Formula One ( F1 )

Now you know your shit, but this is absolute fantasy.

He'd be more likely to be an estate agent if he stayed with McLaren. No, he wanted to win (and the cash) and made a shrewd move. Maybe Schumacher should have stayed with Jordan or senna with tyrrell or vettel with toro Rosso.

The difference between Schumacher and Hamilton is that Hamilton was given a career by Ron Dennis and McLaren. If it were not for the financial help that he received then his career would have stopped at karting, end of.

Yes Schumacher was given his break by Jordan and Senna started with Tyrell but they had made it to the point where they were able to be picked up by those teams themselves then let their talent move them on.

I feel quite strongly about this and not just in F1; its like wendyball or rugby teams who do not have the transfer budget of the big boys so instead they invest their money in youth development. If someone has invested money, time and effort in you and trained you to be the best that your talent allows you to be then, IMO, it is not really on if you ditch them because things are not going your way. Or in the case of Lewis Hamilton start acting like a petulant child, slagging off the people that you work with and posting confidential information on Twatter before jumping ship. There is nothing about being a competitive person that says you can't be classy.

FWIW if things keep going the way they are at Red Bull I fully expect Vettel to act in the same manner.

He's not Aryton Senna, able to drive beyond the car and so forth.

But he can get more out of the car than others- look at what McLaren said about his team mate from last year in comparison, they said that Perez would never be as fast as Jensen in the same car and that was a large part of why they were binning him.

I also suspect that the car needs to suit him- but that's true of Vettel, who much as I think is a twat, can really drive.

Jensen had the car, the team, and enough ability to win when it counted- and did so.

You may not like the political aspect of being a driver, but you could be the fastest person to ever sit in a car- doesn't matter if you spend your entire career in a Mindardi because you can't get a drive with Williams, as it were.

IMO every WDC since Räikkönen in '07 has had the best car on the grid. It kind of goes with the territory these days.

It's basically about understanding performance changes as the tyres wear. As well as grip levels the aerodynamics also change. As the tyre wears it will reduce in diameter slighlty which will change things like ride height and the gaps to the bodywork and floor at the rear etc. There's also the influence of any lips that are formed on tyres as the rubber rolls off the sides of the tyre. This will affect the vortices coming off the tyres. So these seemingly small things have a significant influence on the aerodynamics and hence balance (rear/forward downforce levels).

Understanding these influences are why they would maybe want to run on tyres in these conditions as it's something you can't test in the tunnel but would be benficial to know in the event that you would need to run on worn tyres from a strategy perspective. Or how to minimise any adverse effects.

Added to that it's about how to work the tyres properly, i.e. getting them to and keeping them in their optimum temperature performance window and how to maintain that as the tyres wear. As well as mechanical set up, aerodynamics plays a significant role in how the tyres are worked.

Out of curiosity what is the difference in Diameter between and new tyre and one that has "fallen off the cliff"?

If Mercedes can withstand the serious challenge from Honda next year, Hamilton may move up in people's considerations.

I'm starting to get a bit sceptical about whether or not this will be a damp squib. In the last couple of years McLaren's problem has not been with the engine, but with the chassis and the aero package. I know that Ron is back with the cunty win at all costs including corporate espionage attitude but he did let himself get pushed out of the door in the first place, has he lost the edge? If so will there be a repeat of last year where they had a strong engine and poor car.

From what I've read their biggest problem this year is making the rear wishbones down-force providing structures, something that most other teams looked into but discounted because the drag was just too great. McLaren of old would have known that other teams were looking at it, found out what they were doing and probably discounted it.

Back to power plants though. It must be concerning to the non-Red Bull teams, that their own Renault engines look anemic in comparison to Red Bull's. Are Renault putting all their efforts into Red Bull, and allowing the others to catch up... if and when?

**Also, Ferrari came close to the same exhaust-turbo solution that Mercedes did, but bottled going as far, possibly due to the risk from vibrations along an extended shaft? That must hurt the Ferrari engineers, to know they were so close, and the same idea was better executed by their competitor. **

I think Renault users may look at Honda as a solution, if Renault can't match the Merc unit. It's all speculation, but one engine is so far ahead of others, we can't properly assess the chassis of Ferrari, for example.

Lastly, why is Force India punching above their weight?

Hold on what happened to the snorts of derision about Ferrari being incompetent at designing small engines?

The best racing drivers are born to race. They are competitive and they are cunts. What they do off track doest really bother me, as long as they are good to watch behind the wheel of a single seater.

Jim Clark was supposedly one of the nicest men to have walked the planet, he also happened to be one of the best drivers of all time. There are quite a few other examples. As I have already said earlier in this meta-post just becuase you are competitive doesn't mean that you cannot be classy.

haha. that's great.

I think it must be a British thing - no-one likes a winner. Look at Alonso. When he was WC, everyone hated him for being a whiny bitch. Now, he is the best driver on the circuit. Maybe it's an underdog thing.

I have never had a problem with Alonso, Hamilton is just a prick pure and simple for reasons I have outlined many times.