Grand Prix 2011 Italian Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

The fat bloke lady is starting to sing

Sebastian Vettel took a major stride towards a second world championship after a crushing win in Belgium, he extended his lead over Mark Webber who made a good recovery from a bad start to finish second after a fantastic overtake on Fernando Alonso into Eau Rouge.

Lewis Hamiltons indifferent season continued after a crash with Kamui Kobayashi into Les Combes, while he won't admit it, he will be close to giving up on closing down Vettel as he is over 100 points behind, but while he can't win the championship, that won't stop him going to win every race remaining and with Monza being a strong McLaren track, he will be up there in the running.

Monza is one of the most historic tracks on the F1 calendar and will be full of Ferrari fans as it is the teams home race and the tifosi are known for their support of the prancing horse and after a Ferrari win in 2010 they willl be expecting more of the same from Fernando who needs a win to keep alive his fading championship hopes but an average showing in Spa including losing third place late on will be a killer blow to the Spaniard. Massa is sliding further into obscurity after a good start, but faded quickly into the minor points.

The track isn't one of Red Bulls strongest circuits due to the low downforce and long straights but we have said that a few circuits aren't Red Bull friendly circuits and Vettel has gone on to get pole and win and Monza might not be an exception with Vettel in imperious form and the car seemingly bulletproof there is no-one who can stop the bull racing to the title in emphatic fashion.

After a turbluent weekend, Pastor Maldanado picked up his first point in F1 with a strong drive to tenth (and a lot of luck) to give his beleagured Williams outfit a small reason to be happy but it represents how far they have fallen in that a point is an achievement for them. Barrichello finished a dissapointing 16th finishing behind both Lotus cars.

Bruno Senna will be aiming to improve on a promising first weekend back in F1, he qualified a brilliant 7th, but rusty racecraft caused a bad collision at turn 1 and he eventually finished 13th, the last of the unlapped cars, Petrov managed to pick up a handful of points to go level with his former team mate Nick Heidfeld who is seeking legal advice after losing his seat last week to the young Brazilian.

Adrian Sutil continues his upturn in form after outpacing Di Resta who had a poor weekend with the German taking home 7 points and Di Resta just finishing outside the points in 11th, with Nico Hulkenberg challenging for a set at Force India next season, both these two drivers have improved lately with both taking home points from the last few races
At the back of the field, Jarno Trulli finished ahead of his team-mate showing that maybe he still has some pace in the Lotus now that they have fixed the power steering issues, with Chandhok just over his shoulder he will need to beat his team-mate to ensure that he still has a seat at the team next year and extend his long career.

For Galahads supreme circuit write up see here http://cliptheapex.com/pages/autodromo-nazionale-monza/
 
Click to expand
So FIA are going to have two independent DRS detections zones for the first time unlike Canada where there was only one detection point for the two zones. Not sure if this is a great idea.
 
Quintessentially said:
So FIA are going to have two independent DRS detections zones for the first time unlike Canada where there was only one detection point for the two zones. Not sure if this is a great idea.
Click to expand

I think so yes. Although, didn't they use 2 DRS zones at Valencia as well, but then I think there was just the 1 activation zone.

I suppose the issue with 2 activation zones is that if you pass in the first zone, you'll then possibly get overtaken in the 2nd, so it might be better to pass in the 2nd. I think this is better than having 2 zones with 1 activation though, as if you remember, that allowed a car to get in-front through the first zone and then just pull away even more in the 2nd, giving them quite a large advantage. This is probably fairer, although it does make it a little artificial and maybe the single DRS zone would be best.

I think the two zones will be split up a little more than at Canada and Valencia, which should mean 2 different overtaking points in the track, rather than one huge overtaking section.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/94135
 
tranquility2k9 said:
Looks like this could be one of Ferrari's Rear Wings / DRS for Monza.

http://www.formula1.com/wi/sutton/2011/d11ita28.jpg

Is it just me or does the rear flap look VERY small and the whole design quite innovative? It certainly looks very interesting.

You'd expect Ferrari to have saved something a little special for their home race.
Click to expand

If it makes them faster, then why not from the start of the season........looks very untidy.
 
