GPWizard F1 Forum
F1 News & Discussions => General F1 Discussion => Topic started by: J.Clark on September 14, 2016, 04:55:57 PM
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A night race - fantastic race to watch with all of the colors under the lights.
I have some truly mixed feelings about the circuit. Sometimes I think it is fantastic, and sometimes not - the lights do influence my thinking in all likelihood. The circuit itself is okay I suppose. It is roughly 3 miles in length with 23 turns, most of which are tight and low-speed. The speed trap is probably not at the fastest point since it is on the start/finish straight instead of the run between turns 5 & 7 - turn six is pretty much a no-lift as I recall. There are two DRS zones, just mentioned.
The lap record was set just last season by Ricciardo at 1:50.041.
Current drivers who have won:
Vettel (3), Hamilton (2), Alonso (2* - 2008 was highly controversial)
2008 was the year that Ferrari released Massa with fuel hose still attached and cost him a relatively easy win. Alonso was struggling until Flavio decided a "minor" crash would allow Alonso to perfectly time a pit stop and help him back up the ladder, and eventually led to him winning that race. It was highly controversial and Flavio paid a price, but . . .
I can only guess, but the cost for the average fan to attend this venue is likely close to that of the race in Monaco.
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Calling for some rain on Sunday...could make things spicy ;) ;)
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Calling for some rain on Sunday...could make things spicy ;) ;)
Have we had rain at Singapore before? Or could this be the first ever wet night race?
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I don't think it has rained there for a race before.
I wonder about the glare of the lights in the spray.
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Not really sure about this race, the fact it's a night race and the lights make it interesting but as far as the actual racing not so sure. One good thing is Mercedes are brought back into Ferrari and Red Bulls pace so that could be added spice, we'll see. As far as rain with lights and spray it could end up.a procession behind the safety car, so for once I would prefer a dry race.
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Not really sure about this race, the fact it's a night race and the lights make it interesting but as far as the actual racing not so sure. One good thing is Mercedes are brought back into Ferrari and Red Bulls pace so that could be added spice, we'll see. As far as rain with lights and spray it could end up.a procession behind the safety car, so for once I would prefer a dry race.
These past couple of seasons we've seen great races at 'dull' tracks and dull races at 'great' tracks. So I don't think it's foolish to be optimistic. I do think that FIA has become very cautious when it comes to wet races. I can't say I blame them, but it does make the races dull to watch.
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Ricciardo says he feels he's owed a win in 2016 for Monaco, and he thinks this is his best chance so he's going all out this weekend. Could be very interesting.
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FP1 Results:
1 33 M.VERSTAPPEN 1:45.823
2 3 D.RICCIARDO 1:45.872
3 5 S.VETTEL 1:46.287
4 44 L.HAMILTON 1:46.426
5 6 N.ROSBERG 1:46.513
6 7 K.RAIKKONEN 1:46.890
7 55 C.SAINZ 1:46.936
8 26 D.KVYAT 1:47.683
9 19 F.MASSA 1:48.044
10 21 E.GUTIERREZ 1:48.109
11 14 F.ALONSO 1:48.202
12 11 S.PEREZ 1:48.214
13 27 N.HULKENBERG 1:48.359
14 77 V.BOTTAS 1:48.453
15 12 F.NASR 1:49.595
16 22 J.BUTTON 1:49.615
17 30 J.PALMER 1:49.794
18 20 K.MAGNUSSEN 1:50.263
19 94 P.WEHRLEIN 1:51.112
20 9 M.ERICSSON 1:51.479
21 31 E.OCON 1:52.379
22 8 R.GROSJEAN No Time
Mercedes position isn't as strange as it might first look. They were on Softs. The other top runners were on Ultrasofts.
Grosjean was the first car out but came right back in. The team later tweeted: "Issue with @RGrosjean's car based on low intake pressure. Bodywork off, investigating possible leak. Session over. #FP1" He finished the session playing card in the garage.
