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

So the second half of the F1 season will start with the epic race through the Ardennes forest that is Spa-Francorchamps. The track has more iconic corners and sections than most of the rest of the F1 tracks have put together. What would a modern F1 season be without a race here? Well I guess it would be 2003 or 2006 but lets forget those and say how F1 would not be F1 without a race here. The teams certainly enjoy it and after they've all be sunning themselves on beaches for the last month (apart from Ferrari of course who have secretly been developing parts with Haas in America....allegedly) so they will be raring to go. No one will want it to come round quicker that Mercedes who had a bit of a nightmare in Hungary. Both their drivers have a reputation of losing heart after a bad result and dropping form so they'll be hoping that things run smoothly in the first part of the weekend and they start to get back in the control position they have sat in for most of the season. With Ferrari winning the race on pure pace last time out though both the team and drivers will be forgiven for looking curiously over their shoulder. Is it possible that Ferrari could mount a second half of the season championship challenge? Vettel certainly seems to have got a sniff of it.

Away from the front pair with have a Red Bull team who will probably be depressed as hell that their form of double podium last time out will sink into nothingness as their engine power lets them down and dumps them back into the pack. Whilst they've had a lot of stick off everyone for how they keep complaining about the Renault engines after seeing how good their chassie was at a track that doesn't require as much engine grunt you start to see their point. Wherever they are in the field Danii Kvyat will hope he continues to take little chunks out of Ricciardo's points lead on him. The young Russian will be on a high after his first podium and he showed in GP3 days he's pretty good round Spa. That's not to say Ricciardo isn't on form though, he had a great race last time out, but he really needs to work on those starts. In the Red Bull B team the fight between Sainz and Verstappen will continue. Verstappen has the points upper hand after his 4th in Hungary but Sainz has usually come out on top on this one.

Will the McLaren revival be dead on arrival? Great results in Hungary but I can't see the Honda engine doing too well on the long straights of Spa and Monza. However both have been known to have a high attrition rate through crashes so maybe if the McLaren keeps it clean and tidy they'll continue to pick up points. That means from a McLaren point of view they have to hope Pastor Maldonado carries on as he has been doing for the Enstone team. 4 penalties in one race I think is a record for F1 and surely we are approaching a 1 race ban for Crashtor. It can't be doing Enstone any favours in the cash department either especially as they are supposed to be broke. They at least have Grosjean quietly doing a good job though. Williams should be on strong form at Spa but you never really sure which Williams you're going to get on race day. I'm sure they'll make it their priority to not get involved in a race with the Mercs but whether they can mix it up with the Ferrari's is anyones guess. One man who will probably be mixing it up in the top 10 as long as his car holds together is Nico Hulkenberg. Hulkenberg seems to have re-discovered his appetite for F1 after his Le Mans win. The other curve ball into the F1 mix at Spa might be Manor. The decision still hasn't been made on whether they will run their 2015 car with the 2015 Ferrari engine. If they decide to it could bump them up the field a bit and make everyone have to be on their toes in Q1.

I hope the run of good races F1 has will continue with this one but once again I can't see past a Hamilton pole and cruise to victory. Mind you I said that at Hungary.

 

[teabagyokel]

Titch - One point, 28 laps around Spa is 196km, 2/3 of a Grand Prix distance. Same as 36 at Sakhir or 45 and a half at Interlagos.

 

[Titch]

Well yes, and I do know that driving hard in an F1 car is hugely different to driving a road car. But I thought that part of the F1 remit is to develop new technologies that are passed on to the motor trade. I sincerely hope that they aren't passing on tyre technology that creates worn out tyres after a few hundred Kilometres. The motorways would be littered with cars.

I know thats a daft comparison, but they should /can engineer tyres that are better than that. Tyres in F1 are created to wear out but sometimes blow out, and thats not good, and are an artificial means of making things more interesting, because drivers are so restricted by rules that pure racing has become almost a thing of the past.

 

[teabagyokel]

Surely though, any tyre that's going to appear on a road car is by orders of magnitude too hard for an F1 car to extract maximum grip! We want them soft & quick, surely.

 

[The Artist.....]

teabagyokel

Personally, I'd like an option for drivers; soft and quick, but wearing out quickly, or hard and slower, but will last the entire race!

