[Closed] F1 2017 (Bound to contain spoilers!)

I think we can expect far more in season development this year than for the last few - the stupid token system is binned so pu development is allowed, there are new tyres to master and a new set of aero regs to finesse. I think the scope for loopholes will be reduced compared to the double diffuser /F duct eras but I'm hoping that one of the midfielders has come up with something unexpected.

With the rules so aero based we're hoping that RBR can close the gap even more than last year and win a few more races. Also with in season engine upgrades without the token system they maybe larger in season steps

Sadly I feel a Hamilton winning bore-fest might be on the cards

all depends if hamilton has first dibs on his pit crew. As the man with acid reflux once said. " still I rise"

Doing away with the token system means that Renault and Honda can completely scrap their old engines and start from a clean sheet of paper. Mercedes have much less to gain, so the other engines should be much closer. The Red Bull and Torro Rosso cars were both very good last year, let down by underperforming engines. If Renault can produce a good engine, Red Bull should be title contenders and Torro Rosso might surprise. The McHondas seemed to be about 4th or 5th best team by the end of last year despite the worst engine. If Honda produce a competitive engine, I expect McHonda to be fighting with Ferrari for 3rd in the championship. Ron Dennis may be gone, but McLaren have a very strong technical department and don't seem to be in disarray like Ferrari, so they should be able to produce a decent car. Force India and Williams are hard to predict. They won't have the resources to keep developing their cars like the richer teams, so it will be important for them to be competitive at the start. I expect Torro Rosso, Williams, and Force India to be fighting for 5th through 7th in the teams championship.

Hamiltion seems a bit mentally fragile. When things go well, he is breathtakingly fast, but he seems to lose focus easily. It will be important for him to dominate Bottas from the start, otherwise I suspect he will go back to tantrums and sulking. Bottas' early performances with Williams were very impressive, so I suspect he will be much tougher than many Hamilton fans assume. Alonso and Ricciardo both seem to be mentally much tougher than Hamilton. They both have to cope with fast teammates, but I don't think they will suffer the slumps that Hamilton seems to suffer from. Hamilton has got to be favorite for the title, but I expect Bottas, both Red Bull drivers, and possibly Alonso to win races and challenge for the title.

Doing away with the token system means that Renault and Honda can completely scrap their old engines and start from a clean sheet of paper.

There's about 4 things Honda need to be better at

1. the packaging
2. the turbo (the main issue; they've probably fixed)
3. the hybrid unit power delivery
4. Fuel efficiency

It would be daft to throw it all away, when all the bad points lead from 1 (Ron's need to have a really small engine to fit in the chassis, which also wasn'y allowed to be modified) , 2 is pretty easily solved, and that does away with 3 and 4

Renault's woes were centred around the HPU, and rather than give up all their tokens on a duff engine, they threw in their lot to produce a better version of it for this year. They apparently reckoned they need to find 35kw from it, (about 47bhp). so not a massive hill to climb

Doing away with the token system means that Renault and Honda can completely scrap their old engines and start from a clean sheet of paper. Mercedes have much less to gain, so the other engines should be much closer.

Maybe, but Merc have also had far longer to refine their design than the others. Hell, they may even have developed a brand new super-engine... it's not just the others who will benefit from the removal of the token system. It would require Honda and Renault to come up with something very special to have half a chance of challenging Merc.

Alonso and Ricciardo both seem to be mentally much tougher than Hamilton

Ricciardo definitely, but I'd put Alonso on a similar footing to Hamilton ref. mental fragility.

Agreed on Bottas though - he's a classy driver. I really really hope he does well.

Are we writing off Vettel and Kimi? Both fast on their day and similar. With a reasonable car they should be up there. Although no major replacement for Allison it remains to be seen if the department can step up.

I quite liked the Effing and Jeffing by Vettel. We need more radio commentary when the races are processional.

Are we writing off Vettel and Kimi?

I think we are writing off Ferrari. Podiums at best again for them, they seem to have got stuck in a mediocre cycle of thinking they are great but not delivering.

With a reasonable car they should be up there.

Last I heard, they both drive for Ferrari, the team that sacked its technical director last year as part of yet another redisorganization. I think they will struggle to beat McLaren, let alone Mercedes.

[quote=thepurist ]I think we can expect far more in season development this year than for the last few - the stupid token system is binned so pu development is allowed

Though I think an upgrade still counts towards the engine allowance for the year, so they won't be able to have upgrades every race and will have to balance what they do with the need to avoid penalties later in the season.

Ferrari pretty much shot themselves in the foot last season and threw away chances to win with bad strategy calls or erratic driving.

