Formula 1 - 2020 Season

Good news for F1 cuz racing point was crap for a name.

 

Chinese GP (April) looks to be cut due to coronavirus.

 

First day of testing in the books, signs not looking good for an exciting season.

If Hamilton wins in Australia, may as well cancel all the other races and hand him the title there.

 

Did anyone expect different? RBR and Ferrari put up the occasional challenge last season but both couldn't complete at every race. And last year was better than previous years. Mercedes still has a lead.

In other news, racing point is driving around in last year's Mercedes and while not F1 related, the sad news is that Aston Martin will not take the Valkery to LeMans. They cited changes to the hyper class rules (will be combined with IMSA rules) as one of the reasons.

Really sad because I would have loved to see that car race. The class itself also sounded very interesting.

 

*Valkyrie

 

First day of testing isn't really representative, none of them will have been pushing the car. Ferrari won't be 9th fastest in Australia, for example.

 

Ferrari have taken the Mercedes approach to testing, at least yesterday, which is validating the data from the simulator.

It could just be they ran the tanks full all session. There hasn't really been a good break down of yesterday explaining how long each run was etc.

Being so far behind running similar programs is not good.

Let's hope today is different.

 

I think being so far behind on the first day of testing is completely inconsequential. If they've got a program to run and they can get the data they need at the speeds they did, why would they need to care what speed the other teams were doing?

 

Testing is under way and here's all the relevant stuff:

Teams & Drivers:

• Mercedes - Mercedes
  • 44 Lewis Hamilton
  • 77 Valtteri Bottas
• Ferrari - Ferrari
  • 5 Sebastian Vettel
  • 16 Charles Leclerc
• Red Bull Racing - Honda
  • 23 Alexander Albon
  • 33 Max Verstappen
• McLaren - Renault
  • 4 Lando Norris
  • 55 Carlos Sainz
• Renault - Renault
  • 3 Daniel Ricciardo
  • 31 Esteban Ocon
• AlphaTauri (ex-Toro Rosso) - Honda
  • 10 Pierre Gasly
  • 26 Daniil Kvyat
• Racing Point - Mercedes
  • 11 Sergio Pérez
  • 18 Lance Stroll
• Alfa Romeo - Ferrari
  • 7 Kimi Räikkönen
  • 99 Antonio Giovinazzi
• Haas - Ferrari
  • 8 Romain Grosjean
  • 20 Kevin Magnussen
• Williams - Mercedes
  • 63 George Russell
  • 6 Nicholas Latifi

Calendar:
19-21.2. PRE-SEASON TEST 1, Barcelona
26-28.2. PRE-SEASON TEST 2, Barcelona

15.3. AUSTRALIA, Melbourne
22.3. BAHRAIN, Sakhir
5.4. VIETNAM, Hanoi
19.4. CHINA, Shanghai - Cancelled at least for now
3.5. NETHERLANDS, Zandvoort
10.5. SPAIN, Barcelona
24.5. MONACO, Monte Carlo
7.6. AZERBAIJAN, Baku
14.6. CANADA, Montreal
28.6. FRANCE, Le Castellet
5.7. AUSTRIA, Spielberg
19.7. GREAT BRITAIN, Silverstone
2.8. HUNGARY, Budapest
30.8. BELGIUM, Spa-Francorchamps
6.9. ITALY, Monza
20.9. SINGAPORE, Singapore
27.9. RUSSIA, Sochi
11.10. JAPAN, Suzuka
25.10. UNITED STATES, Austin
1.11. MEXICO CITY, Mexico City
15.11. BRAZIL, Sao Paulo
29.11. ABU DHABI, Yas Island

--

Also, there's already some possible controversy cooking up.
Mercedes' steering wheel now moves along the z-axis too, apparently controlled by driver they push it "in" in corners and pull it back on straights.
Finnish F1 broadcasters expert (ex-F1 Engineer Ossi Oikarinen) suspects it affects the toe/tracking of front wheels to either increase the toe in corners further than it usually is or to decrease it from the normal slightly outwards toe on straights to improve speed.
Could this be seen as illegal moving aerodynamic part?



(edit: also no idea if toe is the right word, never knew it meant something other than a body part)

edit2:
(Apparently it is the right word there)


https://twitter.com/ScarbsTech
Some analysis/guesstimates on it

From another forum, no link to source:

 

There are theories that they are just running this system for testing to allow them to easily test a number of configurations without having to return to the pits

 

If they do it always the same way (push in for corners, pull for straights) that theory doesn't work really

 

If it's manually operated, they will argue it's not a powered device, similar to S-ducts

Cheers

 

Toe

 

S-Ducts did get banned though

 

Are you thinking of F-ducts?

 

Yeah, I got confused from the comparison, because I can see how F-ducts would be compared to this, but not S-ducts which are just passive airways.