2012 FORMULA 1 UNITED STATES GRAND PRIX - Sun 18 November 2012

[buh_buh]

I'm ok with what Ferrari did.
Felipe's out of the championship, they did what they could to maximize Alonso's position, which pretty much has been their MO all year. I won't give them props for being honest about it, but at least they were honest about it this time.

[Mibz]

Originally posted by ottamania
i hope vettel crashes regardless

FTFY

[cycosis]

Now now lets play nice....

[Inzane]

Originally posted by Cos
Is it just me or are they really pushing the American stereotypes? It is bugging me a bit. All the music is southern rock, the have made wanted posters, just seems kind of rude to me. Lol

I thought that was all for the TEXAS motiff, not necessarily America in general.


What a great race!

Anyone else a bit bothered by the TSN coverage? For example at the end of the race they cut to commercial during the victory lap and as far as I recall we missed the drivers getting out of their cars (and waving, hugging, Lewis checking out the other cars, etc.), the weighing, the back-room chit-chat among the podium winners (I was expecting we'd see Vettel pouting), the grid girls, etc.
Oh yeah, and most importantly, the TSN broadcast didn't even come on until late Sunday evening. WTF??

[Mibz]

TSN takes the BBC feed, which you could have watched live on CTV.

[Kramerica]

I always stream the Sky F1 feed so I can catch what's going on inbetween the commercials.

[scary_perry]

great race - my three fave drivers on the podium

awesome championship IMO for same reason

the last 2-3 F1 seasons have been the best since Prost/Senna IMO.

wonderful racing, awesome spectacle

the austin track is wicked too, going to buy the F1 game so I can 'try it.'

[Inzane]

I know it's probably been discussed before but I'm going to say it again anyway ---

What the hell happened to Mercedes this year?!?

How could a team with the Schumi-Brawn combo get everything so very very wrong?

[Kramerica]

Originally posted by Inzane
I know it's probably been discussed before but I'm going to say it again anyway ---

What the hell happened to Mercedes this year?!?

How could a team with the Schumi-Brawn combo get everything so very very wrong?

Double DRS. Brawn has been pretty open that they went down the wrong path with it. To start with most teams couldn't get it to produce any benefit and Mercedes basically had to design their whole car around it to get that benefit. From there they were boxed in for development of the car any radical changes would marginalize the Double DRS and basically not be worth implementing. This was fine at the beginning of the season, but when everyone figured out how to work the Pirelli tires better Mercedes couldn't do anything, which was why they were the only team that needed to do two pitstops last race. At the moment I think Mercedes are the only team designing a completely new car for 2013 which says alot about how much the Double DRS is integrated into the current car and how much of a failure it has been.

[rage2]

To add to what Kramerica posted, the DDRS system worked very well for Red Bull, their car is much faster than everyone else since they implemented the system. Mercedes' implementation maxxed out, and there was no time or resources to change directions or improve in other areas. Every other top team was able to focus resources to improve the car, which made Mercedes look like they were going backwards.

Same thing happened to Lotus last year with their front facing exhaust. While promising, it severely limited their options in improving the car by mid season.

Mercedes gave up several races ago. Everything they're doing now is to test stuff for next year.

[scary_perry]

But the RB is not the fastest car on straights?

[Kramerica]

Originally posted by scary_perry
But the RB is not the fastest car on straights?

That's a little bit misleading, there are degrees of agressiveness you can set up DRS, the more agressive you go the more unsettled the car becomes when it comes off. Red Bull have traditionally gone really mild so that they can use it throughout qualifying without unsettling the car when it comes off in the corners, the compromise is that they lose some speed out of DRS. Ferrari's DRS is really agressive and you can see they struggle through the corners in qualifying but can over take really easily during the race.

Should also mention that Red Bull traditionally gear their car for quicker acceleration through the corners and has never been a car that fast on the straights to begin with

[rage2]

The RBR implementation of DDRS isn't to maximize straight line speed. It's to get rear downforce back while reducing drag. It does so by channeling air when the wing is open into the rear diffuser. So basically, there's a very very small drag penalty, with huge gains in downforce.

