713 replies to this topic

[Scuffers]

once again, the Merc engined cars dominate the lap count chart..

 

ignoring reliability etc, the depressing thing for me is that their race pace (if that's indeed what these long runs are) is painfully slow compared to their ultimate pace (and I don't think we have really seen that yet).

 

ie, the races will be a massive economy drive as opposed to actual racing...

 

 

[techieboy]

ie, the races will be a massive economy drive as opposed to actual racing...

Yep. I think that's the reality of this coming season. Assuming Pirelli have delivered some tyres that stand a vague chance of lasting at least a third of a race before giving up any semblance of grip, I fear most of the time (after the first 3 laps) the drivers are going to be plodding around in fuel preservation mode.

[jameso]

I dunno if that bothers me - I figure if "race mode" is just a 80 or 90% engine map and everyone runs it then it won't affect the racing....

[fezzasus]

once again, the Merc engined cars dominate the lap count chart..

 

ignoring reliability etc, the depressing thing for me is that their race pace (if that's indeed what these long runs are) is painfully slow compared to their ultimate pace (and I don't think we have really seen that yet).

 

ie, the races will be a massive economy drive as opposed to actual racing...

 

 

 

They're lapping at roughly the same speed as last years lap times, It's too early to compare qualifying as I suspect we'll only see them unleash full speed during free practice.

 

The only driver who has come out and said they're slow is Kobayashi in a Caterham which looks about 4 seconds off the pace of anyone else.

Edited by fezzasus, 28 February 2014 - 06:22 PM.

[techieboy]

Another useful day of testing for Red Bull

 

 

12:18 [color=rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;]As a reminder for those wondering why the leaderboard is only showing nine cars - Sauber and Red Bull are yet to set a time today.[/color]

[color=rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;]Adrian Sutil came to a smokey halt in the pit entry at the end of his installation lap first thing this morning. [/color]

[color=rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;]Red Bull has had a couple of attempts at getting Sebastian Vettel on track, but the first attempt lasted half a lap and next time around he didn't even make it out of the pitlane.[/color]

 

[CocoPops]

Horner said they were 10days behind schedule

[Scuffers]

0 lap count for the day.....

 

they really are in trouble now...

 

I know Renault are not in great shape, but Caterham seem to be able to get the mileage in (all be it dog slow)

[turbobob]

Cock

[CocoPops]

Cock

I do feel for red bull, but it's a huge opportunity for the other teams. What are Renault playing at, they could and should have run this engine in a test bed car, not like they couldn't bastardize a formula Renault car is it!?

[turbobob]

I don't think the engine has problems as such. It's more the first time the engine has been run in the cars.

[turbobob]

As for being an opportunity for other teams. With the complete overhaul of the engine rules, it was a level playing field anyway. 

[Scuffers]

 

Cock

I do feel for red bull, but it's a huge opportunity for the other teams. What are Renault playing at, they could and should have run this engine in a test bed car, not like they couldn't bastardize a formula Renault car is it!?

 

As I understand the rules, that's banned.

 

I hear that some of the issues relate to mgu cooling (both of them) and inverter cooling...

[siztenboots]

[slindborg]

Maybe for the first two races they can use any car that their engine is in or OEM made by the brand...

 

Merc - Zonda R's

Mclaren - P1's

Redbull....Clio 200

Caterham - R620

Williams... Maybe at a push the CX75

 

Would make for a fun grid.

[Dave E]

Williams also could run a clio

[slindborg]

or a migrane.. or even a laguna V6

[techieboy]

Shame Benetton aren't still around....

[VXT Tim]

Confirmed Hamiltons fastest lap was actually on super softs.

[siztenboots]

