The word is that the return of Formula 1 to Europe will see some fairly major changes in the cars that have been raced in the first four events this year. Up to now the score has been Ferrari two, Mercedes two, with Sebastian Vettel winning twice and Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas once apiece. Vettel leads the World Championship by 13 points, but Mercedes is ahead in the Constructors’ by one point. It’s certainly tight.
Red Bull is reported to have done a huge amount of work in recent weeks, trying to close the gap on the other leading teams and Renault too is expected to bring some significant updates to Barcelona. But that does not mean that the two tops teams have been standing still. Clearly, there is work going on at Brackley, Brixworth and in Maranello. One can see this given that the pattern before Russia was that Mercedes qualified better than Ferrari, but was not as good in the race. In Sochi, it was the opposite, which seems to suggest that both teams were focussed on their weaknesses.
Ferrari continues to show very little ability to communicate and the only insight into its preparations for the Spanish GP appear to be that “prior to this race, the cars return to the team’s headquarters for the first time since the start of the season. There, they will be prepared and repainted before heading off”. One hopes that there has been some mnore incisive technical input than this… The philosophy of allowing results to speak for themselves is dumb thinking in a sport that is supposed to be about communication… and at some point Ferrari’s sponsors will presumably cotton on to the fact.
Meanwhile in Brackley, where they understand these things a little bit better, the question is how much gain there is going to be from the recent drive to improve the F1 W08 EQ Power+. The word is that a large amount of weight has been shaved off the car in recent weeks and this means that the team will once again be able to use ballast. The wheelbase has also been shortened, which should help with the problems that the team has seen with tyres at the early races.
joeblogsf1 
Always suspected that Merc would think better of the LWB …. can’t wait too see what impact that , and Ferraris lick of paint , will have!
Looking forward to seeing the new improvements on the cars.
Good Mercedes is going back to the short wheel base and shaving weight of its cars. New lighter gear box and suspension also.
Be glad to see improvement from Mclaren…any improvement.
I am no racecar engineer, but shortening the wheelbase in the middle of the season sounds like a huge change. Would this not require a new moncoque with the front suspension mounts in a different place? Ferrari has really got them worried if they are doing risky stuff like this. (Fun to see…)
Not major. Can be done by changing the distance between the PU and the rear axle line (shorter belhousing/spacer, in effect). The front can be done changing the wishbones and pushrods to sweep the front suspension back.
In days gone by, these (along with ballast) were useful to tweak the weight distribution (even between practice sessions) but now weight distribution is fixed by the rules (” boo-hiss!”) , that’s not so useful.
Also no engineer, but I always imagined that the cars did not need to be so long, the moment low down power was up and good. My speculation is that the car length of the long wheelbase designs suitable aero and straightway speed over turning, too much, and that the current new formula would reduce disparity. The dirty air holes surely play into this, and with DR’S I suspected that more overtakes on the straightaway justified giving up cornering agility.
Usually when I have a hunch that *sounds* right to me, but I think if it was strictly true then my presumption would get talked about commonly, there’s been a very interesting explanation and corrections to my thought– anyone care to enlighten me? Or is this too car specific?
Hi John,
I’d not claim to be an expert like (to give one example) Willem Toet.
But as I understand it, the long wheel base places the wheels further forward and rearwards, relative to the main structure. This means that the flow around the front wheels (coming off the front wing, through the gap between the inner face of the wheel and the monocoque) has more room to sort itself out (or be sorted out by turning vanes and other devices) before it encounters the floor and sidepods. Also improves the wake of the front wing, I’d guess.
Similarly, if the rear wheels are further back, the flow through and around the chassis. engine and cooling package has more space between and is less affected by the upstream flow before the impostant bit over the rear wing and the diffuser. Less blockage, if you like.
So the longer wheelbase can give you better downforce and/or Lift/Drag ratio. The downside is that longer usually means heavier and polar moment of inertia is increased, so response can be slower when mot overwhelmed by aerodynamic effects.
But, as ever, I may be wrong. 🙂
Mercedes have said that they will keep the longer wheelbase.
Yes, they have, Rumours are not always true
Yep. Anything that even slows decisions by a few days of development is probably crucial this year. Before we got underway at Melbourne, I commented that I had been so close to being disinterested by the coming season,. But I concluded that the action in the McLaren garage and MTC was where the excitement lay for me. It rather looks like my instincts are not misguided.
