Grand Prix 2015 Australian Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

The penultimate test before the start of the season is under way so time for us all to speculate on what will happen in Australia as the teams actually race one another for the first time under the revised eco-regs. Gone are the anteater snouts, although the cars still aren't particularly pretty (to my eye at least) and we have a mix up on the driver front.

Mercedes continue with double World Champion Lewis Hamilton, who wont use car No.1 (BOO!) and Nico Rosberg whilst their likely challenges have been playing musical chairs. Fernando Alonso has gone back to McLaren and Ron Dennis is doing his Basil Fawlty impression "don't mentioned 2007. I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it" and JB retains his seat after fevered speculation :sleeping: that he would be dropped in favour of K Mag to see how well Honda can do on their return to F1 after a 6 year absence.

Vettel slips into Fernando's seat at Ferrari with the hope of dragging the red menace back to it's Schumacher glory days or perhaps even back to it's real glory days of being "The" F1 team. Kimi Raikkonen carries on Ferrari, presumably the team management saw something else last season compared to us humble fans to justify keeping him on for another bash. Either that or they discovered that Alonso had been feeding Kimi Magnum's laced with mogadon.

The Honey Badger will smile his way through the season as Red Bull's defacto No.1 with Danni Kyvat taking his place as the junior driver. What chance of a repeat of 2014 with the new boy at Red Bull showing the incumbent how it's done? Will Renault have manged to close the gap to the Mercedes power unit? As the only other team to win a race in 2014 Red Bull should be best placed to challenge the Mercedes but who knows what the other teams have been up to over the winter.

No change at Williams, Massa and Bottas continue with Mercedes power. I still can't get used to Williams Mercedes but then I'm just an old git. Assuming Williams have the same system behind the driver as the works team and their car has evolved over the winter could we see Frank's team challenging for wins?

The RB junior team has a completely new line up with Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen at Toro Rosso. I would suggest they are as likely to be allowed to beat the main Red Bull team as Williams are the Mercs but then I'm just cynical.

Lotus, or Team Enstone as some might say, continue with Grosjean and some bloke with braces on his teeth and a huge bag full of petro dollars, this time with a Merc engine to push it along. Gone is the double nose in favour of a far more orthodox car. They should be able to challenge Force India for places this season but I doubt they will be much higher up. FI have a stable driver line up with Hulkenberg and Perez but there is much speculation about the dire state of their finances as rumours abound that Vijay Mallay is on his uppers. It may explain the haircut as he can't have paid for someone to do that to his head.

And finally to Sauber. Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson have replaced Gutirrez and Sutil, I woudl presume because of the size of pay cheque they can provide. Sauber need a good season as scoring Null Points in 2014 must have cost them big in the FOM prize money pay out. They have also been very conservative in their car design but if testing is to be believed it's a fairly speedy machine and I cannot believe they won't pick up a few points this year.

Marussia or Manor GP are threatening to turn up in last years car just to make Bob Fernley feel guilty for vetoing the idea of team using the 2014 car for the first 2 or 3 races but, as has been pointed out in the past, this is the Piranha Club so don't expect any favours from the other teams.

So what to expect at Albert Park? I suspect Mercedes will still be the team to beat but the gap will have closed to Red Bull and Ferrari. Williams will be a subservient No.2 team and be close but not quite close enough. In the midfield I expect lots of racing as the team left in F1 for 2015 all appear to be very similar in terms of machinery, cash and driver capabilities. The big unanswered question is how the Mclaren Honda will perform and I don't think we will find that out until FP1 on the Friday or even come the end of the race on Sunday.

Welcome back F1, we have missed you.
 
So what do we know about Kmags engine failure and will it cost Alnoso?

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I don't think it matters an awful lot right now... Would a grid penalty for entering an extra engine make that much difference to a McLaren driver this season?
 
From the ESPN website

"At the end of 2014 several drivers suffered severe grid penalties for engine changes, some of which carried over multiple races. This will no longer be the case in 2015. A grid drop will still apply for changing certain components after drivers have exceeded their initial allotment, but any unused penalty will be converted into a time penalty for the race rather than carrying over to other events. This will also apply in the case of changing an entire power unit, previously resulting in a pit-lane start, with a cumulative penalty for each component being installed and, if necessary, a time penalty for the race."
 