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I also have mixed feelings about this track. As a spectacle, it is all rather dramatic and looks very impressive under the lights. That said, the track is not inspiring and the racing is only remotely interesting if it rains or if drivers make mistakes and crash, which leads to safety cars messing up the strategy and putting drivers out of position. Otherwise, it's a dull procession, offering little on track entertainment.
It is the best chance this year for another team to beat Mercedes on pace. Red Bull has the best chance in my opinion. Ricciardo and Verstappen are both looking fast, and Hamilton has had a lot of problems and mistakes, while Rosberg has been into the wall. Mercedes will be under pressure, possibly for the only time all year, so let's hope that someone can take advantage to give us a contest. If not, it will be the midfield where all the action is, as usual.
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Times for FP2:
1 6 N.ROSBERG 1:44.152
2 7 K.RAIKKONEN 1:44.427
3 33 M.VERSTAPPEN 1:44.532
4 3 D.RICCIARDO 1:44.557
5 5 S.VETTEL 1:45.161
6 27 N.HULKENBERG 1:45.182
7 44 L.HAMILTON 1:45.275
8 55 C.SAINZ 1:45.507
9 14 F.ALONSO 1:45.779
10 26 D.KVYAT 1:46.029
11 11 S.PEREZ 1:46.063
12 22 J.BUTTON 1:46.574
13 21 E.GUTIERREZ 1:46.727
14 19 F.MASSA 1:46.856
15 77 V.BOTTAS 1:46.960
16 20 K.MAGNUSSEN 1:47.161
17 30 J.PALMER 1:47.166
18 12 F.NASR 1:47.531
19 8 R.GROSJEAN 1:48.391
20 9 M.ERICSSON 1:48.487
21 94 P.WEHRLEIN 1:48.505
22 31 E.OCON 1:48.823
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Renault had only 1 upgraded engine for R/B and Max got it. We'll see how much edge it gives him over Daniel.
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My favorite radio call of the week-end (so far):
Ricciardo (after Nasr cut him off): "####, coming out of the pits, using the DRS and doing all sorts,"
Reply from his engineer: "You have to remember it's Nasr..."
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Renault had only 1 upgraded engine for R/B and Max got it. We'll see how much edge it gives him over Daniel.
Looking at FP2 it gave him 2/100ths...maybe Max needed it more than DR ;)
In all seriousness, why would they give it to MV?
My favorite radio call of the week-end (so far):
Ricciardo (after Nasr cut him off): "####, coming out of the pits, using the DRS and doing all sorts,"
Reply from his engineer: "You have to remember it's Nasr..."
:DD :DD
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Renault had only 1 upgraded engine for R/B and Max got it. We'll see how much edge it gives him over Daniel.
Looking at FP2 it gave him 2/100ths...maybe Max needed it more than DR ;)
In all seriousness, why would they give it to MV?
My favorite radio call of the week-end (so far):
Ricciardo (after Nasr cut him off): "####, coming out of the pits, using the DRS and doing all sorts,"
Reply from his engineer: "You have to remember it's Nasr..."
:DD :DD
MV is their race winner, he's their rising star. I don't know what sponsors are saying behind closed doors, but I suspect he's the 'flavour of the month', so of course he'll get preferential treatment.
Alternatively, given Renault's reliability struggles, perhaps a new unit is seen as a risk, and thus a risk to be given to the new guy.
Alternative B, given the Byzantine rules regarding engine penalties, it's possible that Max has the allotment available and Daniel doesn't... or this means that in the future Max will suffer a penalty where Daniel doesn't.
Alternative C, the team, behind closed doors, came up with a fair way to decide. Sorry Daniel: rock smashes scissors.
Finally, screwing over the Aussie is a tried and true strategy at RBR. When in doubt, stick with what works.
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Or, Daniel got the only upgrade at Monaco? (I seem to recall.)