 

[Dash Racing]

There are many racing series that use tyres much closer to road spec with regards to wear. It slows things down a smidge, yes, but surely that's better than exploding tyres that could behead people? The option The Artist..... proposes is an attractive one.

 

[teabagyokel]

Isn't the idea of it beheading someone rather an extreme and unlikely result of a tyre blowing? You could get a serious injury from an entire tyre hitting the head, but I struggle to see how the gradual coming apart of the tyre is going to behead anyone.

 

[Dash Racing]

I know it's confirmed as possible with a big rig tyre. Mythbusters have not tested racing tyres, so I couldn't tell you for sure about the danger of racing tyres exploding. The high speeds involved certainly leave room for concern when a tyre explodes though.

 

[Splash]

I was a passenger in a taxi overtaking an articulated lorry on a motorway when its rear tyre exploded right next to me. Fortunately, there were double wheels on the axle so the lorry carried on driving straight. Apart from a few stray bits of tyre hitting the taxi, we suffered no ill effects. The taxi driver did get out when we eventually stopped and checked all round his car for damage. It was loud though!

 

[erinha]

Coulthard's take on the incident: BBC Sport - David Coulthard column: Vettel right to tackle Pirelli on tyres

 

[Hamberg]

I'm glad Rosberg and Vettel didn't drive in the 90s or before if they don't accept tyre blow outs. I suspect Bianchis recent death has something to do with the emotions.

 

[RasputinLives]

Well if Coulthatd says its pirelli's fault then that confirms it wasn't

 

[marksawatsky]

We have run numerous brands of tires to failure on my race track. Some burst with little warning, some have cords that break but they still hold air, some have bulges that develop on the sidewall and some can be run all the way through the rubber and the top layer of fabric cords before they fail. It's all about the design of the tire. Pirelli could make a tire that would hold air until the cords were visible to the driver, remember Lewis in the gravel trap in China 2007? His Bridgestones were well past it and showing a lot of carcass but they kept going.

 

[Greenlantern101]

Pastor took himself out before he could take anyone else out

Why would anyone have him in their car, he surely costs more than he brings in Venezuelan Bolivars.

"Maldonado's retirement was self-inflicted," said Lotus trackside operations director Alan Permane.
"He had a huge off at Eau Rouge. That damaged the clutch-control system.
"The valves were damaged and that locked his clutch out. That's why he couldn't get back."

F1 news: Pastor Maldonado's Belgian GP retirement was self-inflicted - Lotus

 

[Incubus]

That's interesting because as far as I know it's the first time Lotus have gone out of their way to publicly lay the finger of blame at Maldonado's door.

That kind of statement is normally a sure sign that a team is beginning to lose patience with a driver...

 

[Greenlantern101]

Lotus patience must be saint like for it to have lasted this long.

 

[teabagyokel]

If they're going to go bust, they may as well do so without him in the car.

On Friday FP1, they gave their new front wing to Palmer. That is, they gave the new component to the reserve driver to test, because Maldo would wall it.

 

[RasputinLives]

That's interesting because as far as I know it's the first time Lotus have gone out of their way to publicly lay the finger of blame at Maldonado's door.

That kind of statement is normally a sure sign that a team is beginning to lose patience with a driver...

I think that is possible however I think the more likely reason for the statement being made is that when the car came to a stop in the race the radio transmission was broadcast of Pastor saying "Engines broke". I'm pretty sure this was followed quickly by a phone call from Mercedes to Enstone to make sure they understood the consequences if they did make it publicly clear that it wasn't the engine.

Appearences are everything ya know.

 

[Incubus]

Are you sure that's what he said? What I remember him saying was "I've got the engine" (implying he could make it back to the pits which he did) or "I broke the engine". That wouldn't be quite the same thing.

 

[RasputinLives]

I'd have to listen to it back but I thought he'd said he broke the engine because the Sky commentary team said afterwards its not very often that happens to a Merc engine. Either way I think part of that statement was to make sure their engine supplier was clear of blame.

 

[Incubus]

I'm actually starting to think that Lotus actually reacted to the Sky commentary rather than what Maldonado actually said because "engine" was the only word I could hear clearly in his sentence. I know I'm splitting hairs a bit, as it makes little difference anyway.