Formula 1 CFA Comments
CFA Australian GP 2016 - Preview
by Cato Batista, 18/03/2016 11:38:26
The two changes that could impact racing the most this year are the new QF format and the new tyre regulations. Let’s get up to speed.
This is how qualifying will take place from now on, and believe me, this is more like playing musical chairs:
Same one hour in 3 segments, 16 minutes for Q1, 15m in Q2 and 14m in Q3. Instead of cutting the slower cars at the end of each session, the slower car will be eliminated one by one every 90 seconds. In the old days the faster drivers could set a time and sit the rest of session saving a set of fresh tyres for the race. Now everybody will have to be on track lapping as fast as possible from the start. This way there will be only 2 cars fighting for pole in the last 90 seconds of Q3.
It will be fascinating to watch how teams will adapt best to the new format, of course they have it all planned already, but the season opener will be a very interesting case study.
And by the way, this new format start this Saturday not until Spain as I incorrectly said.
The next change we’ll have to analyze very close from now on is the tyre regulations.
Pirelli has introduced a new fifth different compound, the purple-walled ‘ultrasoft’ design for rapid warm-up and huge peak performance. The idea is that each driver will now have 3 compound choices per race instead of 2 like in years past. From its 5 types Pirelli will bring 3 compounds to each GP and the drivers will have to use 2 of those during the race. Instead of 10 ...
2015 Abu Dhabi GP - Race
by Cato Batista, 29/11/2015 1:54:23
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Qualifying was a mighty Mercedes in-house battle that was decided in the very last moment in Nico’s favour by a substantial 4 tenths-margin, the sixth consecutive time he beats Lewis for the pole. This was probably Kimi’s best QF effort of the year to take 3rd place away from the impressive Checo in the flying Force India. Daniel was smiling more than usual, a 5th for the straight-slow Red Bull was testament of his skill. Sixth was BOT, another great drive for a Williams clearly struggling for grip in the corner sectors. Closing the top 10 were the sister Force India, Williams and Red Bull cars plus SAi’s Toro Rosso. The eternal-third place VET will start back in 16th, his Ferrari lost speed in Q1 but more critically because the team got their time calculations completely wrong.
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2015 Abu Dhabi GP - QF
by Cato Batista, 27/11/2015 19:11:16
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It’s too close to call between Lewis and Nico as they are comfortably at the front of the field in Yas Marina. The timesheets shows PER as the 3rd fastest chrono of the day ahead of the Ferraris and Red Bulls, but in reality there was very little time dedicated by the teams for fastest laps, today was all about learning tyre performance difference between daytime and nighttime. Race starts before sunset on Sunday and goes into the night with the subsequent big drop in track temperature and the steep learning curve to understand what the rubber is going to do.
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