Vettel against double points even if it helps him

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Sebastian Vettel says he wouldn’t support the plan to award double points at the last race of the season even if it turned happened to help his trouble-hit team.

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Sebastian Vettel Q&A: There’s no quick fix to our problems (F1)

“Q: When looking at your current situation, is it a blessing that there will be a double points allocation at the last race of the season?
SV: Gee, that is pretty harsh. It is February and there is a long way to go. Whatever the situation will be I am not a fan of the double points, as I don’t understand the reason behind it.”

Grosjean: Lotus fighting to catch up (ESPN)

“I don’t know why we haven’t been able to carry everything over from the filming day. I think it’s a temperature thing, we don’t understand everything for now. There were small issues related to batteries too. It’s undecided if it’s a problem with Lotus or with Renault yet.”

Hamilton ‘proud’ of Mercedes (Sky)

“Whilst it looks like we’re doing lots of laps, it’s still a massive challenge for us and we’re still coming across issues and things that we’re finding out about the car. It looks like other people are having issues and some perhaps bigger than others.”

Renault: no more holding teams back (Autosport)

Renault head of track operations Remi Taffin: “We will try to do some longer runs and to be as much as possible on track.”

Ecclestone court judgement expected (The Telegraph)

“A High Court judgement will be handed down on Thursday morning in Constantin Medien’s $140 million damages lawsuit against Formula One chief executive Bernie Ecclestone.”

Bernie Ecclestone denies Sainsbury’s boss to replace him at Formula One (The Guardian)

“Asked what the Sainsbury’s boss knows about running a motorsport series, Ecclestone said: ‘All he knows about is looking for support for his kids.'”

Formula One having no real discussions about series takeover by Liberty Global (Autoweek)

“A source close to Formula One has revealed that ‘no real discussions’ are taking place with sports and media group Liberty Global, which is understood to be interested in investing in the Grand Prix racing series.”

jm1419fe200.jpg (James Moy Photography)

“A Red Bull Racing engineer records the engine noises of cars leaving the pits.”

Graham Hill’s Lotus F1 car to make £1m at auction (Auto Express)

“The legendary F1 Lotus 49-R8, raced by Graham Hill, is to go up for sale. Introduced in the 1967 season, the race car is expected to fetch between £700,000 and £1 million when it goes under the hammer in June.”

FIRE UP: 1991 McLaren MP4/6 V12 (McLaren via YouTube)

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Comment of the day

@Mateuss is encouraged by the sound of the Mercedes W05:

The onboard sound is a million times better as far as I am concerned. Not just because the new engines sound better, which they do, in my opinion, but also because the little microphone can capture it better.

On the V8 onboards the noise was a little annoying, partly because the microphone probably maxed out and did not relay all the texture of the sound in good detail. Where here is seems not to be the case, probably because the new engine has all kinds of texture at different frequencies and different volume.

Remains to be seen how will they sound in the FOM onboard cameras.
@Mateuss

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28 comments on “Vettel against double points even if it helps him”

  1. Good point there in the COTD. Maybe we’ll also be able to hear the drivers better through the radio.

    1. Well the actual FOM onboard audio can only get better, although I don’t know if the mics buried in the sidepods will capture all these complex sounds that can be heard standing on the side of the track.

  2. I suspect Inoue is more on the button that he realises!

    In all seriousness however, I hope the times in testing that are being acheived do finally put the rest the fear of an overly slow formula that seems to be haning around. Yes the cars are particululary slow at this precise phase of the formula but all the running is an extended systems-check shakedown. The amount of data on the engines theyll need to collect to baseline the engine on its own will have to be huge.

    Its easy to forget just for how long the engine – the heart of entire car – has been a non-entity in car setup in pre-season testing. The V8’s themselves were just an ugly truncation of the 3L V10 engine, and those were designed and testing in the era of unlimited testing. So going slow now shouldn’t be a reason to panic, after all the formula now is at its slowest most unreliable point, and can only speed up, get more powerful, etc.

    And that is in a nutshell why I feel so let down by JV’s rant. Even though on DRS and double points he’s entirely correct, on this point hes not just wrong, he should know better.

    1. And they’re not going that slowe anymore. Hulk have beaten last year’s best lap (on race day).

      1. I think JV does know better. I think folks are dissecting to the second per lap, based on testing, his assertion that F1 is too slow, including compared to GP2, but also compared to the past. But it’s not just literally about how fast these new cars are to last year’s times, which we won’t know until they actually have to race them in anger in a manner that gets them to the checkered flag.

        It’s JV’s thinking, if I were to extrapolate what he is saying, that by now the cars should be 10 seconds faster (just a number I’m throwing out there to make the point) than they are and than they were when he won in 97, such is the safety there both within the cars and within the tracks, and the improved technology. And it should not be about tire and fuel conservation that is done now by the pits telling the driver what he can and can’t do and when. And DRS should not even be there. The drivers are more like passengers now, there to monitor a moving science experiment, and able to push a button to pass. If that has to be the reality then at least on top of all the gadgets and gimmicks the cars should be so much faster than GP2 that the words wouldn’t have even entered JV’s mind let alone come out of his mouth. Yet look at the debate it has caused, and the people rushing to F1’s defense, all while there are several aspects to F1 that are indefensible right now.

