The Official 2012 F1 Thread. Spoilers possible!

Perhaps Alonso is not as good in explaining the deficiencies of the car as he is in driving them?

A driver like he must play merry hobbs on a car's set up from an engineers perspective....

The explanation the Speed crew gave is that the FIA said the yellow light wasn't a caution, but a warning about the track condition. I've never heard of that before, but I have no reason to think the stewards would make something up.

Sure does look odd, though.

While I didn't care for the final result, I agree with everyone that this was one of the best F1 seasons that I can remember. Weather and fortune helped Alonso get into the points lead, and having a slow car at the top was always going to make for an interesting challenge.

Plus, a tip of the ol' lug nut to Pirelli, for doing as requested and making tires that didn't last.

Maybe so. They do have all those data streams coming from the car, though, so surely they aren't that dependent upon the driver's input? I'm not sure if it's a smokescreen or not, but this is the second consecutive season that Ferrari has said the track data didn't match the wind tunnel data. So they were building parts on false assumptions. If they're telling the truth (I think they had to use the old Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne at one point) then the problem lies back at the factory, not behind the wheel.

The big developments in the last few years have come from flexible bodywork, exhaust gas management and engine mapping. And it seems that Ferrari are always chasing, never the leader, in these breakthrough areas.

They're still coming to grips with the whole horse-pushing-the-chariot concept, so bear with 'em.

pretty cool evolution video of the F 2012

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Remember the guy who said you can't unlearn something? He was referring to Red Bull (and McLaren too, apparently) knowing how to weave flexible carbon fiber body parts and that a FIA ban wasn't going to erase that knowledge, that it would find its way onto the cars.

I wonder whether someday it won't be this or that part that we're talking about, but instead the entire car changing shape for aero advantage?

I thought they said something about it being a yellow perrelli sign or something.

That vid would be Exhibit A in my "What's Wrong With F1" case.

Such small changes really add up in the grand scheme of things for lap time. With that video its easy to see why the team with Adrian Newey has had the dominant car for the past 3 seasons. Even though they were a bit slow at the beginning of 2012 without the old blown diffuser he just made up for it in other ways. A cheating flexi front wing is only a tiny portion of what made the RB8 so fast. Its the small changes made to the entire car that add up to seconds per lap. I'm sure there were hundreds of other changes Ferrari made that the video didn't show. Even with more open rules you'd see the same thing once they start tweaking on their base setup.

those were only the changes for Austin & Brazil.
I think there are a few other "evolution" videos over at AMuS
so yeah.... 1000's of changes over the years... the exhaust this year was the big one

some of the final updates to the Red Bull for 2012....Including the suspicious 3rd damper ride height control
rest of the "evolution" videos are here LINK

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Don't they ever stop?



http://sniffpetrol.com/2012/11/29/ferrari-to-challenge-christmas/

I don't doubt there are valid technical reasons for the changes and incremental performance improvements as a result. I just take a dim view of hundreds of millions of dollars being spent for such vanishingly small returns, given the reality that all of this nibbling around the aerodynamic margins doesn't improve on-track competition (and in fact hampers it), the financial costs require the sport to sell its soul to the moneymen to finance the development, and encourages the application of meddlesome DRS-type gimmicks used to carry on the charade.

Think Kimi is getting royalties on the "Leave me alone" t-shirts, and sweat shirts, and pens, and mugs, and hats, and .....?