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Renault now says that they will have the new engine available for Danny Ric this week-end. K Mag & Palmer will get them, too.
http://www.racer.com/f1/item/134380-all-renault-drivers-will-now-get-upgrade
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I bet MV is sulking ;)
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FP3 times. Hamilton on Supers, all others on Ultras:
1 6 N.ROSBERG 1:44.352
2 33 M.VERSTAPPEN 1:44.411
3 7 K.RAIKKONEN 1:44.860
4 3 D.RICCIARDO 1:44.903
5 5 S.VETTEL 1:45.104
6 27 N.HULKENBERG 1:45.316
7 26 D.KVYAT 1:45.503
8 44 L.HAMILTON 1:45.806
9 55 C.SAINZ 1:45.879
10 77 V.BOTTAS 1:45.947
11 11 S.PEREZ 1:46.112
12 14 F.ALONSO 1:46.164
13 21 E.GUTIERREZ 1:46.316
14 19 F.MASSA 1:46.529
15 20 K.MAGNUSSEN 1:47.116
16 22 J.BUTTON 1:47.277
17 12 F.NASR 1:47.293
18 8 R.GROSJEAN 1:47.411
19 9 M.ERICSSON 1:47.956
20 30 J.PALMER 1:48.689
21 94 P.WEHRLEIN 1:49.201
22 31 E.OCON 1:49.565
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I bet MV is sulking ;)
Max doesn't sulk he has a built in scowl that's always there
even when he smiling
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True, and then they blew it when it wouldn't have even been close.
Saturday free practice results:
1. Rosberg Mercedes 1m 44.352
2. Verstappen Red Bull 1m 44.411
3. Raikkonen Ferrari 1m 44.860
4. Ricciardo Red Bull 1m 44.903
5. Vettel Ferrarii 1m 45.104
6. Hulkenberg Force India 1m 45.316
7. Kvyat Toro Rosso 1m 45.503
8. Hamilton Mercedes 1m 45.806
9. Sainz Toro Rosso 1m 45.879
10. Bottas Williams 1m 45.947
11. Perez Force India 1m 46.112
12. Alonso McLaren 1m 46.164
13. Gutierrez Haas 1m 46.316
14. Massa Williams 1m 46.529
15. Magnussen Renault 1m 47.116
16. Button McLaren 1m 47.277
17. Nasr Sauber 1m 47.293
18. Grosjean Haas 1m 47.411
19. Ericsson Sauber 1m 47.956
20. Palmer Renault 1m 48.689
21. Wehrlein MRT 1m 49.201
22. Ocon MRT 1m 49.565
Qualifying about an hour away.
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Disastrous Q1 for Vettel. Problems with his rear suspension was causing his inside front tire to lift off the ground on every corner. P22! Last year's winner will start from last place.
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Here is the grid - no penalties this time; although, to make the engine penalty system work as intended, Hamilton should be P-22 again this race.
1. Rosberg Mercedes 1m 42.584
2. Ricciardo Red Bull 1m 43.115
3. Hamilton Mercedes 1m 43.288
4. Verstappen Red Bull 1m 43.328
5. Raikkonen Ferrari 1m 43.540
6. Sainz Toro Rosso 1m 44.197
7. Kvyat Toro Rosso 1m 44.469
8. Hulkenberg Force Indias 1m 44.479
9. Alonso McLaren 1m 44.553
10. Perez Force India 1m 44.582
11. Bottas Williams 1m 44.740
12. Massa Williams 1m 44.991
13. Button McLaren 1m 45.144
14. Gutierrez Haas 1m 45.593
15. Grosjean Haas 1m 45.723
16. Ericsson Sauber 1m 47.827
17. Magnussen Renault 1m 46.825
18. Nasr Sauber 1m 46.860
19. Palmer Renault 1m 46.960
20. Wehrlein MRT 1m 47.667
21. Ocon MRT 1m 48.296
22. Vettel Ferrari 1m 49.116
Massa, Bottas, Button, and perhaps even a Haas were caught out by the yellow in Q2, preventing them (each was on a hot lap) from advancing. Such is the way . . .
Up front, the Mercedes duo may have a rough go of it, if they can't win the race through turn 1. Ricciardo is on a more durable tire, and if he can beat Nico on the start - a possibility - Nico's race could be in real jeopardy. Kimi too has been quick, particularly on the starts, and if he can stay ahead of Hamilton through turn 1, let alone perhaps get Rosberg as well, that will make for an exciting first stint, if nothing else.