        Whether or not the cars are a bit or a lot slower than last year, or possibly a bit faster by the end of the season, but I think not likely a lot faster, is not really the point. It is about a trend downward toward cars that are certainly not significantly faster if at all than 17 years ago, that are less and less in the drivers’ hands to race. They should be way faster and still as much in the drivers’ hands as before.

  3. Hey, thanks for the mention! And I also agree with the COTD. I (as many) was kinda getting used to V8s, which IMO sounded far better when they didn’t have a rev cap. But the whistling and the furious nature of these turbos, regardless of how restricted they are, makes me excited for the season to start.
    Thats one point for you FIA. You still have like a gazillion of negative points, BTW.

  4. Am I crazy or does Vettel have a hint of muscle tone this year?

    1. I guess he always knew Mark could beat him up, so he focused on his books instead. Now he has a shot at being tougher than the whippersnapper

      1. No chance- Dan is a tough Aussie and already has Seb covered LOL!!

  5. Max chilton decided to shave the last few tenths off his legs, that’s all he wanted to show.

    1. That’s some wishful thinking there from Max :)

    2. so is that how they plan getting into Q2?

    3. Maybe that’s the trophy for finishing every race (last).

  6. Asked what the Sainsbury’s boss knows about running a motorsport series, Ecclestone said: ‘All he knows about is looking for support for his kids.’

    So he’s just like you Bernie! You’re doing everything to support your daughters flamboyant life style…

  7. Given Vettel’s respect for F1 history, he’d probably be the only driver who, if he was going to win the championship in the Abu Dhabi super-bonus-season finale-bonanza purely because of double points, would pull over and let the rightful driver win it.
    Probably a lot easier to do when you’ve won four in a row of course…

    1. I totally doubt it :) Maybe he won’t be satisfied by the way he will win, but he will never voluntary give up win or title. Malaysia 2013 for example. He won’t let his team mate win, what about driver from different team. And after all you might be against the double points, but when they are fact for everybody else, why don’t you just take the opportunity. You can always say after that “Yeah, they were bad idea. I told you so, but you didn’t listen” :) Actually i do hope something like this happens, because i want the people who supported it, to suffer from it.

      1. +1 @vasschu

        The one who can’t cope with a team order to let his team mate win? You gotta be kidding @olliej.

        1. Lol can you imagine the looks on RBR’s and their sponsors’ faces if SV handed a WDC to someone else? It would probably be grounds for firing and maybe even a lawsuit for breach of contract.

          Unless there is a runaway leader such that double points don’t matter, which is what is trying to be avoided, the unfortunate consequence of double points is that someone will be robbed and the winner will have won because of the luxury of the points, so there will be unavoidable asterisks beside their names. I’ll assume that is why most within F1 seem to be against this, including of course SV.

          1. @jcost The negative reaction he got from Malaysia 2013 might make him all the more likely to turn down a tainted title.
            If he’s worried about being sued for breach of contract he could always just stick it in the tyres and drop a few hints in the media – no one would be able to prove anything.

          2. Put another way @olliej you are dreaming. Saying he doesn’t want the help of double points is all well and good and I would like to think the quality of most of the drivers is there such that they are thinking the same thing. But the fact is that it is there, and the fact is he wasn’t going to let a team order stop him from cheaply passing a cranked down MW in the first race of last season, so I don’t know why you think he would have such morality if it came down to winning or losing the WDC this year on double points. If he can win it that way and rob someone else, that finger will be flying just as high as ever, and when pressed about his ‘not wanting the help from double points’ comment, he’ll just remark ‘yes that rule is unfortunate but it is the same for everyone, no?’

  8. Gee, I thought RBR was an almighty team. They should have figured stuff out by now shouldn´t they?
    That is the advantage of being a Constructor and not a client. Look at how far ahead are Merc, Ferrari and McLaren!! They are constructors and they seem to have everything in order!

    There is one thing that surprises me. It´s amazing that Renault, the pioneers of the first Turbo era are having such a hard time with the this new Turbo Power Unit.

    1. Gee, I thought RBR was an almighty team. They should have figured stuff out by now shouldn´t they?

      Yeah, RBR, trying to fool everyone into thinking they’re all that, with their fancy four consecutive drivers’ and constructors’ championships. The REAL question is, what have they achieved during 2014 preseason testing?? Uh huh, that’s what I thought. What a bunch of amateurs.

  9. Bernie tells Sylt to write an article stating that King won't replace him running #F1. I guess that means the contract is signed…— Andrew Bryant (@Optimaximal) February 20, 2014

  10. I can’t agree with COTD. It’s awful. For sure there will be more room for other sounds, but it really does not sounds great. There is absolutely no madness at all in this sound. I’m going to Spa this year so when I will hear it live I may think different from now.
    That said, there will be so much exciting challenges this year that I may even not pay attention to the engine noises – but still – it’s not great.

  11. Am I the only on that thinks that if you put the nose of the Lotus and the McLaren together, they could have babies?

  12. *Takes hat off and claps*

    Respect Mr. Vettel, respect. As one of the more experienced of the drivers now and the most successful I do hope he says something to somebody who will actually listen to him.

  13. Vettel wants double points, he just wanst to be more liked so he says that he don’t want them, obviously.

  14. I still can’t understand how can Ecclestone change a race into a double points one. Isn’t all this sporting side of the matter FIA’s business. You’d think, all they need to do is call the meeting with team bosses and Jean Todt. Everyone votes to scrap the idea, and no problem. Ecclestone is a non-entity, or at least he should be non-entity in this whole points business.

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