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

Yes, its a tad early, but I'm not sure about being online tommorow and i'll do it now just to be safe. Well anyway, after a 3 week break, F1 roars back to life at the Tilke designed Instanbul Park circuit with the first European race of the season . F1 has been extremely unpredictable so far (apart from the pace of Vettel) and there seems no reason for this to change in Turkey barring the competitiveness, or lack of, this weekend.

Last years race is remembered for close action and fighting at the front, namely two incidents; The now famous crash between Vettel and Webber and Hamilton and Button arguing on track about who's going to win the race.

While we expect Red Bull and McLaren to pick up from where they left off in China with strong qualifying and race pace, it remains to be seen whether Ferrari can fulfill their pre season promise and finally get back to the front after 3 (or in Massa's case 2) lacklustre races. And what about Mercedes and Renault? Both teams will be aiming at the podium after strong drives this season with Heidfeld and Petrov getting 3rd places and Rosberg leading a sizeable portion in China before finishing a strong fifth behind the Red Bulls and McLarens. Williams appear to be going backwards and are now on a level with Team Lotus for pace and they will need a strong performance to banish doubts, and falling share prices. The midfield has also become increasingly conjested with Sauber, Force India and Torro Rosso fighting over the small points with the likes of Di Resta and Perez making positive early impressions with Sutil and the evergreen Barichello struggling.

At the back HRT and Virgin continue to squabble at the back with HRT finally getting their act together and posing a real problem for Virgin who have recently employed Pat Symonds to evaluate the outfit and suggest ways of improvement due to no increase in pace of their 2011 challenger and they could end up slipping behind the improving Hispania team.

Turkey has become famous for its high speed turn 8 which will no doubt help the likes of Red Bull with their *ahem* flexi-wings and it would be a foolish man to bet against a Red Bull Vettel taking pole on Saturday, but as Murray Walker said, anything can happen and it usally does, particulary with rain being forecast for the latter part of the week, we might be seeing the intermediate tyres being used for the first time this season. Tyres will again be the watch word though whatever the weather, along with marbles.

With the Turkish Grand Prix currently under threat due to rising prices and low attendance figures, this year could be the last time we see F1 cars grace the sweeping track and one of Tilkes' better tracks and if the last 3 grand prix are anything to go by, we should be in for a cracker this weekend.

For Galahad's superb circuit write up see http://cliptheapex.com/pages/istanbul-park/
 
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The harder tyres in my opinion are pointless, they don't do what they are meant to...which is give less grip but more durable...instead it's less grip and the durability more or less the same....
 
A few trends for Istanbul:
  • Only three former winners of the Turkish GP will be competing this weekend: the two McLaren drivers, and Felipe Massa, who scored his first victory there in 2006 and has followed it up with two more since.
  • Massa also has three pole positions in Turkey, and has never qualified lower than eighth. Since joining Ferrari in 2006, he has always outqualified Fernando Alonso at Istanbul - the Spaniard has yet to make it onto the front row in qualifying.
  • Alonso is, however, one of only two drivers to have completed the race distance in all six previous Turkish events. The other is Jenson Button.
  • Istanbul saw Vitaly Petrov's best qualifying performance in 2010 - 9th position.
  • Sauber/BMW Sauber have got their drivers into the top ten on the grid in Turkey nine times (out of twelve).
  • Michael Schumacher outqualified Nico Rosberg in Turkey last year, however this is one of few venues where the seven-times champion has never won. Both Mercedes GP cars, and the Renault of Robert Kubica, qualified ahead of the best of the Ferraris in 2010.
  • Rubens Barrichello has struggled at Istanbul, only once making it into the top ten in qualifying, and scoring a solitary point from his six starts.
 
I agree with sly about the hard tyres, they were around a second a lap slower but lasted at best a couple of laps longer. With them lasting for the same period it was obvious that softs were always better. However, if we now have a situation where you can go 2/3 stops on hards (and 1xsofts) or 3/4 stops (and 1xhards) then it gives a greater likelihood of differing strategies. So once again I applaud Pirelli.

I'll be interested to see how all the cars handle the updates, you can bet at least a few teams will bolt 'em on Friday and they'll be off again come Saturday afternoon. The new tyres being tested on Friday could hamper the teams abilities to assess the updates too.
 
The FIA has confirmed that the DRS activation zone at this weekend's Turkish Grand Prix will start shortly before Turn 11.
As AUTOSPORT revealed last week, the FIA has decided to stretch the activation area so it is between Turn 10 and Turn 12 - which means it will run through the fast right-hander onto the back straight.
The detection zone for the DRS will be shortly before the braking zone for Turn 9.
The location of the DRS zone is the same place where Red Bull Racing duo Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel collided last year in their fight for the lead of the race.
 
As TBY already noted, this wasn't a Red Bull circuit last year, and I don't think they will dominate this year either. I do expect Seb to be on pole though.

It will be a worrying sign if McLaren cannot challenge the RBR in Istanbul, as it was probably their second best circuit for pure pace last year.
 
The place where Red Bull had the advantage was Sector 1 and turn 8 I think....plus I heard Red Bull's qualifying performance is so good, is due to the way the way they set up their car with the DRS in qualifying.
 