While it could be unlikely, Ricciardo could win this race and it is not unlikely that Kimi could even finish on the podium should a Merc have problems.
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I think Button touched the wall and got a flat, he was already past the yellows, a shame really he would have been top ten. If Hamilton suffers from another bad start he could be well down the order.
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Jenson complained that the steering broke, but the video showed clearly a rear flat tire - good spot DH1.
Perez has received a 5 grid place penalty, and additional 3 place penalty and 3 points on his license for blowing past double yellows without slowing and passing Gutierrez in the same area. Of course Perez insisted he did slow, but the telemetry shows that he is full of it :D :D
http://www.pitpass.com/57284/Two-grid-penalties-for-Perez
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Perez has received a 5 grid place penalty, and additional 3 place penalty and 3 points on his license for blowing past double yellows without slowing and passing Gutierrez in the same area. Of course Perez insisted he did slow, but the telemetry shows that he is full of it :D :D
Nah, just shows he doesn't have a good lawyer like Rosberg. :tease:
Trouble is when like Perez you're on your best run (or only run) and you get a shunt like Grosjean's you're damned if you do - but also if you don't. Can't see an answer apart from Charlie throwing a red straight away - takes the pressure of doing something stupid off the drivers. :DntKnw:
I remember thinking, when watching Q3, Rosberg's out in front of Lewis he might try tapping the barriers in a low speed shunt to deny Lewis a run at the pole. :crazy: Seeing MV's Red Bull charging past on the warm up lap only added to my delusions - I figured they were thinking like me. :crazy: :fool:
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Warning! Rant alert!
As of the German Grand Prix, throwing a red is exactly what Charlie is required to do in this situation, by the rules (albeit, not ones they've bothered to write down yet). He didn't do it. I'd like to know why.
The speed under yellow-flag situation... ...if I comment on why Sergio was for all practical purposes obliged to drive it the way he drove it, and why the stewards broke the regulations by penalising him for it, I'll be in trouble.
As for the overtake situation, I've seen it and the only way Sergio could have stayed behind the car he overtook under yellows was to cause (or rather extend) the hazard himself. The rules are such that, at absolute minimum, Gutierrez should have received an Article 30.14 infraction - but apparently he wasn't even asked why he was so slow. There were at least two occasions where overtaking due to the other car being excessively slow was permitted last year. Sergio did exactly the common-sense thing there and was penalised for not making things more dangerous than necessary.
Add to this that Verstappen was allowed to hit Perez in the race without so much as an investigation, and that Williams was allowed to release Bottas dangerously (nearly injuring mechanics from 2 different rival teams in the process) without penalty, and it is easy to get the impression that that the stewards were more interested in penalising Force India than in regulating the race (i.e. their actual job) this race.
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Great points Ali. I'm not really sure why Sergio couldn't have slowed more for double yellows considering he improved on his previous lap during the double yellows, but I completely agree that he had no choice but to pass Gutierrez who had practically pulled to a stop.
The Bottas release was not so unusual, but what I found frightening was that Bottas decided to race the Ferrari even though it was going the maximum pit lane speed by that point, and Bottas was clearly behind. It was impossible to have legally pulled in front, and simply an intimidation move, while if the mechanic (was it FI or McLaren, I am not sure) organizing the front right tire of the pit he went past, had moved his foot one cm back, it certainly would have been clipped, and how Bottas didn't run over the air hoses which could have killed someone if they had been caught up in his wheel, is beyond me. I would have penalized Bottas had I been a steward.
Sorry I missed chat. Would have been plenty to talk about. I can point out that Max should thank his lucky stars he had such a lousy start otherwise he would have been wiped out by Huldenberg in the opening seconds. As it was, I was grinning ear to ear watching Kvyatt keep him at bay through a good chunk of the race. I wonder if STR is getting a phone call from RBR this morning about a revision to their driver lineup for the rest of the season.
As usual it seems nobody will be held accountable by the track worker out on the main straight under green flag conditions. The FIA has dozens of officials whose job is entirely based around safety, but none of them bother to scan even the front straight as the green flag is called? Wow...
