The Motorsport Thread 2015

I wouldn't rule it out, but Spain is usually the weekend  everybody brings a big update so we'll see how they all shake out.

Practice 2 times, Merc definitely have a strong edge but Barcelona is hard on tyres so the race may come to the Ferrari's, hard to say at this point. Button in 7th and Alonso 11th looks encouraging.

Pos	Driver	Car	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1m26.852s	-	26
2	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1m27.260s	0.408s	37
3	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1m27.616s	0.764s	35
4	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1m27.780s	0.928s	36
5	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull/Renault	1m27.943s	1.091s	25
6	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso/Renault	1m28.017s	1.165s	32
7	Jenson Button	McLaren/Honda	1m28.494s	1.642s	31
8	Valtteri Bottas	Williams/Mercedes	1m28.525s	1.673s	39
9	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso/Renault	1m28.674s	1.822s	31
10	Felipe Massa	Williams/Mercedes	1m28.712s	1.860s	36
11	Fernando Alonso	McLaren/Honda	1m28.723s	1.871s	28
12	Romain Grosjean	Lotus/Mercedes	1m29.086s	2.234s	14
13	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull/Renault	1m29.098s	2.246s	4
14	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus/Mercedes	1m29.217s	2.365s	34
15	Felipe Nasr	Sauber/Ferrari	1m29.333s	2.481s	37
16	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber/Ferrari	1m29.361s	2.509s	34
17	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India/Mercedes	1m29.601s	2.749s	38
18	Sergio Perez	Force India/Mercedes	1m29.707s	2.855s	35
19	Will Stevens	Marussia/Ferrari	1m31.929s	5.077s	30
20	Roberto Merhi	Marussia/Ferrari	1m32.751s	5.899s	23

Poll for Rosberg, looks like Ferrari are well off the Mercs pace this weekend. Sainz and Verstappen in 5th and 6th is a brilliant result, Red Bull have talked up a lot about a big update for this weekend and the Torro Rosso's are still faster with the same time bomb, sorry engine, in the back.

Formula E from Monaco was interesting, massive pile up on lap 1 when Abt hit the wall on the exit of turn 1 and Senna was launched over the back of him. Not sure if Abt was pushed or not, the replays arent clear. I think turn 1 was just a bit too tight for this race, for next year instead of using the F1 tracks Ste Devot they should move the apex back so that it's a more open 90 degree right rather than a hairpin with a left hand kink after it leading down to the harbor chicane, the end of the barrier that goes up the hill to Massenet funnels them all into a very tight space.

Indycar tonight from the Indianapolis road course, Power on poll as usual. Most of the Andretti cars are at the back of the grid. You know something's wrong when Dracone is the only person you can outqualify.

It's amazing that Rahal, both Graham and his dads single car team, have ended up as the top Honda team taking the fight to Penske and Ganassi whilst the multi car Andretti have been woeful at times. KV seems to be finally coming good as well, Colletti was impressive in holding off Kanaan for most of the race and Bourdais was right in the fight for the podium here, finishing between JPM and Pagenaud.

I was always worried which version of Colletti would turn up for Indycar, the guy that lead the first half of the 2013 GP2 championship, or the guy that then didn't score a single point for months afterwards. Seems we've got the former though.

Interesting turn of events at Indy, it seems the teams were having trouble pinning down the new aero kits for Indy, quite a few crashes, the team owners complained to the Indycar league and they decided to remove the aero kits for the race! They were going at around the 230 mph range, now they are down around the 225-227 range.

Qualifying also got rained out yesterday, they still haven't qualified anyone today yet. I kind of wish they would reschedule the Indy road race, and go back to having the whole month to get ready for the 500. Could have had the aero kits figured out this way. I'm not a terribly big fan of the Indy gp race anyway though, it's a meh track.

Edited by Sheavy - May 17 2015 at 13:29

Sheavy wrote: Interesting turn of events at Indy, it seems the teams were having trouble pinning down the new aero kits for Indy, quite a few crashes, the team owners complained to the Indycar league and they decided to remove the aero kits for the race! They were going at around the 230 mph range, now they are down around the 225-227 range. Qualifying also got rained out yesterday, they still haven't qualified anyone today yet. I kind of wish they would reschedule the Indy road race, and go back to having the whole month to get ready for the 500. Could have had the aero kits figured out this way. I'm not a terribly big fan of the Indy gp race anyway though, it's a meh track.

Not quite true. In the last week we've had 3 airial accidants with Castroneves, Newgarden and Carpenter all getting airborne (and all Chevy's at that). Indycar mandated that the wicker/Gurney flap be removed (I'm not sure whether that's the one along the nose, rear wing or both), qualifying boost to be cut back to race levels (so about 40hp less) and that the teams are to run the same aero set up in qualy and the race. No more 233 laps thats for certain.

The suggestion has been that the floor cut outs between the bargeboards and the side pod are causing this but nobody really knows, there just hasn't been enough time to analyse whats gone wrong and it hasn't come up in testing before (I think the testing was done at Fontana and Texas, but not certain). So these measures have been brought in to slow the cars down a little and try and avoid the accidents whilst a permanent solution is looked into. Of course the Honda guys have been bitching because they haven't had any accidents.

Not surpriesed Lazier didn't qualify, he hasn't run faster than a 218 all month, and Vautier is only qualifying the car, James Davison is signed up to race it but had a GT race in Canada at the weekend so couldn't be there for qualifying.

That was a strange one, he just went straight on. It's like something at the front broke.

EDIT: Confirmed by Honda, left front suspension failure. Has had surgery on his left thigh, speculation that it's a broken femure, it seems Katherine Legge is the most likely candidate to take over the car.


Edited by sleeper - May 18 2015 at 17:48

Seems Hinch is out for the season, nasty injury all round that. Briscoe will take his seat for the 500 on Sunday, I don't know if that's for the whole season or just that one race though.

Hamilton was fastest in practice yesterday, though it doesnt mean much as it rained only 20 minutesinto the session. All we really know is that takes a lot of laps for the soft tyres to warm up properly and nobody has run the super-softs yet which are a brand new compound for this year. Should make for an interesting weekend as it's going to be a decidedly "green" track for qualy, nobody knows what they tyres are like and it could rain as well.

My favorite Sunday of the year!