Motorsport Off Topic Thread

Stu999 · 18 Sep 2020 at 15:24

413x said:
Extremely concerned about Renault driving line up next year.

There is no Renault, only Alpine

Merlin5 · 19 Sep 2020 at 20:53

Ferrari at pcworld today!

chrismscotland · 23 Sep 2020 at 07:59

Stefano Domenicali is set to replace Chase Carey as the new boss of F1 next year.. seems a good choice to me; he's been away from a team for long enough and has been involved with the FIA for a while.
Although I'd have liked to see him back as a Team Boss

https://www.planetf1.com/news/stefano-domenicali-formula-1-ceo/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/54259817

vanpeebles · 23 Sep 2020 at 08:15

Laughable.

MissChief · 23 Sep 2020 at 09:27

vanpeebles said:
Laughable.

Why? Because he’s ex Ferrari? He’s been working for VW Group for many years since he left Ferrari. There was talk of Toto Wolff potentially being Carey’s replacement for a while. Would that also be ‘laughable’? He seems like a good fit, knows the sport very well, knows most of the people running the teams too.

JRS · 23 Sep 2020 at 09:33

vanpeebles said:
Laughable.

How come? Is this just an extension of the nonsense that went on when Todt became FIA president and fandumb whined that it was Yet Another Example Of Pro-Ferrari Bias™?

vanpeebles · 23 Sep 2020 at 09:58

Yet more ferrari links at the top in a sport that is so obsessed with them to the point of it's own downfall.

JRS · 23 Sep 2020 at 09:58

Laughable.

vanpeebles · 23 Sep 2020 at 10:02

Whatever, I think we can all see how well it's going to play out.

JRS · 23 Sep 2020 at 10:15

vanpeebles said:
Whatever, I think we can all see how well it's going to play out.

Was Jean Todt a particularly bad choice to head the FIA in the end?

I know I wanted Ari Vatanen to get it. But has Todt proven to be wildly biased? Has he done everything in his power to help Ferrari out?

Because if he has, if he really is biased and helping Ferrari out, then he's spectacularly bad at it! They've won 28 races since he assumed office IIRC. Out of 208 (he took over just before the last race of the '09 season). Now, I'm just a simply country fella an' I got problems of my own, but I've gotta figure that if someone in a position of serious power in the world governing body of motorsport truly wanted a team to win a bunch of races they could probably manage to get them rather better than a ~13% success rate.

vanpeebles · 23 Sep 2020 at 10:23

The whole oil burning cheating engine saga?

JRS · 23 Sep 2020 at 10:34

vanpeebles said:
The whole oil burning cheating engine saga?

Which has seen a pretty major set of rulebook clarifications and changes made to the Ferrari engine.

Any more examples of this wildly pro-Ferrai bias?

Armageus · 23 Sep 2020 at 10:48

vanpeebles said:
The whole oil burning cheating engine saga?

Which has resulted in Ferrari now spending at least 1 entire season towards the back of the grid? Again hardly pro-Ferrari bias?

I assume you perhaps mean the way in which the "oil burning cheating engine saga" was not made transparent to everyone, but realistically who would that benefit anyway?

this_is_gav · 23 Sep 2020 at 10:56

Armageus said:
I assume you perhaps mean the way in which the "oil burning cheating engine saga" was not made transparent to everyone, but realistically who would that benefit anyway?

Despite their obviously performance issues, you can bet there are still ideas on the PU which would be of great interest to others.

It was hardly a surprise that the designs and implementations weren't made public, but equally I can see why other teams are annoyed that they didn't get to pore over Ferrari's PU design.

Still, everyone else has a got a free shot at third in the constructors championship this season, so it's not like Ferrari went unpunished.

JRS · 23 Sep 2020 at 11:00

this_is_gav said:
Despite their obviously performance issues, you can bet there are still ideas on the PU which would be of great interest to others.

Well, if you think Ferrari should have been made to hand over IP after getting an engine design clarified out of legality then presumably you think the same should have happened to Mercedes after their oil-burning turn in 2015?

this_is_gav · 23 Sep 2020 at 11:04

JRS said:
Well, if you think Ferrari should have been made to hand over IP after getting an engine design clarified out of legality then presumably you think the same should have happened to Mercedes after their oil-burning turn in 2015?

Quite the opposite. I would be have been surprised and a little disappointed had Ferrari been forced to open up their PU to others (and I'm hardly a Ferrari fan).

By "great interest" I meant that as the PU design as a whole, not looking for other issues.

JRS · 23 Sep 2020 at 11:06

this_is_gav said:
Quite the opposite. I would be have been surprised and a little disappointed had Ferrari been forced to open up their PU to others (and I'm hardly a Ferrari fan).

By "great interest" I meant that as the PU as a whole, not looking for other issues.

Ah, okay.

Mr Jack · 23 Sep 2020 at 11:19

this_is_gav said:
It was hardly a surprise that the designs and implementations weren't made public, but equally I can see why other teams are annoyed that they didn't get to pore over Ferrari's PU design.

I don't really see how this is the issue. They didn't need to give out detailed designs for the Ferrari PU to be open and public about what the issue was, and what they had been required to change, did they? I don't see how.

this_is_gav · 23 Sep 2020 at 11:28

Ferrari seemed to think so, as did the FIA by agreeing not to disclose any technical details with Ferrari's permission. From Binotto in July:

The reason we don't want to open is simple because whatever we need to explain [is] our IP, intellectual property to our project, to our power unit, and I think no one in the paddock would be happy to release information on their design and their project.

I think it's IP, it's confidentiality, it's intellectual property protection, and that's the reason we're not keen to do it.

We can only guess. That the FIA with confiscated power units or other teams couldn't explicitly prove Ferrari's PU was running illegally at the time means we do nothing but speculate. Hence the need for technical information. I mean, we all knew they were doing something they weren't meant to be doing, but you need hard evidence to prove it.

MissChief · 23 Sep 2020 at 11:43

this_is_gav said:
Ferrari seemed to think so, as did the FIA by agreeing not to disclose any technical details with Ferrari's permission. From Binotto in July:

We can only guess. That the FIA with confiscated power units or other teams couldn't explicitly prove Ferrari's PU was running illegally at the time means we do nothing but speculate. Hence the need for technical information. I mean, we all knew they were doing something they weren't meant to be doing, but you need hard evidence to prove it.

The FIA said they could spend millions and still not know what Ferrari were doing. The other teams are being purely selfish and wanted to know what they were doing to see if they could do it too and so the engineers could look at each other and say ‘why didn’t we think of that?’. As usual self serving from the teams. The FIA couldn’t prove conclusively that Ferrari were cheating, hence no real sanction, fine or disqualification.