Why wait days for your F1 coverage?
Produced from the F1 circuit at Valencia, GP+ is a PDF electronic magazine that gives you the full story from the European Grand Prix weekend. In this issue we look at Fernando Alonso’s amazing victory…
We talk to Felipe Massa…
We look back at Spain’s version of Enzo Ferrari…
… the success of Williams’s flywheel KERS at Le Mans
… arguments over engines
… Kevin Magnusson testing a McLaren
Plus all the usual columns and race coverage, and the exceptional photography of Peter Nygaard and his team.
For more information about how to sign up, go to www.grandprixplus.com
What an astonishing, and delightful, season this is proving to be!
Full marks to Snr. Alonso.
In front of Luca too, surely worth a bonus?
First and sixteenth: Filipe, polish your CV. and pack your suitcase.
Ferdinand is really proving himself to be the best racing driver on the grid this year.
And you know how difficult it is for an Englishman to write that, but he deserves the compliment.
The win was a Red Bull gift, but he was there to pick it up.
I’m very curious to know if Vettel’s Renault engine suffered an alternator failure like Grosjean’s.
Sounds like they simply melted and shorted out.
I didn’t see the Hamilton’s front-wheel-less car dumped on the ground incident. Was it as bad an error as it sounds? Must be a mighty strong front end to withstand that kind of abuse. How much time did it really cost him? Would he have won?
Hamilton’s pit stop was 14.1 seconds from memory, against 3 seconds for a ‘normal’ stop. The jacks seem to have had a mechanical failure X 2, not too clear from the view on TV, but the first one failed after a part lift and the backup was hovering behind. When the backup got in, the car wasn’t high enough and the wheels didn’t seat properly on the hubs.
Thanks for that info Peter. Mechanical failure of the jack, so easier to deal with psychologically, than a careless error.
Amazing race. I was prepared to watch it for a few laps and pack it in.
Kept me glued to the set until the end . Now, if I can only remember how to work the DVD recorder:-)
Funny how the European Grand Prix turned out.to be one of the most exciting races this season, who would have thought that?
Not so funny was yet another McLaren mess up in the pits. I don’t understand, how is this possible? I’m not sure I can remember a race this season where they didn’t screw up in the pits and as it looks now, this will cost them the championship. They failed to capitalize on having the fastest car at the beginning of the season and looking at the incident with Maldonado, Lewis seems to loose his cool and becomes frustrated yet again.
It’s just the fickle finger of fate. McLaren investigate each problem thoroughly and solve it, and something different goes wrong the next time. Same as with Michael Schumacher’s car. A load of conspiracy theories sprung up around that – but with one good result, it’s mostly forgotten.
Well Joe said he doesn’t believe in luck and explained how teams and drivers make their luck or not. That would suggest that the fickle finger of fate is similarly influenced by preparation and confidence/relations inside the team. In my opinion, it is fate if it happens once or twice during a season, when it happens in almost every race, there is something fundamentally wrong inside the team. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy, but the team needs to get on top of it asap. I’ve got the feeling this race was crucial. the wdc standing has been very close up to now and suddenly alonso has more than a twenty points gap. on top of that, rbr seems to have regained its dominance, which means that vettel might be able to catch alonso, meanwhile mclaren has to catch up with their development AND alonsos points advantage. and if hamilton gets the impression that his consistency doesn’t pay.off in the long run due to team screw ups and a slower car, he might try to force things again. I didn’t understand why he tried fighting maldonado and my only explanation would be frustration.
Enjoyed the magazine and the articles in particular.
Well done.
Oh, the excellent irony! First time I ever called a race out loud (SV did romp away, so I don’t feel too bad), when FA took the lead, I drifted off, (blast funny work hours, but it looked like done deal even then) only to miss Schumi pulling the last of 9 places to nab a podium. Pastor really has to stop daubing other people’s cars with paint and rubber, though. I want to like that guy more than I do. Not the kind of bad boy behaviour we want, Pastor!
thought for gearsau, wow do I hear you on fiddling with DVD machines, all of them designed by OCD suffering Ritalin popping kids. *
– - – -
TL;DR is you can send a very watchable signal to record on your PC, with a cheap but serious adapter and any recent spec PC. DVD thinigies drive me nuts also . . “component” signal, if you have that out on your box is “good enough” and this, once set up, is a doozie.
