouldn’t prevent new teams from racing, Lotus and Virgin are both easily inside and they’ve hardly had a perfect lead-up.

    OK, we need new teams, but it cant just be any old team that’s going to run around at the back ten seconds off the pace for the whole season. If a team deserves to be in F1 then it should have the ability to make up that lost ground. Speaking of HRT in particular I have no idea if they have that ability, are Dalara developing their car?

    1. Thing is, as James Allen said in his blog, the 107% rule cannot be justified by it’s own reasoning. First of all, it’s determined by Qualifying times, so basically you are saying it’s safe to share the track with these cars in one part of the weekend, but not the other. Secondly, Practice times can diverge by 7% anyway. Perhaps they are going easy in Practice, but rarely are the cars at 100% effort (highest speed, most danger) anyway.

      Also, to add my own reasoning, banning them from the race denies the team testing mileage that they’d need to get in that 107% time. Remember, the last time the rule was in place we had in-season testing and therefore little excuse for a team claiming to be of G1 standard going so much slower.

      The talk of 107% coming back seems to me to be a knee-jerk reaction to an embarassing situation that should never have arisen in the first place. I agree with what Martin Brundle said in the qualifying show: HRT should have been given special dispensation to test and then join the circus in Barcelona for the Grand Prix there. Not that common sense is allowed in the rules…

      1. Linksys Blue
        14th March 2010, 4:37

        New teams are good, and we don’t need any 107% rules, let the front runners and real ‘tech’ heros of F1 walk behind the slow ones.
        You know what? I’m gonna take my granny’s car’s engine and put some fiber in the shape of f1 car and run it in next GP with my own sponsorships, and its gonna be inside 1K $, plz give me support. I’ll try to finish one lap within 5 mins…….
        relaxing on the new teams, and allowing attitude like salty’s will only put an image in the international plane that the F1 is going down and will even accept bad competitors to save its face, and I or any pure-blood F1 fan will not like that.

      2. On the nail Icthyes !

        In effect, we already have a 107% rule ! Only its called ‘Part 1: Race Qualifying.’ As James Allen succinctly points out, if the current system allows every potential contender onto the track for fifteen minutes to find out which are the slowest cars then that’s the fairest way to eliminate them. In fact there is no other practical way that does not excessively penalise new entrant teams which are vital new blood for F1’s future.

  3. New teams are good. And we should applaud them. Which is why I will never understand why they limit the number of teams and why they don’t allow new teams like USF1 to miss a few races one year for the greater good of the next ten. But I guess that’s F1.

  4. i expect the 107% rule to come into play for 2011. with respect to senna and chandhok, they should not have been allowed to put the first miles on the car during a race weekend.

  5. Happy Birthday Patrick!

    I agree with a suggestion Keith made before, the Grand Prix should have been run on the high-speed configuration that surrounds the current one used (apart from sharing the main straight). Sure, the new section looks great from onboard and adds another factor for teams to incorporate into their calculations, but I forsee it causing headaches in the race, especially with backmarkers. And it’s not like we have high-speed tracks coming out of our ears and a dearth of more technical ones.

  6. Fred Schechter
    14th March 2010, 4:14

    Yayy Salty!!

    I still don’t know why we can’t go back to 1 lap do or die qualifying in order of 2nd practice finishing times.
    Forget about 107%, if quali is washed out, 2nd practice times are used.
    With 1 lap quali, the show is an hour even with a few “mistakes” and cleanup (good for tv), while being simple, straightforward, and obvious (seriously, if you make it to Q3 you have to use those tires vs. the guy that finished 11th?! Seriously?!)
    Also, can we give a point or 3 for pole? Otherwise why did we think Senna was so cool,, still?

    Simple, obvious, easy for TV.
    Why is it so hard Bernie? (Jean, are you listening?)

    Never a 107% cutoff (remember Monaco with Senna, I think he cut off half the grid!!)

    1. Problem with old quali was people were doing nothing for the first half hour, I like the new three tier system.

  7. “The last South African Grand Prix to date was held on this day in 1993 at Kyalami”

    And you know Keith who was there?

    That was the first race for Rubens Barrichello!

    He drove a Jordan-Hart for the first time in his professional life in F1 and he was able to run 31 laps before he retired because a gearbox problem.

    Long time ago, and he’s still competing. The F1 GrandFather!!

    1. I suppose, we will have more cars retiring with likewise problems today.

      Hope that Rubens does get fart and good into the points today, though.

  8. As a lot of others already stated, the 107% rule is pretty dumb. Even in testing, the Virgin and Lotus were already good within this limit.
    I suspect HRT will not have any serious problems with this limit in a race or two as well, when after only a handfull of installation laps, Chandhok already did less than 110% of Vettels time (see http://www.usf1formula1.com/2010/03/quali-results-bahrain.html ).
    Introducing it this year will do no good, again changing the rules mid season etc.

  9. We all saw, that the “new” part of the track is pretty bumpy. But i suppose it is far from being as bad as what the IRL have to cope with in Brazil!
    http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/82104

  10. Buxton has a point about the adding of the new track making racing more processional. The difference in the GP2 Asia races is really enormous.

    Our only hope in F1 is for more mistakes in the fuel heavy cars after the start of the race.

    If you read about the blisters on the hands of Pic and Filipi using extra padding to save his bum, even more respect for Senna and Chandhok in keeping the handfull of untested HRT on track.
    Yesterday Chandhok said he sits on the bottom of the car, so his backside will be really in bad shape after only half the GP distance.

  11. happy bday patrickl. hope today’s race is not a disappointment.

  12. Hey guys,,, can anybody confirm the news about both Ferrari cars changing their engines?

    1. They have changed engines. No penalties

  13. Thank you.

  14. Thanks for the update… That’s very frustrating

  15. I am curious to see what it exactly is Renault and McLaren have to take of their Exhausts (linking them up to the diffusor?)

    1. It is regarding the hole for the starter kit in the diffusor.

      McLaren and Renault have widened it to make it part of the air flow. They will have to close it to the standard round hole now.

  16. ‘Body bags’ for F1 cars, that’s cool. I’d like to see one and I’m curious to know what kind of locking mechanism they use. The FIA really does not trust the teams one bit but then again they do like to bend the rules.

    By the by, Will Buxton blog has one example of the ‘archive calendar’ whereby you click on a particular day to see all posting for that day (the idea I suggested when site enhancement ideas were being requested). This really makes life so much easier especially if one wanted to say go back and see the Hamilton / Raikkonen controversy surrounding the Spa GP…

Comments are closed.