I'm hoping Stoffell gets an opportunity to show his talent and maybe give Alonso some thoughts of retirement. I'm not sure Stroll will shine against Massa. Aside from the 2 there arent any rookies per se.

Everyone else I get the feeling will be going through the motions after the first 5 races.

Honda can completely scrap their old engines and start from a clean sheet of paper.

They started their big comeback with a clean sheet of paper. It didn't help them at all.

They had the opportunity to look at the best engines in the business and hit the ground running.

Which they spectacularly failed to do.

With all the fuss about McLaren Honda being so emotive, everyone forgot the rubbish "Earthdreams" cobblers they spent a decade trundling around at the back with.

Don't underestimate Honda, they've learnt a bitter lesson in trying to be different. I think the new power unit will be a Merc copy.

That said, have Merc got a super motor developed? Something which goes up to 12 with ease compared to everybody else's will it go pop 9.5.

We can pontificate all we want but until that flag drops in Australia we won't know.

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/38931000 ]f1 tyres like it warmer the 4 ![/url] who'd have thought it ! 😯

Possibly trialling running without blankets too. I imagine they were basically like plastic!

Got to be gutted for the test driver... 1st go in an f1 car, oh actually seb's just smashed it up, sorry!

I reckon RBR and Mercedes are gonna be pretty close! Looking forward to seeing those 4 drivers battling it out at the front 🙂

a closer fight may well change mercs "let 'em race" policy and be a more traditional main driver and a number 2 team. (so a good start will be even more important to cement the no1 spot)

Merc can have as many policies as they want, it won't matter to Hamo

Another season propping up the grid for McLaren then!...

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/honda-admits-new-f1-engine-concept-very-high-risk-873576/

...I bet Jenson is in the car in Melbourne when Alonso flounces off. 😀

Wlliams the first to break cover

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(Pics from Joe Saward's blog)

That Williams looks good...

This is on the gif thread, would like to see it slower...
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Edit: Found it...
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I was a bit meh when the Williams broke cover this morning. Not the 'wow' factor I was expecting. May change when we see it from the back 3/4.

F1Fanatic have done a side-by-side analysis...

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/02/17/compare-williams-new-fw40-with-their-2016-car/

To quote Richard III, now is the winter of this testing. Does anyone know if the testing is gonna be shown on telly?

Sauber launched...

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...they desperately need a new colouring-in person!

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/02/20/pictures-sauber-reveals-first-images-of-its-2017-car/

Interesting roll-hoop detail.

call for Binners! (or Jamie).

Does anyone know if the testing is gonna be shown on telly?

Sky usually do a 30 min report show at the end of each day.

Had a quick flick through the Sky planner but couldn't find anything. Happy to be corrected though!

It may be titled Ted's Notebook

Another season propping up the grid for McLaren then!...

Or the risk will pay off and they will be smashing it on the front row! That would be amazing 🙂

Haven't got Sky unforts...

Sauber launched...

Not sure about that big gin stretching back from the air intake! Looks very awkward!

Looking forward to Mercs new 'boat' as Hamilton puts it.

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Technical director Jorg Zander explained the decision to use a year-old engine, saying it is “a tried and tested system with higher durability to begin with.”

“Being able to get started early and defining the engine environment was an advantage because the team was familiar with the engine and the transmission as well as the cooling requirements the engine entailed.”

Listing every reason apart from the actual one there- that it is cheaper! 🙂

Looking forward to Mercs new 'boat' as Hamilton puts it.

Where was that?

Lots of websites do a live text coverage of testing, usually with pix of any interesting bits seen on the cars. Probably gives a better understanding of what's going on than Kravtiz's 'infotainment'

Where was that?

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/02/19/it-looks-like-a-boat-hamilton-on-new-mercedes/

Ted Kravitz lol used to actually quite like him when he was on the beeb

Flat-out through Copse? 😯 Not so much wow in itself, but that will be flat-out all the way from Luffield to at least Maggots 2 - though given that's only a slight lift at present I'm guessing that might be flat too which would make Becketts the only (slight) braking between Luffield and Stowe. So well over half the circuit almost all full throttle in one chunk. Could be interesting in terms of stresses on the car (and will the brakes be a bit cold by Stowe?)

Just like the old days of proper Silverstone then, before they slowed em down with that chicane at Woodcote

Like a boat?

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and will the brakes be a bit cold by Stow

Stone cold I imagine! Even Hockenheim of old didn't have such long gaps in braking. I look forward to inevitable overshoots at Stowe!

With Sauber running a 2016 Ferrari engine I can't see them getting anywhere near the points this season (or even off the back row of the grid). With the removal of the token system the engine suppliers are talking of big performance gains over winter and last years Ferrari engine just won't cut it this year.