= = =
Usual ranting guff & detail follows:
= = =
So may I suggest a sneaky trick (if not beer money, nice dinner out with your SO money) which is to get any video board from BlackMagic Design, (I have a “Intensity Pro”) and hook that to your component out feed. It’s not true HD, but those cards are broadcast good, and the only problem is they pull down too much detail, (they presume you have a top quality signal, so you can dial that back quite a bit) which can overload really super fast drives. Anyhow, plenty good for me, holds up on a fairly big screen.
FWIW, the HDMI encryption is AFAIK broken, just that sussing out how that might work seems overkill.
For the record, no, I do not share any of this footage, usually ditch it as I will not justify the spend on disks, and you’d be insane to share any footage as FOM have one of the sharpest teams on figuring out how to slap down funny business like that. Better than much of Hollywierd. Hey – sudden thought – maybe whatever they do is worth more to Hollywood, make up some of those missing billions on the valuation!
That may sound complicated, but honestly it’s plug and play, and BlackMagic tech support rocks. No affiliation, just saying it might be cheaper and easier than a DVD recorder.
* Think Taiwan also here, they have madcap one chance make or break exams. If you have time, read up on the havoc the Ritalin shortage caused, apparently the drug is going off patent, so the Pharma boys want to move everyone onto something new. It’s scary, they have a whole generation hooked on that. I think my entire and every school would all have been diagnosed with something, but – how strange – they grew up and calmed down . . what I see sadly is parenting by pills. Or, my pet theory, kids who the elf and safety brigade won’t let go out and play. I don’t believe in this OCD thing. Kids have to be obsessive – they can’t provide for themselves yet, so pester – and compulsive, hey, yes, they are experimenting and learning. But at least there’s a outlet for all that frustration on Reddit or 4chan…
I still fail to understand your posts, so will not read them again. Since you are addressing your comments to other posters, I ‘guess’ that you are understudying joe Saward?
No, on all counts. I think you misunderstand me more than my occasional “off” posts.
I could have said, “Feed the composite signal from your (older model) sky box into your computer with XYZ card and it beats playing with DVD recorders.”
Unfortunately because I have a geek bent, I thought to explain how, and why it works.
As flattering as it would be to be thought I understudy Joe ~ there is much to learn from him ~ I prefer my own askance style, am probably incapable of conforming to house literary guidelines, and if anything am far too old to start out again.
So I consider your comment a backhanded compliment!
Moreover, I do not expect many people to have understood much of my recent posts. There are motor engineers here, and computing engineers here. Some smart finance minds, too. Ambient or RShack could knock me dead on programming, Peter Forbes or rpaco as to engineering. To take a random sample. It may be a folly, but I am trying to talk up to my betters, not down.
Anyhow, the latest style attempt clearly isn’t working. I dislike dullness, or even too much consistency. I merely got bored with the whole bang on the business side and there’s no trademark disputes about. Further, I was disappointed at someone’s suggestion I could not be a attorney for saying a judge might be bent. Because I have track on winning cases attorneys’ have dismissed as impossible, maybe because they suck ****. Good attorneys fight silly prejudiced judges all the time. Woe betide you if you ever rely on one who is not so inclined.
Add in to the fun mix, some weird things happened with my health, yet unresolved, including a complete collapse, and I have been mucked about with medicines aimed to solve problems the quacks are not sure what they are supposed to fix, and so sadly I got all over the place. Oddly, just being messed about like this has refocussed my mind, only in different ways, in too much detail, as befits trying to solve a demanding puzzle.
To answer your question, I address individual posters for sake of clarity, and because we did not originally have comment threading, and because I think it polite.
