F1 Digest - Malaysia Qualifying
- Length: 8:26
- Size: 7.8 MB
- File: digest7.mp3
- Transcript: digest7.pdf
- Torrent: digest7.torrent
Catching up with all the action from Free Practice 3 and Qualifying in Malaysia. No rain as promised, but plenty of other incidents to keep us entertained.
Free Practice 3
A lot of out of place times with the humidity playing tricks on the tarmac. Heidfeld placed a really good lap at the time of the timesheets, whilst Alonso and Hamilton appeared to be struggling.
Qualifying
Most of qualifying was taken up with playing the will it/won’t it game with regards to rain. For the record, it didn’t. Also notably, the incident with both McLarens impeding Heidfeld and Alonso and their subsequent penalty.
Conclusions
McLaren accept the penalty they’ve been given, Heidfeld’s happy and we imagine Trulli is the same. Button struggled on his tyres but Honda find their qualifying placement agreeable, whilst Ferrari are just happy to have had a trouble-free day.
March 22nd, 2008 at 3:31 pmDaniel B said:
Will be interesting start with Alonso 7th and Hamilton 9th
Depending on the weather, I’m going for a Massa win if wet, and Kimi/Heidfeld win is dry.
March 22nd, 2008 at 3:46 pmopenwheel said:
No fuel burn at the end of Q3 is to blame here. Although I am confident that the drivers will adapt.
March 22nd, 2008 at 5:30 pmArun said:
Good one openwheel!! lOl, anyways, I think FIA is still partial in handing out the penalties, anyone remembering Monaco 2007 will remember Massa penalized for a similar incident by getting his best lap invalidated, and I am sure LH would’ve been higher in the grid if this was done, instead of 8th and 9th, everyone wants to supress McLaran (hahahahaha.. I love this). Sorry for being mean! Just don’t want McLaran to become one like australian cricket team…
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 pmbrendanstallard said:
“No fuel burn at the end of Q3 is to blame here.”
Open Wheel, (or any other techno savvy person)
Care to explain that a little more: I think I get what you mean, but I’d like a little more amplification.
What could the regulators do: to prevent this type of nonsense occurring again? ‘Cos this has to be sorted real quick.
While Hamilton and Kovalainen are clearly (IMO) at fault: this was obviously a strategy discussed by the teams beforehand. This again is something they have done as a result of the rules, so what adaptation must they make?
Change the rules: or punish the drivers: which I absolutely support, we can’t have this going on during Qualifying. Its waay too dangerous.
brendan
March 22nd, 2008 at 11:57 pmSteveintheUK said:
Open wheel, as in no body work over the wheels, so if two cars touch wheels, one car WILL end up flying though the air. ie, F1, GP2, A1, IndyCart, IRL etc
Closed wheel, Saloon cars, have body work around the wheels, just like a road car, so just like when you hit another car when driver on the road, you’re bounce off each other more safely an in an open wheel, so less likely to have flying cars. ie, British Touring car, Nascar, truck racing, etc
If Heldfeld had hit the back or side of one of the slower cars on his last quail lap he would probably not be racing tomorrow, when the small area of the nosecone hits the big solid lump of the engine it’s not good for a drivers legs. The head on crash test that the FIA does is only done at a max of 50mph, although I think in may even be as low as 30mph, so the nosecone doesn’t really offer the driver much protection when driving into the back of another cars enigine at 100+mph.
On the other hand when Nascar, BTCC, do the same, the driver of the rear car has his engine in front of him and hits a nice large deformable rear section of the slower car, absorbs a lot of the energy from the crash. Its still not a nice crash, but the drivers are less likely to suffer any leg injury’s, but both drivers will still end up with very sore necks.
Not sure if that explains anything really, but hope it helps
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:30 ambrendanstallard said:
“Not sure if that explains anything really, but hope it helps”
Steve,
Much appreciated, and I didn’t know that about the open wheel thing. I did know something about tyres: because way back in the 70’s I prosecuted some loon for driving race cars on a road car. The race tyres were incredibly tough on the bits that hit the road surface, but the side walls were paper thin and useless in street circumstances. (I lost the case):)
However: and my question must have been badly phrased. I’ll try again.