I will speak only from my own experience in pursuing both very ambitious long term (century plus man year) and the kind of come back targets that beguile observers to declare thir despairing in my company is final, scoring as if former success is of itself the indictment : it is way too easy to set specific requirements and goals that transpire to having way more root influence on the market approach, and yet can be totally off your charts both in the effect you are looking for as well as the dependencies of commitment to the development, and yet which turn out to be removable with surprisingly negligible overall cost.
I’m certain that the phenomenon is a very strong psychological experience as well. Managers get overly fond of silver bullets. Finance does in placid anticipation awaiting the transfiguration of cash flows.. Everyone has ready excuse for the general malady of the company.
But I have found that the level of internal delusion can even extend to not challenging the validity of internal test data. A invisible wall erects in a Trumpington Reverie adorned by the spray paint doubs of the unwashed cave dwellers you assume will tear their fingernails upon, so tantalising shall be the inaccessible feast of modernity within.
So there can arise a cosmic danger of distortion as the alien world delegates are ever closer to stepping on the red carpets and self congratulatory speeches, which have been the real know it all busy work of what was once before the Great Hope, a fairly normal successful company that just happened to ply a trade with a but more than normal attendance upon the effort. (such things always have a exponential effect)
And this is why my question above about the Not A MP4 auto is not embarrassing me as much as it probably should. The rest of the Woking Wobble looks all too familiar.
But what will not be familiar, whether a development on thar car makes the speed, or other factors unleash the pent up talents, will be the facing, if any of which is my little bit of a fantasy fan’s wish, comes to be. The new mix of a front running nit a MP4 I bet will provide some of the best excitement in many years.
I don’t quite follow the communication part. What makes F1 a sport about communication with the press? It’s about winning races. Ferrari are old fashioned (some – many – will say pretentious) in the sense that they prefer to just get on with it rather than keep talking too much about what they are doing behind the scees – information which is questionable when coming from any team. Seems like those who need to know will know….
So why are the sponsors there?
allow a former corporate animal and low level ex-racer opine that the sponsors are there because:
– some marketing guy wants the link to such an iconic brand which covers many demographics, not to mention the stellar image impacting on their brand
– some corporate dullard wants the pit passes
– the TV viewing figures are huge, even in these straightened times, and – more importantly – global coverage so that one sponsorship covers the many markets that a multi national has (only the Olympics and Soccer World Cup come close)
– occasional mention in the mainstream press
– occasional use of the drivers and team props at various launches/functions
– close coverage in the specialised press
but its really the TV coverage which delivers the link to their global demographics and thus the reason its so expensive
forgive me, Joe, for disagreeing with you
cheers
Peter
but mainly, I reckon its the TV coverage
as a dinosaur I guess the TV – as a visual medium – would include the new multi media such as streaming to phones and laptops – but how the kids can see anything on those tiny screens is beyond me…
This foggy is very short sighted, and as such, can increasingly be contented with the small screens, at least now I found clamp stands to be a alternative to pressing things against my nose. Providing the software makes good use of the resolution (ahem, black marks all around, still, dear me) and the display is good enough, then I will attest I very much hope that 15 megapixel 28 inch 3:2 screens become standard options. Phones are more marginal, because at high resolution and for text, e.g. The absolute 0 of the AMOLED in my LUMIA beats even the super IPS LTD of my P10. The latter knocks the former into a cooked hat for displaying smoith almost black or images. But I totally see it all coming really good quite soon now. These “tiny” screens are hardly much smaller than say the 9 inch orange phosphorus CRT of the luggage IBM I wrote a Package Man clone with my best buddy, summer of 83 I think.
I really should have just said instead, that if not for top luxury phone screen demand, I think the general high quality computer monitor market might be even worse. If that’s possible. If you believe the marketing or your needs genuinely are met by say Benq claims (which are impossible by known tolerance variations as plenty of normal measurements) and that’s the same as everyone, maybe…. I despair.
I don’t have a problem with being disagreed with.
So their shiny logos get seen by millions of eyeballs every second Sunday. Whether or not a team’s PR dept put out a length essay or a curt one-liner will have zero bearing upon whether or not the masses buy the sponsors’ products or services.*
(*clue – they probably don’t anyway; it’s primarily about brand awareness as opposed to sales conversion._
On logos etc and I have watched every race in full since Monaco 1986, save for most of 2002 and 2003 after the shenanigans in Austria I can tell you MB get money from Epsom, read in in a report about how people were surprised they didn’t go to McLaren, McLaren have Chandos somewhere on the car, Ferrari have Santander on the end of the front wing end plate. Other than Red Bull (clue is in the name) and Martini with Williams I could not tell you another sponsor of these teams.
So, so much for brand identity.
