Would love to see a video to accompany the jump. Why would he do that!? It' not like the car is on fire, badly.
For reference the V8's last year were doing 314kph max at Bahrain. Most the field was in the 305-310kph range. Alonso's 336kph was done in a slipstream but last years fastest speed trap also was in a slipstream so they are vaguely comparable. The cars will slow a little when more aero goes on, but other aero parts and the engine will become more efficient!
[video=youtube;oQvmjf210Bg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQvmjf210Bg[/video] [video=youtube;PZRTt7wyB9M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZRTt7wyB9M[/video] [video=youtube;UL0fK019khY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL0fK019khY[/video]
Best case situation for Vettel's defence of title: 6-8 drivers (Mercedes, Mclaren, Ferrari, Williams, Force India) are starting contenders for the win/podiums forcing them to average out at 46 pts a piece over 4 GP's, Vettel sneaks in 7th-8th during that period and maybe more if a lot of DNF's happen in front, so 4x 7th-8th = 20pts, a gap of 26pts to the top spots. Not so good situation for Vettel's defence of title: Only 6 drivers lock out the top 6 spots for the first 4 GP's (Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari) with an average of 59 pts each, with Vettel scoring only 9th x2 and 10th x 2 = 6pts, a gap of 53 pts to the top spots. Bad situation for Vettel's title defence: Only 2 teams have a chance of winning first 4 races (Mercedes, McLaren) locking out the podium and 4th place, an average of 70pts each with Vettel still having an average of 6pts, a gap of 64pts to the top. Very bad situation for Vettel's title defence: Mercedes lock out the top 2 spots and score an average of 86 pts between them, Seb thus being 80 pts behind and much more if one driver out of the team wins all 4 in a row, in short his season has ended even before it began come Spain. First one seems unlikely, so I expect it to lean more to the 2nd with a hint of the top and this expecting the likes of Williams, Force India to do better than red Bull at the start, with Sauber and others maybe failing during the race to give Vettel more of a chance to score points.
I wouldn't write off RBR just yet. If any team can turn their fortunes against the odds, it's them. They may not start out on the front foot, but expect them to be on top of things pretty quickly.
@tgruener Red Bull again hit by a problem with the power unit. Ricciardo: "Will take an hour. Maybe more."
Tobias Grüner F1 ‏@tgruener 1m Secon quick run by Rosberg: 1:33.283m on soft tyres. Almost 1 second faster than Lewis yesterday. AMuS live:
As Rosberg enters lap 37 of his race simulation, we understand McLaren will attempt another one with Jenson Button this afternoon. Incidentally, Jenson had some interesting remarks to make on the challenge of completing a race distance with these new cars thanks to the 100kg fuel limit: “We know there’s a lot of work to do in doing the running. I don’t think my engineers have been that busy before a race distance in testing. But even in race condition they were so much busier today because of the fuel saving. Very, very busy. There are a lots of things that we have to do to try and to make their lives easier and our lives easier.”
Such are Red Bull’s isues, Crofty reports some are now speculating they may look at going back to the drawing board and introducing a B-spec car: “They are making progress, but they are finding more and new issues. Forget about them winning the double after missing the first test in 2010, there has been such a seismic change between 2013 and 2014 that you are kind of wiping the slate clean. My favourite quote from everyone in the paddock this week has been ‘I don’t know’ – the teams don’t know everything that is coming up against them and why the problems are happening and in Red Bull’s case we think we know it is cooling and packaging with Adrian Newey going for the maximum aero design and not the necessary cooling requirement. “But one leading F1 figure from within another team told me that he wouldn’t be surprised now if Red Bull weren’t thinking of B-spec car and redesigning the rear end of their car. They have the resources to do that, but that is going to take some time. Daniel Ricciardo hinted yesterday when he said ‘if we don’t win the first five or six we can win the next ten.’ Are we getting into a situation where up until Barcelona – the first European race of the season – Red Bull are not going to be featuring at the sharp end. It would be an amazing comeback if they can salvage something from that, but if anyone can do it, they can.”