What do the regulators do: to ensure that an incident such as occurred yesterday: does not occur again?
I mean: to an extent….why did the Mclaren drivers do what they did, because that’s the real knuckle of the problem.
What do the regulators do to stop it happening again?
brendan
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:41 amSteveintheUK said:
There is a rule for F1 that states that drivers on a slow down lap much maintain a reasonable speed, apart from that, and the not blocking rule, I don’t think there really is any rules to stop it happening again, yet.
March 23rd, 2008 at 1:00 amBen said:
It’s just common sense to keep off the racing line though. Bad call by the Mclaren pit wall crew. It’s amazing that these teams have been doing this for endless years and STILL make amateurish mistakes like this.
The good news is that we’ll see Lewis try to get past Alonso (if we get a clean start that is)…
March 23rd, 2008 at 1:41 amCorey said:
All points very true Steve and the FIA need to address it quickly. On the crash test speed I might be wrong but I believe that even though the crash test is done at 50mph (not sure as i’ve seen a realtime video and it seemed really fast), the amount of energy that it dissipates and how far the nose crushes determines how good the nose will be.
I think the crash test must show the structure wont see more than 20g deceleration. After that, crashing into anything that gives very high G deceleration will be enough to kill the drivers.
So it still does a good job as we saw in Kubica crash and if it didn’t disintegrate as it is built to, the crash looks better for the car but worse on the driver.
I believe we will see some changes to the end of qualifying by the next GP where there are stiff penalties for any repeat of today
March 23rd, 2008 at 3:07 amSteveintheUK said:
When IRL, Nascar drivers hit the outside walls on the big ovals they regularly feel 100+g, I think the highest that any driver has survived was around 150g, I need to find that info online somewhere. I still think that a test should be done at 100mph, or even 150mph to make sure the carbon/kelvar isn’t just going to turn into a pile of dust at those impact speeds. Carbon is really strong, but when it reachs it breaking point it fails totally, hence the use of Kevlar to try and hold it together.
I do material testing and can’t really see the point of the current FIA crash test, when was the last time a F1 car a race speed went around a corner at 50mph? Today 60mph, or even 80mph, is considered a really slow corner.
If cars fail the 50mph crash test then the designer should be banned from ever designing an F1 car again, with all the computer power and technology they have now days there’s really no excuse for it.
True, but rear ending another car, nosecone to engine block, is going to push the strength of the nosecone why pass the 50mpg test. If todays race starts from the grid on a wet track we could see that put to the test. Even on wet tracks the last car on the grid is doing 100+mph by the time they cross the start line, if a driver on the front 2 rows stalls or gets a bad start there could be a big speed difference between some of the cars, and with bad visibility caused by spray we could be looking at a big crash.
The last time I think that happened was during the first start of the race where Senna died, at that was on a dry track. Traction Control took away a big cause of those speed difference, but with no TC and a wet track, the risk is back.
March 23rd, 2008 at 10:56 amlou said:
Im really confused it will not let me follow the link to comment on the race thred?
anyway an update on trullis mood
http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2008/3/7550.html
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:09 amScott Dryden said:
It’s not only you, I can’t access it either.
The problem’s actually our fault - we’ve commented too much.
It’s just one of those things that can happen with blogs sometimes.
It’s usually pretty simple to solve, and just involves setting the PHP memeory_limit value to a higher amount (assuming you have memory to spare). I’m sure ‘me’ will get on to it as soon as he realises.
Anyway, I’m off back to bed for an hour or so. I don’t feel that I need it right now, but will probably be thankful of the extra rest later in the day.
Bye for now, everyone.
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:17 amlou said:
having never had a blog i was unaware of this.
yep im off too.
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:28 amSteveintheUK said:
I think we may have found the limit for the max number of comments on a single post in Wordpress, either that or the file size for these comments has max out.