In many respects I believe that Ferrari are a unique case, they seem to be able, over a large number of years, to write their own rules ( I don’t mean technical or sporting regs ) I’ve always considered that they have the whole of Italy and Italian Industry behind and working for them. We talk about them whether they win or not, when they cry Italy cries but still they garner publicity. Almost from the public’s perspective they can do no wrong and I believe I am right in saying their road car sales are unaffected by their racing team’s results.
Ferrari road car sales continue to grow. Their biggest markets being the US and China, neither of which has a history of supporting F1 to any great degree.
Ferrari’s brand in the US is based on historic races such as LeMans and Daytona, in other words endurance racing with the GT cars from the 50’s and 60’s still ranked amongst the most valuable cars ever.
Further, Lamborghini has no motorsport legacy whatsoever and nor do they advertise, yet they are hardly lacking for sales…
How can you say they have no motorsport legacy whatsoever when they once supplied engines to backmarkers in the early 90s?
Then there is the small matter of the GT3 Lamborghinis for the last 10 years at least. Or is this just an F1 blog, for F1 only? 🙂
> Ferrari road car sales continue to grow.
So is global inequality. Hence so are the numbers of billionaires, and those on the next few rungs down the ladder.
I’m not making a political statement, just a commercial one. It’s not exactly rocket science to grow the turnover and profits of a global luxury goods brand in this environment.
The Sponsors are there to make money, they just want their logos stuck on the side of things that people see, be that cars, drivers, footballers, sports shoes, drinks cans or big red buses in London.
The race is about who comes first and who else took part. The cost of racing is covered by the sponsors, but just because the team doesn’t want to constantly feed information to journalists doesn’t mean the team are failing their sponsors.
I agree the sponsors are only paying because they want to target F1 fans and maybe the fans want more information from the teams, but that’s not the reason the teams turn up.
I suspect most Ferrari fans (not necessarily most F1 fans) probably like the way Ferrari do things, it seems to be mainly journalists and TV commentators that grumble about the lack of information coming from Ferrari.
To bask in reflected glory?
Sponsors are there to get the exposure (but, not ONLY by team communication to media). Performing on track surely works for sponsors, so, if a team chooses not to communicate it is their way of working. No need to undermine a team just because they don’t work to our liking.
Perversely the main Ferrari sponsor is invisible ……
Do you mean the tobacconists, or Formula One paying them tens of millions just to turn up??
I would assume the sponsor are there to be seen when the car performs well and ideally wins some races (thinking on the top tier). Personally as a fan I don’t have much expectations about the communication part since I would not expect the team to reveal anything relevant ahead of time to the competition. I love to read this blog, surely not for the fluff but for a well reasoned commentary on the world of F1.
Isn’t their main sponsor banned from even being mentioned?
Is good question. I am minded of the Beatrice sponsorship of the Lola operation back in the last turbo era. The Big Boss wanted the Beatrice name plastered over the cars but J Random Punter couldn’t nip down the shops and buy a Beatrice, whereas she COULD buy a packet of Marlboro or a bottle of Martini.
Another dinosaur cheating my 20 feet of throat having just had a comet trajectory earth level twitch travel up my dispersed “cloud computing disaster tolerant ganglionic cluster” brain server 2000…
The sponsors could be quite happy in fact do much better – in particular the smaller sponsors, – if they were politely moved back a distance from Formula One’s operations.
This corporation washing came about in the final 99s and set in at the new millennium.
It has not been any savior to F1 whatsoever.
The saturation of the teams and so sadly the drivers’ lives such as can be the fans’ views have overwhelmed the normal public interpretation of F1 and horrendously occluded the interaction of top athletes and technically elite individual competitors who have absolutely unique insight into the advancing world, and hid their minds behind a HP (which you may no longer refer to as Hewlett Packard) or equivalent in another area, who (as Compaq) caused JPM to – – according to the tone of the mediocremedia of that day – – drag down F1 with brown nosing the money baggers.
This is not just tosh and the apotheosis of piffle when you have teams attenmpting to express allegiance and gratitude to the suppliers they certainly daily make unheeded demands of, but a appealing lock out of smaller sponsors, who see the playing field painted like the corporate colours of the home pitch of an away match.
Liberty is a intelligent organisation, but it is successful in applying itself in a fairly narrow constituency of markets and contents and is successful more as a legal and financial department (which could easily be delegated to a top bank*) than the breadth of twenty years of little observed history of a pinnacle sport globe trotting in every imaginable way a that and then some. I hope they have a plan to make allowances for the possibility that new plans and more resources may be what they need if only to begin with.
