F1-Blog

What’s Monaco shown us?

Well then! What a weekend for F1, troubles, turmoils, crashes and jubilations. Let’s see what Monaco has shown us.

Mercedes: We have learned that Lewis is now more upbeat again after his down mood before the event, and we have also learned (as I think we already knew) that Nico is less good at hauling a car that’s not exactly to his liking around. Nico made a good decision (prompted by the team)…

Renault not to debut new PU early

Renault have said that they will not bring the upgraded power unit to Monaco, even though they have said they will bring it to the test days next week.

After this weekends performance with the ‘old spec’ from Red Bull that may be the wise choice, as pure power is not what’s needed at Monaco and time may be better spent making sure that the power unit (with what people believe has the new style…

Lewis after a slightly slow entry into turn one got overtaken by Nico, and tried to come back past in the 3rd corner getting a much better drive onto the short straight, whether Nico saw Lewis coming or not is unsure at the moment, but whether he did or didn’t, Nico did not leave Lewis enough space and he had to take to the grass to avoid the other Mercedes. Traction was lost, and Lewis slipped…

Lewis back on pole

Lewis Hamilton got his performance right this weekend just at the right point, after struggling compared to his team mate in all the free practice sessions, he managed to get his car balance right just at the right time, in Q3.

Lewis said that the issues he had on Friday were technical, and because it was therefore a wasted day Lewis decided to follow Nico’s setup for the free practice 3, and…

Musical Chairs at Red Bull

So then we all know (and knew) that Red Bull have called up Max Verstappen from the junior team to swap places with Danill Kvyat, But what does that mean for the two Red Bull teams?

Well we know that Max has been making waves, there’s nothing normal about his career path to F1, and now it seems that the Red Bull ‘factory’ team have had enough, and want some new blood in the team to drive it…

This week we have news from Renault and a disagreement between bosses.

Renault : The team have said that they will be bringing upgrades to almost every race left in the season (and lets be honest, they need it!).

“We have some aero development and we have some front suspension developments coming and we have an engine upgrade in Canada so we can expect to be putting something on the car almost…

Complete race breakdown coming shortly.

Pos Driver Car Gap 1 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1h32m41.997s 2 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 25.022s 3 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 31.998s 4 Valtteri Bottas Williams/Mercedes 50.217s 5 Felipe Massa Williams/Mercedes 1m14.427s 6 Fernando Alonso McLaren/Honda 1 Lap 7 Kevin Magnussen Renault 1 Lap 8 Romain Grosjean Haas/Ferrari 1 Lap 9 Sergio Perez Force India/Mercedes 1 Lap…

Engines and Head protection

The engine rules that have been agreed for 2017 have a proviso in them that allows the FIA to force the engine manufacturer that is supplying the least number of teams to supply a team that does not have an engine supply. This would have meant that this year Red Bull would have got Renault engines, via the FIA forcing them to supply the team. New manufacturers into the sport get let off for their…

Pre-Race news from Russia has Mercedes deciding to swap the engine in the back of the 44 car for Lewis.

They have switched over to the engine the one that was used in the first 2 races. They have also switched over the MGUH, Turbo, Energy Store, Control Electronics, and have flown out on a private jet the parts that made the upgraded fuel system they introduced this weekend. The fuel system has…

Nico Rosberg had an easy time in Qualifying at Russia earlier with his only real challenge of Lewis Hamilton out of Q3 due to an MGUH failure in Q2 causing him not being able to take part in the final round of Qualifying.

It seems that the Mercedes team have still got a massive pace advantage over the rest of the field, with Nico even when not under pressure being able to take pole by over 0.7…

Lewis not in Q3

Looks like Lewis has had the same MGUH failure in Q2 at Russia as he had in China.

This means that at best he will start in P10 on the grid as the car cannot go out for Qualifying in Q3.

More in our post Qualifying breakdown.

RussianGP pre Qualifying news

A lot of the news from the practice sessions at the Russian GP is the test that Red Bull did of the Aero Screen.

As an aesthetic thing, it’s a far better solution than that of the ‘Flip-Flop’ one that Ferrari tested earlier in the year.

There are some problems with it, like how difficult it is to buckle the driver into the car initially as the engineer doing the strapping in has to have very long…

A topsy-turvy qualifying session has left to the first race not to be a Mercedes lock out for a good while. Instead of the two silver arrows, we have Vettel in the Ferrari joining Lewis on the front row.

On the second row we have Robert and Ricciardo in a Red Bull with a Renault engine running the engine map that Renault wanted them to run all along.

A rain soaked Q2 and Q3 session has led to…

Headlines from Friday, Hamilton sits out a lot of both Friday sessions due to  inlet issues, the team put it right part way through FP2, and Hamilton went out and set a scruffy fastest lap of the day, more impressively was Ferrari, showing good pace, and in the hands of Kimi one of the best to manage his tyre degradation, showing he could be there or thereabouts on Race Day if the track…

Engines upto 5 again

In the last few hours the F1 teams have gotten together and agreed in principle to up the engine numbers from 4 to the same as 2014 and all drivers get 5.

This is not really down to reliability issues, but rather that the engine manufacturers will find it easier to bring changes, improvements and fixes to the engines.

It needs to be approved by the FIA, but as all teams have agreed to it…

Renault and Red Bull Love loss

It seems the mud slinging between Renault and Red Bull has not stopped or slowed down, if anything it’s got worse.

Speaking in Auto Hebdo, Cyril Abiteboul had this to say about Adrian Newey’s complaints aimed at Renault after Melbourne.

“It’s difficult to have a partner who lies. Adrian is a charming man and an engineer without parallel, but he’s spent his life criticising engine partners. He’s…