Sarinaide said:
If it makes them faster, then why not from the start of the season........looks very untidy.
Click to expand

Because it doesn't make them faster at every track. They have different wings for different tracks. They don't just slap a wing on the car at the start of the year and go "Ecco a voi, vecchio mio".

McLaren brought 3 different rear wings to Spa, for example.
 
Sarinaide said:
If it makes them faster, then why not from the start of the season........looks very untidy.
Click to expand

Because Monza is a low downforce circuit and this is a low downforce rear wing? Probably wouldn't have been too effective at Monaco...
 
Monza weather report!
Google says that theres a chance of storms on Saturday and Sunday
BBC says Sunny intervals on Saturday and Light rain shower on Sunday
And for my time report:
Saturday: 0700-patcy grey skies 1000-Light rain showers 1300-Sunny skies (0.2mm of rain expected) 1600-The same as before
Sunday: 0700-Patchy cloudy skies (0.1mm) 1000-Partly cloudy skies 1300-Patcy rain possible (0.9mm) 1600-Moderate or Heavy rain shower (2.7mm)

Brackets indicate the amount of rain:tumbleweed:
 
The DRS should be less effective, since the amount of drag reduction is proportional to the amount of downforce, and the Monza wings are the lowest-drag/lowest-downforce combination of the season. That's not to say that having two, long zones won't give them every chance of overtaking each other, though. Getting the rev limits right for qualifying, and the race, will be crucial.

I'm looking forward to the unveiling of the Monza-spec rear wings tomorrow. I still miss the old Hockenheim :(

Any chance of bringing back AVUS?
 
I saw Smedley say that too, was well funny. They are a great pair.

Interesting in driver interviews, Jenson and Lewis have both sounded a little unsure as to whether they will be fast enough on the straights after seeing some other teams bringing very small rear wings.

Lewis says:-

"I don't know what to expect. We’ll find out tomorrow if we've got competitive end of straight speeds. I’m not quite sure. You look in the garages and you see some people with really, really thin wings, and some people with similar wings to what they had in the last race. We have a similar wing to what we had in the last race. I’m hopeful that it will work and we’ll be competitive."

"Last year we didn’t have such a strong blown diffuser, this year’s are much stronger, so I think you can run less downforce on the wings and still have similar downforce to the heavier wing in low speed corners. Yes, Jenson was very competitive, but it’s a bit different with the DRS, particularly in the race, it’s a little bit different compared to last year. You’ll lose a lot more with heavier downforce."

Meanwhile, in this interview (around 2 min 15 onwards), Jenson also talks about this same topic:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/formula_one/14845870.stm

He says:- "I just hope we haven't got too much drag really. I'm not sure what drag levels people have got here, but the Mercedes was very fast at Spa and we've got to hope we've been able to take enough drag off the car. We've been trying many different things and hopefully we'll have good straightline speed, but whether it's enough we've got to wait and see."

They both sound a little worried about their straight line speed to be honest. I think some teams have brought extremely small wings here whereas they have the same as they had at Spa. I think with the blown diffusers this year, that are generating so much rear downforce, you can get away with running a very small rear wing and still have the rear down force, but then lose the drag.
 
Only time will tell, but once again McLaren seem to think they're the smartest ones in the room. Don't mind the conventional Monza wisdom held for decades.....

Does anybody think they'll really be able to get out front and immediately clear a 1 second gap? Because I don't.
 
It might be a good strategy to get pole, provided their DRS works effectively, but might require some robust defending in the race.

Or McLaren might put a totally different wing on for FP2.
 
Perhaps McLaren are relying on extra downforce to allow them to stay on terms with Red Bull through Curva Grande & the Lesmos, and DRS to hold them off down to Ascari & into the first chicane. I suppose it also depends on how the tyres behave - they may be needing some rear downforce to keep the tyres in their optimum temperature range.
 
From Autosport:

"Minor adjustments currently being made to the front wing on Hamilton's car with the use of a hammer."!

ROFL Are Top Gear filming there, or something?
 

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