Ive been working in the IT business since the mid-nineties and a recurring problem in recent years has been that even magna cum laude university graduates dont know how to program properly anymore. The reason for that is they arent being taught and the days, when hardcore Nerds like the Hippopotamus Corporosus were foreswearing any sort of social life in favour of all-nighters teaching themselves how to get their puny little computer to do stuff it was never designed to do, are a thing of the past. Kids these days dont grasp the concept of spending three days of programming to come up with a program or device driver that you can just download from the vendor these days. Todays generation wants instant gratification. Back in 1994 I installed Linux on my computer for the first time. It was akin to building a Caterham kit car that came with a few parts missing, like the gearbox for instance, which you then had to build yourself. In my case the system didnt know what to do with my massive 512KB SVGA card and apparently my brutally fast single-speed Mitsumi CDROM drive spoke only the binary equivalent of Greek. So I spent two weeks designing and programming device drivers for my exotic hardware. Todays youth would send the DVD back if the system wasnt installed and ready to go after one hour at the latest. If you come fresh out of university today, chances are that you have learned to program in Java or C#, which has nothing to do whatsoever with programming. Imagine you were asked to write a program for bolting stuff together. Todays kids would come up with something like that: List BunchOBolts = new List (); List BunchONuts = new List (); Nuts nut=BunchONuts.begin(); for (Bolt element in BunchOBolts) { element.ConnectTo(nut); nut=BunchONuts.next(); } Voila! Program done in 2 minutes: Instant gratification. Now heres the problem. They have no control over whether or not the Nuts and Bolts are created properly and with a minimum amount of resources. And more importantly, they rely on the runtime system to give the resources used by the temporarily created Nuts and Bolts back to the system when they are no longer used. By using convenient programming languages, they are isolated from and left in the dark about the underlying processes. Back in the olden days we had to do that on our own and thus had full control, but also full reliability. If our program didnt work, it was our fault. If todays script kiddies write a program that doesnt work, chances are they hit a bug in the runtime system. The thing is though: Hardware doesnt provide convenient languages, especially cutting edge stuff like this years engines. You dont need useless Java monkeys, you need battle-hardened experienced Assembler jokeys, who know how to shave off a few nanoseconds from an inner loop by eliminating a redundant near jump. You need folks, who know that MOV BX,AX SHL AX,2 SHL BX,4 ADD AX,BX SHL AX,2 is a few processor cycles faster than MUL AX,80 Renault, however, seem to have hired an unholy bunch of C# script kiddies or some guys, who acquired their hardware programming skills on Wikipedia, because if they were hardcore nerds from days gone by, we wouldnt have heard the words software problem uttered nearly as often as we did during winter-testing. To put it bluntly: A program that after 2 years of development still doesnt run properly has been written by someone, who chose the wrong job. Back in the day hardware programming was witchcraft. You either got it right or you incurred quite a repair bill. When I wrote the Linux graphics driver I had to program horizontal and vertical frequencies manually to achieve a certain non-standard screen resolution. I got one number wrong and pushed the horizontal frequency past the limits of the of the monitors tube. It started to stink, made a nasty pppphhhh sound and caught fire. That meant shelling out 400 Deutschmarks for a new monitor. But that wasnt an attempt at programmers jackass. We simply didnt have any other option. Today, you would write a CRT emulator, that would give you a parameter exceeds limits error message instead of a plastic bonfire. But in our days computers had less memory than todays wrist watches. They simply didnt have the oomph or the resources to simulate a full-blown cathode ray tube with all its bells and whistles, so we had to play horizontal frequency bingo. But that also meant I didnt just run the stuff through the assembler as soon as I thought it could compile. I checked and rechecked things, which is why I burned only one monitor, not five. Things are a little different these days. If the programmer themselves havent got a clue how stuff works, what are the chances that their managers have the slightest idea? Most companys think that programming means that a fat guy vomits a  few letters and numbers into a file, pushes a button and everything works. Testing these days is considered optional. When was it last time that you bought a video game that didnt install a first patch within a week of release day? If you buy software on release day these days, youre a blithering idiot as it is unfinished. The last program I bought that didnt need patching to repair basic functionality cost me 0,00 bucks, because I had written it myself. I had spent 3 months on programming it and 2 months on testing it and when it it was released, it worked. Todays industry would have released it after 3 months and then spend 4 months on releasing patches that should have been part of the release version. This is why Renault doesnt deserve any pity. They either have completely inept programmers or they havent tested their stuff properly. Most likely both conditions apply. As a result of that they now have more egg on their face than a farmer, who faceplanted a days load of eggs. Formula One is supposed to be the pinnacle of automotive engineering. Bringing software that is fundamentally broken is completely and utterly unacceptable There is nothing more humiliating than your customer (Red Bull) announcing that they are going to send a task-force to sort out the mess youve made of a product youre asking 20.000.000 items of currency for. Needless to say, money will arrive at Viry in much smaller quantities than originally anticipated. Nobody would pay the full price for a restaurant meal, if they had to go to the kitchen and prepare it themselves, because the cook is hopeless. Renault puts the powers that be between a rock and a hard place. There are three possible scenarios. The first one is, that Red Bulls hacker brigade is over 30 and played with soldering irons in their youth as opposed to my little pony. It would be a massive achievement if they would sort out Renaults software by lets say Barcelona, but that would also highlight Renaults utter uselessness even further. The second scenario is that Renault keeps making a fool of themselves with catastrophically inferior units, which would mean a catastrophic financial loss as all their customers would withold payment for what would essentially be a broken product. In that case FIA would find themselves in a situation where they would be forced to grant Renault permission to sort out their engines despite the engine freeze, which would lead to much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Mercedes and Ferrari camps. The third scenario is the unlikeliest, as it would require that FIA actually grow a spine. Back in the late 1990s Toyota entered Indycars as an engine manufacturer and their engines were ridiculously underpowered and unreliable. After almost 2 years of on-track shambles the organizers set them a deadline and threatened to exclude them from competition if they hadnt at least achieved an acceptable level of reliability by then. Kicking out a manufacturer for utter uselessness has happened in the past Andrea Moda anyone? Renault have done every mistake in the book. They invested too few resources, employed too few engineers and tested on a woefully out-dated and inferior dyno. As a result their engine is best described as utter crap. Like last years early season Pirelli tyres it is not fit for the intended purpose and will serve no other purpose than to thrash the manufacturers image. The only team that can make the thing last longer than barely a race distance is Caterham. But to satisfy the units excessive cooling demands they had to ruin the cars aerodynamics and as a result the green monstrosity from Leafield would come second to most of my furniture in the wind tunnel. If Lewis Hamiltons and Jenson Buttons statement from the latest test are anything to go by, Adrian Newey has built a stunner, despite the hurried design phase. Even though Vettel was running with a neutered engine on the last day of testing, Motorsport-Total reported that his corner speeds saw the oppositions jaws hit the deck hard. But all that comes to nothing if your lobotomized PU loses you 30kph on the straights. Newey might have packed the car tighter than David Coulthards white trousers again, but it is the excessive need of cooling, shoddy programming and general hopelessness of the Renault engine that renders the RB10 the worlds most expensive paper weight. For this epic fail they deserve neither pity nor forgiveness. They deserve nothing but ridicule. Unfortunately four teams have to pay the price.

[JG]

wow, what a load of gobledegook.