Sponsorship is about bragging rights. That can be done far from the track. Often to greater effect. Just ask any pub subscribing fan.
Apologies self reply but my footnote meant to add that cable TV is the product of Mike Miller at Ddexel Burnham Lambert. Liberty equally so. Men was jailed (mistake corrected but you never hear of that) and Drexel smashed (and a Lehmann scale global meltdown narrowly avpided) purely to keep Milken’s empire building away from the connected social ranks.
> HP (which you may no longer refer to as Hewlett Packard)
I don’t. I refer to Keysight as “Hewlett-Packard”.
Not allowed to do that either, of course, but whatevs…
The trouble is that the weekly stories that are spun by most teams are just Candy Floss. We do not get answers to the questions that were left open at the end of the race.
No explanation was ever given why Lewis’s low mileage engine disintegrated in Malaysia, or what effect the overheating engine in Russia will have on his race in Spain. DC seemed to think the radiator on the LHS was loose and clearly moving arround inside its side pod. How can that happen?
Most journalists seem uninterested in the technical side of the sport, so are happy to reproduce press releases, without question. The BBC even produces a Gossip column where it provides links to other sources, rather than try to veryfy the accuracy, or otherwise, of the stories.
I don’t see communication just with the press, its also about engagement, personally I think F1 has become very aloof living in its ivory tower keeping fans behind fences. A lot of fans like and enjoy to see whats going on, what developments are coming. How teams are reacting.
Lets not forget that F1 is still largely paid for by sponsors, every communication is an opportunity to reinforce the brand.
Just look at how often football shows discuss the off season, transfers etc. Every time they do this the sponsors get an airing and folks get to argue in the pub, at work or online about the next great thing or teams overpaying for yesterdays hero.
Its more than a Sunday thing
To Joe, as a pundit, F1 is all about communication
To designers, it’s about invention
To team principals it’s about management
To the drivers it’s about adrenalin and wins, probably in that order
To fans it’s adrenalin, excitement, exhilaration [yeah..fat chance]
Fully expect AMG Mercedes will be ahead of Scuderia Ferrari from this point forward. Ferrari seems to run out of good ideas after the opening flyaway races. Aero updates either don’t provide gains or destabilize the cars balance. This will probably lead toVettel taking up his precontract with Mercedes as others are suggesting. Any wisdom to add on this matter Mr. Saward?
Mercedes LWB – one of the departed Paddy Lowe’s innovations? If it was, best of luck Williams.
according to reports Mercedes have no “free ballast” now. so a 5kg ballast situation means the car will need be 10kg lighter then it is now if they are 5kg overweight now.
no hurry Joe.
The shorter wheelbase will reduce weight. Simples innit.
what short wheelbase?.
Really looking forward to Barcelona first practice and seeing some pace from the Red Bulls. Ricciardo and Verstappen are wasted at present and that is not good – we want more title contenders.
It would be nice if Ferrari spoke a little more and Toto Wolff a little less!
+100% Totto please respect the fans intelligence… Too many management sound bites and meaningless PR drivel for a lifetime … oh bring back the days of yore when principals spoke their minds, team managers like Patrick Head, Tom Walkinshaw, Flávio Briatore (pre Singapore) come to mind…
Ferrari are a mystery, a contradiction.. Long may it continue
N.N.ARM
This is not the first time Joe has alluded to Ferrari’s paucity of communication. I’ve noticed it myself for quite some time. I’m curious as to how this manifests itself. Do they, for example, tend to not issue press releases on matters where their fellow competitors would normally issue a statement? Are they openly hostile to media? If so, do they single out nationalities? Or type of media… as in, daily press, specialist press, radio, television? Do they have individuals they adore… or loath? I am not by any means seeking for you to name names; I’m genuinely intrigued as to what it is the Scuderia does – or doesn’t – do in contrast with the rest of pit row.
I was surprised when Jake and co managed to get hold of the cigarette man for a few words, admittedly not many but he seemed quite willing, though his English is not very good. (not a criticism since my Italian is terribly non va)
“Ah I thought this could be the beginning of a change in Ferrari communication policy?”
Joe – how is it that the teams have been able to make such significant changes to the cars? Red Bulls seems as if it will be almost a completely different car. I thought there were restrictions on how much tweaking they could do, have the rules on that been relaxed?
My understanding is that there are no restrictions on bodywork changes except those imposed by time,money and available brain power.
The cars aren’t homologated, except for the chassis, they can do anything they want as long as they are within the rules.
> The wheelbase has also been shortened
Can they do that without new crash tests / a new homologation? And if not, are teams allowed to crash test / homologate multiple chassis designs in a single season?