And there is no Manor to make them look respectable either.

one may laugh at the ugly old ferrari up there ^^^ but least it came from a era that if all the cars were painted the same colour you could still tell them apart 😉

The Sauber looks great. A bit of a Rothmans vibe to it. Really nice livery IMHO, just needs a few more sponsors.

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Is that the new canopy red bull are testing?

At the minute I'm not a fan of the angled rear wing endplates. Looks A1-GP inspired and something a child would draw.

Those airbox sail things are going to annoy me. They still haven't got rid of those silly stub noses, either.

I welcome the wider cars - I remember looking at the new 1998 cars and thinking that they looked impossibly narrow, but so far I'm disappointed that the 2017 cars look like the 2016 cars but with lower rear wings.

If I had my way, all F1 cars would look and sound like a Ferrari 640 or McLaren MP4/6.

...but so far I'm disappointed that the 2017 cars look like the 2016 cars but with lower rear wings.

Same here - perhaps they need to shorten the wheelbase.

We'll see what Renault serve up this afternoon.

They'll look better on track I reckon, until they are stuck line astern due to effectively making the tracks narrower with even shorter braking distances

Who'll take me up on a bet that Renault launch with a black and yellow livery, which they'll change to yellow and black before the season (see Zebra thread for the difference).

Oh and it'll have a stub nose, a shark fin, a massively convoluted front wing and look remarkably similar to the Williams and Sauber.

Who'll take me up on a bet that Renault launch with a black and yellow livery, which they'll change to yellow and black before the season (see Zebra thread for the difference).

I bet there will be less yellow, but a large dollop of green from BP/Castrol.

Nah, the green will be with the orange on the Mclaren

Renault car unveiling is live streaming from here in 10 mins https://www.renaultsport.com/?lang=en

Just pull the bloody cover off the car...........

Well there's a first - a live F1 launch stream that works!

...oops - nope - stopped at the end of the pitlane! 😀

...and we're off again.

And looking at the colour of the stage there will be a lot of grey on the new car.

I do wish they'd stop B--------ing on about stuff and just show the bloody car.

This is F1 though, wwwwaaaaayyyyyy more talking balls before and after the event that the actual event itself

Prost now!

...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

And twenty five minutes in we're STILL looking at four, receding middle aged guys sat awkwardly on pub stools, no doubt discussing 'kinematics', endlessly repeating 'for sure!' and 'technical challenges...'.

Alain Prost is old enough to remember when new car launches involved a soggy Silverstone circuit in February, with the new car being followed around by the ubiquitous Renault Espace carrying a tow-rope and some men wearing garishly coloured ski jackets.

Twenty-nine minutes.

Whoever decided on these press conferences needs to be taken outside and shot.

This will get the younger fans engaged in F1!

This will get the younger fans engaged in F1!

They'll say "who are those old farts and why are they talking shite? Where's the car?"

Finally. Looks exactly like the Sauber, but in yellow/dark grey.

I'm out.

Who'll take me up on a bet that Renault launch with a black and yellow livery, which they'll change to yellow and black before the season (see Zebra thread for the difference).

It's neither - it's black AND yellow! 😀

nose looks good

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sharkfin looks merde though
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also dem trousers 😆

Here's how Formula One car launches should be done.

I've still got the video that ^ was taken from somewhere 😆

All I'm taking from the car launches so far is that they don't look too different in reality, certainly nowhere near as much as was promised, and that the front tyres look to have a very rounded profile compared to the rears. Doesn't fill me with faith that Pirelli have got them right this time 😕

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http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/02/21/pictures-renaults-new-f1-car-for-2017-breaks-cover/

Looks like it may be a matt paint finish from the overhead pic.

Looks like a Jordan.....

They had areas with matt paint last year too. RedBull claim their matt paint gives them a slight aero advantage, sort of like the dimples on a golf ball helping it travel further. Probably a tiny, tiny difference in the windtunnel until it gets dirty or wet but I do like the look of it.

Loved that video PJM1974, thanks for posting! 🙂

Ooof, the new Force India is a bit rumple fuggers

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front wing is quite busy 😯
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Definitely a 10 pinter!

Not pretty.

And FIA should ban the sharkfin before the first race. The others looked sort of OK, but this looks like they're carrying a sheet of MDF back from B&Q.

You have to work quite hard to make something designed to be sleek and aerodynamic look pig ugly.

Step forward F1 designers... 😯 🙄

front wing is quite busy

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Sidepods look very wide too compared to the Renault and Sauber.