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Completely agree with your sentiments Ali. Yet more inconsistency!! However, the idea of dropping double waved yellows in favour of throwing a red has not been ratified so there is no process to invoke it. What is undeniable is that the drivers were all told to 'slow significantly' under double yellows and the rule not to overtake under yellows has been around for ever! Perez chose to ignore clear instructions, not once, but twice. Personally I didn't feel the penalties were harsh enough!
More worrying for me was that the race was even more boring than the last one. Never before have I watched a race hoping that someone would stuff it in the wall to cause a safety car. Anything to create some interest. I was then focusing my attention on Vestappen - in the sense that I started to hope he would be the one to stuff it in the wall! His driving always borders on the plain dangerous but he makes this worse by whining when anyone challenges him. A truly awful race!
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Charlie Whiting has the power to issue such directives, though no formal framework exists to formalise that, and if he didn't, he should have been corrected officially by the FIA in the lead-up to the German Grand Prix (the first race where the directive applied). He wasn't, so leading everyone to expect a red flag to avoid the very question Sergio Perez faced when finding there wasn't a red flag there.
Overly-slow driving has been forbidden through Article 30.14 since 2008, there's been precedent since 2009 that people breaching that principle can be overtaken without penalty (since staying behind them would be more dangerous than not doing so), and it did look like a suspiciously slow Haas. Whether it was slow enough to justify overtaking may be debatable, but given that a Kvyat at 37 mph was considered overtakably slow in similar circumstances in 2014, I suspect it would be a pretty short debate. Yet Gutierrez wasn't even asked why he went that slowly, and no reference was made in the notes to awareness of the regulation (something which also affected Sergio's ability to slow down for the yellow flags, in combination with another ruling - I'd explain further, but lawyers).
That Bottas even had a decision to make on racing Raikkonen proves the unsafe release infraction against Williams, and Bottas having 2 wheels in the slow lane of a pit other than his own is a separate offence for dangerous driving against Bottas. It was a Force India mechanic he nearly hit (and he was slightly further away from a McLaren and another FIF1 mechanic), so FIF1 was pretty furious when such dangerous behaviour attracted no penalty.
The release of a marshal onto a green track disgusted me, as did Channel 4's decidedly casual attitude to the matter (particularly in social media). Marshal safety is not a laughing matter. Maybe a virtual safety car could not have been invoked but warning flags should have been - as it was, only the sector after the marshal was yellow-flagged, which is pointless.
I was the only one in my family who managed to stay awake for the whole race, which particularly impressed my parents because I'd followed it on Twitter "live" (Plan A had been to watch it at the gym, but the last bit of my half-marathon reconnaisance was slower than expected and I got back home 10 minutes before the start) and then watched the "highlights" (seemed like all but a 12-lap section of the race, there to fill a gap between Paralympics coverage). After all the rule-breaking of the first 10 laps, it was hard to feel anything for the race, and I spent most of it worrying about the day of reckoning the FIA will have over the patterns of behaviour Singapore exposed so blatantly.
Mark my words, it is coming, and there is nothing I or anyone outside the FIA can do to prevent that.
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NASCAR and Indycar both have officials in the pits, at least 1 per pit stall. If they see a violation, they call an immediate penalty. No review, no protest, serve it now. Why doesn't F1 have this sort of system?
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I have always thought that there should be an official in each team's pit for exactly that sort of thing.
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NASCAR and Indycar both have officials in the pits, at least 1 per pit stall. If they see a violation, they call an immediate penalty. No review, no protest, serve it now. Why doesn't F1 have this sort of system?
Because the FIA can't even agree what its own rules say, by the look of it. All extra officiating would do is to cause even more confusion (and probably skittled officials, judging by the marshall incident during the race).
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I struggled to stay awake for much of that race. The trouble with the Singapore Grand Prix has always been that, unless drivers crash, it becomes very tedious. Apart from the start and Ricciardo's spirited chase of Rosberg at the end, it was all very dull, and I also felt it was very flat.
There were some questionable decisions made by the stewards and the FIA throughout the weekend. I agree with much of what has been said regarding the lack of consistency and clarity.