I’m sorry if we have crossed, I think we did also recently. Not my intention, at all.
all best ~ j
You know, every time I write a belaboured reply like that, a little part of me dies. Anyone could check back, and know I have no business with Joe, or F1, or even learn what I care for, and why I scribble here a bit, in my quiet moments. Or you could look back and check out how much I called right, which might not be bad for a outsider. Or why I rate Joe. Or any of the myriad personal reasons I think F1 is in trouble and I care. Or guess why I reply to every criticism of my scribbles, because I like the banter and people here, and my nature is reconciliatory. . .
There seem to be some people here who think I am part of this gig. No, nope, no way, I am just tolerated. Joe has a policy to let through criticism, including of him, provided it is not appallingly rude, so I get the same. Fair cop. I do this for fun, so listen to playground admonitions, but check back at my comment history timeline. There’s analysis in there, not adhominem, and little randomness.
Okay, too much taking the mickey out of myself, but hey, someone has to have that job, and nobody else seems up to it .. I may be literary ugliness, but I get to laugh at myself every day, and you don’t, unless I let you
Chill, Peter C, I make a big effort to edit myself, for my own satisfaction of writing as best I can, and end of day may not be up to it. But you add no constructive criticism, so forgive me my disappointment.
Should say, _old broadcast good. But with the compression and all that going on in your broadcast relay, plus less than industrial grade outputs on a Sky box, you’re still fine. Watched the Beeb’s Forum over the ‘net yesterday, which was streaming at 1.5MB/s crisp and clear. One of those little cards will try to capture many many times that bandwidth by default. Also, PITA this does not work with new Sky boxes. You have to ebay for one that works. Apols, not going to be of further help ~ at your own risk, as they say..
Possibly the most interesting race of the season yet. I was impressed how quickly the Red Bull of Vettel managed to build such a big gap.
It always surprises me how, after so many years of development we still can’t get certain designs right. How can a thousand pound F1 state of the art car jack fail, twice?
It also fascinates me to see old ideas making their way back into new cars. Novelties such as swivelling headlights – as seen on the Citroen DS and the 1930′s Tatra Type 77….
….hybrid cars – look back at what Ferdinand Porsche was doing whilst working at Lohner (long before he set up the Porsche Buro in the 1930′s and oversaw the development of the Auto Union race cars)…
…and what about generators? Well, back in
the early 1930′s, Bosch were experimenting with a combined starter / dynamo system, prototypes of which were bench tested and installed on pre-prototype Porsche Type 60 engines. Ironically, the idea was canned, because they underperformed in the cold and were not able to turn engines at sufficient speed in extreme temperatures. Now, in 2012, we still have generators suffering from what appears to be heat related issues. That they failed on two Renault engined cars at a similar point in the race is quite odd. I do wonder if the part was new. Are these auxilliary engine parts even allowed to be developed? Far fetched thought – could they be running a second hidden Kers system that melted after it was deployed once the saftey car peeled off?
I’d guess that the alternator(s) had a mechanical failure, there isn’t a huge amount of electronics inside them, just a 3-phase rectifier and a regulator. The problem is that nature of the drive and the very quick speed changes of the engine.
If it was a toothed belt drive, then I’d go for a belt failure, if it was directly driven, then a coupling breakage?
Having said that, it could just be a simple wire fracture in the main windings
I read elsewhere, that RB confirmed it was an alternator failure. How about the close cowling leading to melting the insulation material? Strange this bug didn’t surface in Bahrain. Anyway, glad it wasn’t a Lucas!
Just want to leave this here, because it has been bugging me for days:
There were recently a few very nasty comments about David T’ and his initials. Unfair, uninformed puns, random rotten potatoes thrown at a imagined dock.
Says someone who knows how complicated how that can be, Y’all bloody well lay off please. You have no clue.
Maybe I’ll expand one day, but I want to say this to DT:
Hey David, do not hide away, that’s the bullshit social opprobrium often as not coming from who would curse you after they kicked you down. Stand up, Man! Take it, I had to. Then send it back.
Get with it, it only gets scary out there when you believe in utter bullshit received morality. YOU did not do wrong.
Strike out, you see the world differently, add to things, not simper and ask permission of a imaginary Puritan audience. Let it rip. Whaddya think I been doing?
I know David will likely not ever ask me why I said this out here on the blog, but if anyone does, I’ll back it up.
best to DT.
~ john