Christine and ‘me’ may have to rethink how we do these Live comments if that is the case, but hope it’s just a minor hickup with the server.
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:38 amthe Blue Orange Lion said:
The same.
So who wanted to read my article on “gas-to-pass” button? Go to my blog and click on “comments”, you’ll find it there…
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:38 amRich said:
Thanks Steve for pointing me to the scores for my Fantasy Racers. I could have chosen worse - but the Red Bull team is proving more energy than I expected and completing the race.
BTW I also cannot access the Race threads. It seems to have maxed at 389 comments. Do not use Word Press so cannot suggest anything than what has already been suggested.
For Lou the Trulliometer is on a HIGH!
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:31 pmlou said:
will go and check it out now
thanks
March 23rd, 2008 at 2:01 pmCorey said:
Crash testing could get its own few pages because of all the issues surrounding it. I’ve used your quote because I had a lecture from an engineer in an F1 team and there was one team using cutting edge crash simulation software who repeatedly failed the physical test while the team using a spreadsheet written in house were spot on and passed first time. Wont name them but its really funny :P. So i agree there is no excuse for failing the test.
Would that happen to include a drop test rig as I need to organize a drop test rig for my team to carry out a test on Aluminium honeycomb for crash structure of our formula student car.
March 23rd, 2008 at 2:24 pmLee Vilenski (Edward Dyer) said:
If you haven’t already checked out the Sidepodcast league on Fantasy Racers, we are top of the Private leagues after Malaysia!
March 23rd, 2008 at 2:54 pmme said:
seems okay, at the moment, we’re keeping an eye on things, and have more improvements planned this week.
yell if you’re still having issues.
March 23rd, 2008 at 3:17 pmme said:
done that too, just in case we’re not seeing all the issues.
cheers for the advice
March 23rd, 2008 at 4:00 pmopenwheel said:
I cannot get the comments from the race either. I could not watch the race live and wanted to read the comments. any way
ITV should be renamed LHTV. never have I viewed coverage that showed one racer exclusivly. Look I have absolutly nothing agaist LH I actually like him but he was not challanging Weber at all and ITV followed this through the pit stops. Where there any other closer challanges that I missed being stuck on Hamilton for over 70% of the race. I was wondering if their were comments on the live page that reflected what I was missing.
I could not watch live for a very good reason so Please do not take it for me not being a dedicated fan.
March 23rd, 2008 at 4:29 pmme said:
we don’t judge sir
i’ve checked the site (and race thread) from multiple locations / proxies and it seems to be working fine. can you tell me if you get any kind of error message, a blank screen or whatever?
March 23rd, 2008 at 4:48 pmme said:
not that i’m about to start leaping to ITV’s defense, but they can only show what FOM give them, and if the race director wants to watch one driver, that’s what we’re stuck with.
ITV didn’t help, with all their post-race lewis-lovin’ though.
will do our best to cover all the backmarker action in the podcast later today.
March 23rd, 2008 at 5:24 pmlou said:
I have just watched the repeat of the race on ITV. Their post race coverage was SOOO much better. Okay still sooooo much “Lewis-lovin’” but there were loads of other interveiws too! they interveiwed many of the top ten drivers which is only an improvement!
March 23rd, 2008 at 6:03 pmLee Vilenski (Edward Dyer) said:
Indeed. But, ITV want to sell F1, and that’s what most Non-F1 fans want to hear about…
I think Jenson Button got about 5 seconds of attention during the race… even though he was quite fast.
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:03 pmopenwheel said:
I was able to get the thread about 5 minutes after I posted here so all is well
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:15 pmlou said:
Its cause he did not really move any places, they did show quite abit of him driving in FP and Quali. I am annoyed they did not show Barrichello once! Especailly when he got the 10 sec penalty - would have been nice if they has quickly cut to it.
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:29 pmme said:
thanks for that, we’ll keep working on improvements. please yell if you spot anything untoward.