The Official 2008 F1 Series Thread

[z31maniac]

I'd like to see Sato join Bourdais at STR. I think that would make a great combo.

[TDE30]

Sneak peeks from Barcelona.

















Plenty of news yesterday (17 November) as the teams have their first day of 2009 testing in Barcelona. Note some of BMW's extremely radical aero changes with the F1.09. The rear wing now resembles that of an old IRL car. Taku Sato headed the charts in his first day of testing for RBR. None of the other teams seem to have the dramatic styling changes like the F1.09 has, but I imagine many teams will be testing different aero packages throughout the week.

[TDE30]

Lee - I read that this morning on Autosport, that's a shame. Bernie is killing F1. Melbourne lost $40 million last year. Shanghai is talking about not hosting after 2010. He needs to quit charging so much for races while telling the teams to cut costs. Why should he be a billionaire from all this anyways. At least he is getting up there in the years.

Yup, I hate to jump on the Bernie Bashing bandwagon, but the guy continues to make irrational decisions and generally leaves a poor taste in the mouths of the fans and the many venues who host these Grans Prix. If the FIA is trying to regulate the costs of Formula One teams, then why does it seem so difficult for venues like Magny-Cours, Montreal, or Shanghai to keep their races? It makes no sense to me, all this cost-cutting bullshit and the races that have been around since the 1950's are starting to wonder how much longer they'll be able to host races.

[z31maniac]

Lee - I read that this morning on Autosport, that's a shame. Bernie is killing F1. Melbourne lost $40 million last year. Shanghai is talking about not hosting after 2010. He needs to quit charging so much for races while telling the teams to cut costs. Why should he be a billionaire from all this anyways. At least he is getting up there in the years.

Joe - It was my understanding that its static. Like say, at the beginning of the lap you have it set to 0. So you could change it to -3 on the open part of the course, then to +3 (or points in between) on the twisty part of the course and it remains where you set until you change it again. But you can only change it twice per lap.

Did I explain that well enough? The caffeine hasn't kicked in yet.

[Hick]

I believe you have so many changes per lap.

Wanting to say 2?

But for how long? 10 seconds, 20 seconds??

Also, new age of UGLY cars

http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?id=44619

[Massive Lee]

I understand this is for the 2008 season. But maybe some of you would be interested to know that there will be officially no 2009 racing in Canada. This Sunday, the news got official. Bernie wants $175 million on 5 years, while the city of Montreal and the governement offered a max of $100 million.

[z31maniac]

I believe you have so many changes per lap.

Wanting to say 2?

[Hick]

^^ That idea IMO is awful ^^

How long can the wing remain 'changed'? Can you move it say 3 degrees in either direction and count that as one move... ie, 2 moves a lap can become 4 moves a lap.

The only time i can think of that making sense would be if you have a dry setup and it rains, or the other way 'round. But that brings up the same question of how long the wing can remain at a setting.

[E30Kaiser]

here is a little snipet about the front wing from the Toyota team from F1.com

"Q: What are the implications of the adjustable front wing?
PV: The adjustable front wing is another change which contributes to reducing the impact of wake on a car's performance. One of the characteristics of a car following another is to lose front downforce and end up with understeer. The new regulations have tried to minimise that but it will still exist. So the other possibility is to offer the driver an active change to the car's balance and the easiest way to achieve this is to make the front wing adjustable. This means that if a car is experiencing understeer when following another car, the driver can add some flap angle to the front wing to improve the balance. The target again is to limit the performance drop experienced when following another car closely, and to improve the chances of overtaking. But in circumstances when a driver is not following another car, he will also be able to take advantage of the adjustable wing to compensate potential balance issues in certain corners. The drivers will certainly be kept busy next year!"

http://www.formula1.com/news/interviews/2008/11/8679.html

[z31maniac]

^Thanks for the link.

Pretty interesting technological advancements.

[Hick]

best without looking too much

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/66676

[z31maniac]

theres some other crap about having stored X amount of energy/electricity by the end of the race.

And over the coming years things will changes. 60-70hp on the rear axel for next season with a final 150-250hp and motors on all 4 wheels by the start of the 2012 [maybe 2015] season.

Got any links for that? I don't think I've read any of that.

[Hick]

theres some other crap about having stored X amount of energy/electricity by the end of the race.

And over the coming years things will changes. 60-70hp on the rear axel for next season with a final 150-250hp and motors on all 4 wheels by the start of the 2012 [maybe 2015] season.

[z31maniac]

Yeah I read that once and sort of got the gist of it, I was looking for a more layman's definition of it. From what I gather, it just stores kinetic energy and uses is for different purposes, like powering the multitude of electronics on the car.

No.

It's used to give the cars an accelration boost, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-70 HP for 4-6 seconds a lap I think. They estimate it to be worth .3-.4 seconds a lap.

[Jon325i]

Ruh-oh - trouble in the Ecclestone household....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3458...ital-home.html