Certainly not suggesting wrongdoing, if they’re doing it in public it’s obviously allowed. Just amazed that such major changes seem to be coming so early in the season.
Many, many, -many- years ago, I was told by a Brackley staffer that if the team could -get- to the front in F1, it would be able to stay there, because they were the class of the field in terms of production lead times from signing off a design to bolting it onto the car. Perhaps he was right.
Today it has been reported that contrary to what was being pushed out by the usual pushers Mercedes has actually shortened the wheel base by half.
They could just angle the suspension arms differently. Front ones angle back more, back ones can angle forward more. Or relocate where the arm attach, or change the hub carriers’ mounting points. No effect on the crash test areas.
I hope F1 drivers never get to the point – as in NASCAR or Indy Car- where the drivers commonly and incessantly refer to their cars getting a sponsors plug in in the interest of “communication. ”
‘The Kraft Hungry-Man Dinner car ran like clockwork out there tonight’, or ‘The Uncle Billy’s Golden State Car & Truck Marts car crew were just super today, Bob’….
“After flat-spotting the front left tyre my Martini Williams was shaken, but not stirred.”
Car manufacturers aside, Red Bull and more recently Haas have this nailed in that the title sponsor is also the name of the car, even if it did take Grosjean a few races to stop pronouncing it in an unfortunate way.
“The wheelbase has also been shortened, which should help with the problems that the team has seen with tyres at the early races.”
Are we asked to believe that the tests are equivalent to Stirling Moss testing a Mercedes Benz F1 or sports car on the Nurburgring. M-B did it in the 1950s; they tested and if testing didn’t deliver results, they tested again..
by how much did they shortened the wheelbase?.
They say they didn’t.
Joe
Apparently Mercedes has been limping all along since the pre-session tests in Spain. Have been running a defined motor and this car that they bringing was actually the real car all along, can you verify?
ST
No
Detuned
Slightly off-topic… I just read elsewhere that one-time Ferrari communications chief Luca Colajanni is now going to be doing the same role for Liberty Media. If he’s who I remember he is…I’m not sure that’s very good news, is it?
He’s OK
I’m guessing the Ross Brawn suggestion that teams be allowed to inspected their competitors cars during the season will raise a few eyebrows. Apparently the idea comes from NASCAR, that pinnacle of motorsport engineering where they’ve yet to catch onto using overhead valves and other modern innovations.
I hope Ross Brawn doesn’t turn into the new Max Mosley, making madcap threats to enable him to sneak through other rules.
After such an illustrious career Ross Brawn seems to have Americanized himself in a big way joining the two other LM men and the three combined seems to want to push aside the fact that they it takes two to tango.
My immediate reaction is that that will make it -harder- for a middle rank team to ever win a championship by coming up with a completely new idea, because it will make it easier for the
big budget teams to discover, copy & refine it. The trend towards rewarding iterative improvement over innovation will be accelerated. Not keen.
@toleman fan – I hadn’t thought the lower teams would be the ones to miss out if Brawn’s idea was put into action. It’s too easy to believe that only the top teams have innovative ideas.
Championships won by second tier teams against the general run of play have often come from opening up a new or different development direction.
Brawn are the obvious example. One might argue for Lotus and ground effects – at the time the 78 launched, the team was looking like it might be at the beginning of a long term slide into the midfield, although with hindsight that threat was rather obscured. And although it’s a subtler example, I’d offer Renault in 05 and 06, spotting that the characteristics of the Michelin tyres they were using would be better exploited by moving mass and aero balance significantly backwards (which also meant that when Michelin withdrew, Renault had to throw a good part of their aero away and start over, whereas McLaren were instantly quicker than Renault again simply because they hadn’t optimised to Michelin in the first place).
Hi Joe, looking forward to a piece here (or in my GP+ subscription) regarding your thoughts on whether Ferrari can maintain the development pace to remain competitive without James Allison. You can imagine that the early season wins might have been attributed to his influence, but everything since will likely be due to the new engineering team. Hopefully they can keep the competition interesting over the remaining races.
Thanks!
Allison says it wasn’t him. Maybe he’s just being -very- modest, but he seemed pretty categorical IIRC.
Joe,
Any feelings so far for how happy / confident each team is feeling so far as the European season upgrades break cover and bed down, or what the competitive order is looking likely to be for the next few races? Thanks…
Hi Joe, why do you dislike Ferrari?
Because they treat the sport with contempt
Seems like a good enough reason.
Glad none of the other teams do that {cough red bull cough}.