RBR was able to open the DRS through the high speed triple apex in Austin, which is absolutely retarded in terms of laptimes. In qualifying, Vettel was 4/10ths faster than Hamilton in the final sector.

Mercedes, OTOH, used DDRS to blow the front wing for a top speed boost, as well as minimize downforce in the front wing to obtain better balance in low downforce corners.

[Mibz]

I read that part of Mercedes failure was because of how the DDRS affected the nose. While other teams were managing to do crazy things with flexible noses, MB couldn't due to their DDRS design. Take that for what it's worth.

[rage2]

Originally posted by Mibz
I read that part of Mercedes failure was because of how the DDRS affected the nose. While other teams were managing to do crazy things with flexible noses, MB couldn't due to their DDRS design. Take that for what it's worth.

Mercedes was not only limited to just flexi wings designs, but entire front wing design in general because they had to work everything around blowing the wing to reduce downforce.

A more detailed look at the DDRS implementations, when DRS is open, you have a huge inbalance of downforce. All of a sudden, you have a car that has loads of grip up front and nothing out back, which means if you turn, you'll spin like a top.

Mercedes decided to fix the imbalance by bleeding front downforce (for a small straight line boost), which allowed it to take high speed corners that doesn't require a lot of downforce with DRS open. Unfortunately, it was the wrong philosophy. There aren't that many high speed low downforce corners in the calendar, and if you've followed F1 long enough, downforce is king.

RBR as mentioned above, went in a different direction. They took a very small drag penalty to add more rear DF to correct the aero imbalance. That's much more useful, as it can be used pretty much anywhere except high downforce corners. As a bonus, there's no gadgetry on the front wing, and they're free to do anything they want there. The front wing has been very important in the last 2 years in overall performance, as that's pretty much the only place where there's free reign on designs. It does absolutely everything, from channeling air around tires, generating front downforce, and feeding all sorts of channels to maximize rear downforce.

While Mercedes was very smart in figuring out that rebalancing aero with DRS open would be an advantage, they just went the wrong way in doing it.

[ExtremeSi]

Originally posted by rage2

Mercedes was not only limited to just flexi wings designs, but entire front wing design in general because they had to work everything around blowing the wing to reduce downforce.

A more detailed look at the DDRS implementations, when DRS is open, you have a huge inbalance of downforce. All of a sudden, you have a car that has loads of grip up front and nothing out back, which means if you turn, you'll spin like a top.

Mercedes decided to fix the imbalance by bleeding front downforce (for a small straight line boost), which allowed it to take high speed corners that doesn't require a lot of downforce with DRS open. Unfortunately, it was the wrong philosophy. There aren't that many high speed low downforce corners in the calendar, and if you've followed F1 long enough, downforce is king.

RBR as mentioned above, went in a different direction. They took a very small drag penalty to add more rear DF to correct the aero imbalance. That's much more useful, as it can be used pretty much anywhere except high downforce corners. As a bonus, there's no gadgetry on the front wing, and they're free to do anything they want there. The front wing has been very important in the last 2 years in overall performance, as that's pretty much the only place where there's free reign on designs. It does absolutely everything, from channeling air around tires, generating front downforce, and feeding all sorts of channels to maximize rear downforce.

While Mercedes was very smart in figuring out that rebalancing aero with DRS open would be an advantage, they just went the wrong way in doing it.

Interesting. I was wondering what was going on with Mercedes this year too. Good explanation.

Should be very interesting to see what they do with Hamilton next year!

[Cos]

.

[urrforce]

Originally posted by Cos
I am liking just lurking in this thread. Please carry on.

lol me too i dont know much about F1 but it's cool to learn here about the background kinda stuff lol

[Kramerica]

Rage definitely is the go to source for F1 technical knowledge, I've been trying to catch up though.

[rage2]

I just read a lot haha. Glad I can help by regurgitate what I've read lol.