To live the dream of 'being there in F1; and to make money by competing in the most technological of all motor sports; the pinnacle. Additionally, there is the small matter of taking pride in the name of their country. Each to their own opinion but I feel this is a bit unfair. Despite the impression you seem to be getting LHTFL, they are doing their best with limited resources. Last year's performance from HRT was better than many gave them credit for - or indeed, expected. Remember that in every race of any kind, there is not only a winner but also someone who finishes last. If HRT or Virgin weren't there, there would be someone else at the tail-end. Perhaps your "shambles of a team" would then be promoted to Caterham? Or if others were removed, perhaps Williams, Toro Rosso, and so on? Survival was all that most hoped for HRT; even if it meant finishing last. But some might say they did better than that, despite not qualifying for the first race… You might not approve, LHTFL; but to call them "a shambles" is to ignore not only their determination to remain in F1 but also their achievements in what is a relatively short time frame against the best of the very best in the world.
HRT very much remind me of Minardi's early days, but they kept plugging away and started to turn in some repsectable performances after 5 or so years. Maybe HRT will do the same? Everyone grew fond of Giancarlo Minardi and his merry bunch of boys as they were doing F1 on a shoe-string budget but, unlike many other teams, they kept turning up year after year because they loved racing. In today's money obsessed, comercially driven world it does no harm to see a bunch of spanners and their tools having a craic at something they love.
here here. Everyone gives them grief, but they qualify within 107, and if you consider how many teams in the past havn't even made it that far, ones that really should have done better (anyone for a mastercard Lola?). And, by the end of last year, they were not the worst cars on the grid. I personally hope they stay in F1 for a while, they are just guys that want to go racing, started by a former F1 driver who wanted to remain in the sport, in it for the love rather than the economic returns. crossed posts with mine, but in total agreement.
Limited resources or not, this is the second season running in which they have not attended testing because they released their car too late etc. I understand small teams need finance to help compete but they should be better prepared than they are now. And ok maybe I was a bit unfair in terms of calling them a shambles but let's look at the bigger picture here. They are struggling for finances and being part of F1 and not making significant progress year by year will not help them. They could do what Williams are doing for example and look for drivers with sponsorship and can bring money to the team. Are they really going to be able to ever compete with the Force India's, Toro Rosso's and Sauber's in the next 5 years? If they came up with a radical design like Brawn did then possibly but I just can't see it.
http://adamcooperf1.com/2012/02/27/crash-test-failure-forces-marussia-to-miss-barcelona-test/ What an embarrassment. Now let's see if HRT turn up to Barcelona; I have a feeling they won't.
You would think something as fundamental as passing the crash test should be round about in the first and foremost thoughts of the design team as they began creating the car. Bread and butter stuff really. So essentially they will have entered the season without a mile of testing under their belt, sounds like a winning strategy
Who says they are not progressing? They were worst by a mile in 2010, in 2011 they started as the worst car but they certainly didn't finish with the worst car, outqualifying the Virgin (and sometimes the Lotus) in the last 5 or 6 GP's.
Bread and butter, yes - but if you built a car solely to pass a crash test then you'd end up with a grid of 24 Tanks. Passing the crash test by the finest margin possible is the aim as it gives a lighter car, and may allow your aero detailing to be finer, etc.
Let's not forget that the likes of HRT and Marussia fulfil a role that is otherwise lost in F1. Thanks to Ecclestone's globalisation of the sport, the swashbuckling privateers of yesteryear are now big business concerns in their own right - those that haven't fallen by the wayside. The plucky underdog is a desirable, perhaps necessary element in F1. The problem for these teams is that, with reliability now so, er, reliable, the days when a lot of retirements up front left the midfield with a shot at podiums and the plucky underdogs being there to pick up points are few and far between. Expanding the points scoring positions from eight to ten hasn't yet had the desired effect.
So your the kind of person that believes everything they hear from team principals? Come on Tom, Lotus/Boullier not a good combination.
Seems like the FIA will not allow the delayed test day for Ferrari and Red Bull. (Source: Ferrari http://www.ferrari.com/English/Formula1/News/Headlines/Pages/120228_F1_Change-of-programme.aspx)
if HRT and Marussia dont pass the test before australia they can still run the 2011 cars right? as long as they fit the rules?
I'm heartened by this. The FIA need to be consistently firm about there own rules and to go as far as they possibly can to avoid exceptions. Slackening off from such ideals is likely to render unfair results when some make all efforts to conform to the written plan, whilst others may be allowed to consider themselves special cases. Ferrari in particular have always wanted to dictate their own exception clauses; but I must say that Red Bull have been following a similar mentality since they entered the sport. This sort of thing should not happen at all. For that reason, I'm very pleased to see they will all be running together as first planned. FIA: Make your rules and stick to them! ALWAYS±!!
Yes, that's good news. Thanks, tomcat. Makes you wonder what representations needed to be made to the FIA by other teams before they checked the rulebook.
You can't blame RBR for wanting a level playing field, if one team always bends the rules why shouldn't everyone else? F1 has nearly always been about pushing the rule book (after all, the current ringmaster tried to get away with the fan car). I am glad though, as soon as I heard people were thinking about private tests I was "WTF?!?" as it seems to be contrary to the whole point of the way the new pre-season tests have been arranged. The only teams I would even consider allowing are HRT, marussia & Lotus as they are new teams and they have a few years of catch up. As to Mercedes, no-one rates them highly except the German magazines. I think most teams know how fast the others are roughly in comparison, and nearly all the teams and drivers are talking up RBR and McLaren. There's also the body language of the teams and drivers, and the fact that they've all been on track with each other following each others cars around and seeing how they're handling and reacting through the turns. Mercedes were talking up their ideas quite highly so I think a lot of the tems would've been paying them a lot of attention, and no one seems that worried about them. They could be doing a great deal of sandbagging, but I doubt they'd sandbag themselves so much that know one could tell if they were fast unless they did it to the point of getting no usable data. As to Lotus, I'm really finding it hard to pace them.
So why were Mercedes allowed to skip a day in Jerez to do private testing? Why couldn't the FIA wait until next year to properly enforce this rule? Anyway, now that they've made this decision, it must apply to all teams - Lotus must not be allowed to do private testing.
Perhaps the teams that complained about private testing had no interest in stopping Mercedes for whatever engine supply, I mean reason. I don't think we've seen anything of the top teams' performance. Doubtless they will be able to extrapolate sector times to understand roughly where they are but most of the testing from the top four has been around tyres and reliability as far as I can see. Like Andrew Benson, I think up to now it's been the most uninformative testing I can remember (although, of course, I can remember the final test from years gone by and we haven't had that yet this year). Unlike Benson I wouldn't then go on to try to read something into it. Mercedes has shown the fastest top speed in the speed trap but that counts for almost nothing in terms of lap times these days. I understand the Mercedes has been pretty harsh on its front tyres, which perhaps explains why they might run the W-duct. Again, though, whether that means too harsh to run a sensible strategy or just slightly more harsh than they expected I don't know.