Thanks -WBF1- !

Just wondered if McLaren got a 10 place grid penalty whether they'd be going back 2 spaces on the grid for like 5 races in a row! Obviously not now. Sense prevails!
 
Nothing much, apart from disastrous PR for Honda. .."Honda. The engine that needs replacing at every race"...
 
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I don't know for certain but I think because Bottas had already qualified then they couldn't use another driver.

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Just as a pointer as to how much F1's changed in the past generation or so what with its ever-more stringent regulations, when Niki Lauda apruptly decided he'd had enough of F1 after a practice session during the 1979 Canadian GP, Bernie simply grabbed hold of Riccardo Zunino who'd just been attending as a spectator and before he even knew it he suddenly found himself covered in Niki's overalls and told he'd be racing a Brabham F1 the following day. Whoever heard of super-licenses uh?
 
F1 changed the moment advertising became part of it, your sponsor became the over riding factor in success, cars became faster as the money increased, there were many entrants that went for various methods of improving the lap speed, engine power aero and various other "cheats" some very clever , some downright dangerous. Designers looked for ways round regulations, those with power in the "sport" lobbied for support to overcome the latest successful design tweak that circumvented the intention of the rules, the spirit is long out of the window.
The FIA should have stood up to the outsiders when they went to law, they should have stated in the early 70's that the FIA was the be all of motor sport, they had the final decision, you sign that the FIA are the final arbiter if you wish to compete, team owners, sponsors, drivers and team principals. The FIA should not have had the power to dispense the running of F1 to any organisation for more than 5 years, most countries have a 5 year rule on governments as a maximum, that protects them from dictatorships. Seems something went wrong and F1 really is in a worse state than Greece
 
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Just as a pointer as to how much F1's changed in the past generation or so what with its ever-more stringent regulations, when Niki Lauda apruptly decided he'd had enough of F1 after a practice session during the 1979 Canadian GP, Bernie simply grabbed hold of Riccardo Zunino who'd just been attending as a spectator and before he even knew it he suddenly found himself covered in Niki's overalls and told he'd be racing a Brabham F1 the following day. Whoever heard of super-licenses uh?

To be fair there's nothing in the regulations currently that would prevent a driver change after practice; only that the replacement would need a superlicence.
 
Today's race was brought to you by Mercedes :D

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I think it would be fascinating to give a group of independent inspectors, probably from the aerospace sector, an F1 rule book and turn them lose on all of the F1 teams. I am willing to bet they they would find a plethora of violations on ALL teams and that correcting them might well change the power structure in the sport/business.
 
When Red Bull were doing well it was the car design. Now they're shit it's the engine.

People say what suits them.
 
People also cheat whenever they can (a sad comment on our world today) because of the financial reward that comes from that cheating.

I wonder what public reaction would be if someone found that, say, Mercedes, had been doing something illegal for last season and this and must, therefore, have all results in that time frame expunged? My bet is the public outcry would be such as to make such a draconian ruling unthinkable!

Doesn't that indicate that it is WE, the public, who encourage the "Win at any cost" mentality?
 
Toto Wolff has said that Mercedes are now leading the way in terms of downforce - higher speeds through the twisty stuff but with Williams and Ferrari beating them in the speed traps. The stats back him up too, you'll find Rosberg and Hamilton placed around 10th in the speed trap both in qualifying and the race, up to 5 km/h slower than the fastest Williams/Ferrari. It's not just the power of the engine, it's the packaging and aerodynamics that is making the Mercedes a dominant package. You could make the argument that the power advantage Mercedes has allows them to ramp up the downforce without being vulnerable on the straights, I suppose.

Meanwhile, the Renault powered cars were 10-15 km/h down on the fastest cars through the speed trap (5-10 km/h down on Mercedes) and McLaren Honda about 5 km/h behind them (15-20 km/h behind the fastest, or 10-15 km/h behind Mercedes).
 
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