I think that tyre strategy is going to be the key to this race.I also expect to see some unusual tactics in qualifying irrespective of what McLaren say.
The pit stop penalty at Turkey is only 17 seconds so any extra stops can be recovered time wise very easily.
 
Jru said:
I agree with sly about the hard tyres, they were around a second a lap slower but lasted at best a couple of laps longer. With them lasting for the same period it was obvious that softs were always better. However, if we now have a situation where you can go 2/3 stops on hards (and 1xsofts) or 3/4 stops (and 1xhards) then it gives a greater likelihood of differing strategies. So once again I applaud Pirelli.
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Perhaps this is a good point. I might of jumped the gun with my opinion on it. If we've learned anything this season, let things play out before making a judgement on them.

The early races have been about guessing how long the soft tyres will last, if hard tyres can last a bit more longer we might get teams deciding which tyre strategy to take instead.
 
KekeTheKing said:
As TBY already noted, this wasn't a Red Bull circuit last year, and I don't think they will dominate this year either. I do expect Seb to be on pole though.

It will be a worrying sign if McLaren cannot challenge the RBR in Istanbul, as it was probably their second best circuit for pure pace last year.
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Yeah as said above, Red Bull were really good in turn 8 last year but Mclaren spent the rest of the lap reeling them in.
 
sportsman said:
The pit stop penalty at Turkey is only 17 seconds so any extra stops can be recovered time wise very easily.
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Pit stop penalty will be quite a big factor this season. If it is a case of 2/3 stoppers again and everyone picks 3, we could see people being clever and going for 4.
 
AXLE TRAMP said:
I'd rather the race was won on the track than in the pits but I guess that's F1 in 2011...
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How do you mean? I class being won in the pits as drivers overtaking another in a pit stop race. Strategy is obviously done "from the pits", and in this sense, China was won "from the pits", but it was played out on the track and was brilliant entertainment.
 
Yes but Sundays BTCC meet at Thruxton was even MORE entertaining - without any pit stops. The racing was ALL on the track. F1 is just different...
 
AXLE TRAMP said:
Yes but Sundays BTCC meet at Thruxton was even MORE entertaining - without any pit stops. The racing was ALL on the track. F1 is just different...
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I guess this is a matter of opinion type thing. F1 is obviously different from BTCC. I quite like how important strategy is though. As long as there is wheel to wheel racing, which this season there have been lots. Strategy keeps it unpredictable.
 
It'd be good to see some big errors this weekend leading to important DNF's. These were what made the drama last season - particularly at turkey - and were the only thing missing from the first 3 races.
 
AXLE TRAMP said:
Yes but Sundays BTCC meet at Thruxton was even MORE entertaining - without any pit stops. The racing was ALL on the track. F1 is just different...
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You can't really compare F1 to BTCC, they are too different and are exciting and gripping in totally different ways. Remember, overtaking is not the be all and end all when it comes entertaining races.
 
johnnoble1990 said:
Why are Pirelli fiddling with the tyres? I know they are trying to get rid of the marbling, but adding a few laps extra to the hards could make it a straight-forward 3 stopper for all teams. Clearly they haven't heard of the phrase "don't fix what isn't broken".
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johnnoble1990 said:
The early races have been about guessing how long the soft tyres will last, if hard tyres can last a bit more longer we might get teams deciding which tyre strategy to take instead.
Click to expand

jru said:
However, if we now have a situation where you can go 2/3 stops on hards (and 1xsofts) or 3/4 stops (and 1xhards) then it gives a greater likelihood of differing strategies. So once again I applaud Pirelli.
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I am pretty sure that I have heard Pirelli quoted on numerous occasions that they will début the new hard compound at Barcelona. And this article confirms that and gives the reason why:

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/formula-1/will-gray/article/5493/

The idea of the different tyre types is to have the softer tyre choice providing a large amount of grip but wearing out quicker while the harder selection will last longer but offers reduced grip (and therefore slower lap times).

So far, however, the durability of the hard and soft tyres have been relatively similar so Pirelli tried out a new compound in practice at the last race designed to make the harder tyres last a bit longer, to make the difference between the two types more similar to that which was originally expected.

Understandably, in China most teams chose to concentrate on learning about the performance of the tyres they would be using over the race weekend rather than testing future design ideas, so Pirelli was left with as many questions as they had answers on their new creation.

That means the new hard tyre - which Pirelli had hoped would add an extra four laps of durability - will not now be raced in Turkey and predictions are that the nature of the Turkish track could cause those hard tyres to be even less durable than they have been in the past, equalising the difference between the different types even more.
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So we won't be seeing the new hard compound lasting any longer than the soft here in Turkey either.
 
Eurosport Tech Talk said:
The race takes place three weeks earlier than last year, so the weather is likely to be cooler than it was in the past - and if that is the case, the reduced temperatures could be a blessing for Pirelli.
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The only problem with this bit of wishful thinking is that Pirelli needed the higher temperatures of the fly away races to help the tyres perform as they were intended. At Barcelona in lower temperatures their tyres degraded at such an alarming rate as to give rise to predictions of 3 and 4 pit stops being obligatory. Pirelli assured everyone that everything would be ok because the tyres would behave better when they are working within a higher temperature range.

So the hotter the better say I.
 

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