The Pecking Order

set up a poll for fun, remind me to look it up at the end of the season.

http://www.not606.com/showthread.php/36947-Who-will-more-likely-finish-higher-in-2011

 

I don't know what to make of Red Bull and Ferrari. It is very difficult to say which one is quicker.

Webber and Vettel started their race simulations with very quick lap times, I think Vettel's lap times in the first stint were on average about a second faster then Alonso and Massa - but by about lap 35 Vettel and Alonso pit but now Alonso starts consistently lapping faster, and degradation is similar in this stint so they were probably on the same tyres. Unfortunately Vettel had an issue on lap 49 and ended his sim early.

 

Oh it's the Stig doing these laps. I would say he'd stab them all in the back and write a book about what a selfish bastard he is

 

AMuS believe the pecking order is:

1. Red Bull - Apparently they have a lot more to show
2. Ferrari - Strength is race pace, low fuel pace bad - Alonso's 1.21.614 was on super softs with 15kg fuel
3. Mercedes - Updates met expectations
4. Sauber - Both race and qualifying pace is good, biggest concern is reliability - especially with KERS
5. Renault - Good on long runs according to Heidfeld
6. Williams - They have new FW for Melbourne, new exhaust for Malaysia
7. Torro Rosso - An excellent impression
8. McLaren - The new car is not the standard of McLaren
9. Force India - Problems with chasis and rear wing
10. Lotus - Big step forward, could make Force India worry?
11. Virgin - They are far behind Lotus
12. HRT - lol


AMuS's point about Ferrari doesn't make sense in my opinion. Firstly that would make the car 1 tenth faster then Sauber. With same engine and KERS, I seriously doubt that. Then there is the the point that James Allen and others confirmed Ferrari didn't do qualy sims. Then there are comments like this:

http://www.planet-f1.com/news/3213/6828156/Horner-Ferrari-are-the-ones-on-top

 

Swap Sauber and Mercedes around, and I'd be closer to agreeing with AMuS (whoever he is).

 

lol amus is short for Auto Motor Und Sport:

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-1-606153.html

They are generally a reliable source of information.

 

Thanks Jose.
Actually I was being facetious. But thanks anyway.

 

hispania will beat virgin

 

Now coming from someone who has always said testing times are irrelevant when looking at the pace compared to other teams, I think the start of the season will be like this;

1) Red Bull
2) Ferrari
3) Mclaren
4) Renault
5) Mercedes
6) Williams
7) Toro Rosso
8) Sauber
9) Force India
10) Team Lotus
11) Virigin
12) HRT

Now don't shoot me for putting Mclaren so high, but I think they won't be scrapping the top ten/top fifteen like people are saying. If they are the 3rd best team, that means 5th or 6th which is still reasonable. I think that Read Bull and Ferrari will be playing a two horse race for about 2 or 3 races, and Mclaren will be the best of the rest of the field, but it will be close with Renault and Mercedes behind them.

I also put Renault above Mercedes purely becuase of the car is terrible/car is brilliant from Mercedes this pre-season. They're opinion change so much, I just leave about the same as last year!

Toro Rosso will be able to challenge Sauber more this year I think, and Team Lotus will catch the back of Force India and have a few scraps. HRT will finish below Virigin, I don;t think they are taking F1 seriously.

All of that being said, tracks favour different teams, so that will change race to race, but maybe not that much. can't wait to find out!

 

McLaren didn't leave Barcelona with the 3rd best car, but they claim to have found a second with a new exhaust solution. If that's the case they should be right up there with RBR and Ferrari. They said this a lot last season though and the updates didn't work, so I really don't know what to expect from them, they could be anywhere from 3rd to 7th and it wouldn't surprise me.

 

McLaren's public statements on this are, in my view, little more than guess-work with a large dollop of P.R. - albeit an educated guess (through simulation). Until they get out on track, they will not know where they are relative to the rest, many of whom will also be bringing further innovation - and almost certainly more speed as a result.

Even if McLaren's revised plan works (however temporarily), the result will be a hotch-potch of patchwork fixes; no match for the evolution of holistic design available to those who got it right in the first place and have actually tested their cars! (Remember McLaren's car arrives at Australia as an essentially different item to the thing they sat in the pits with during testing).

 

McLaren have a habit of doing all the talking and then not delivering with the new updates. So many races last year we were promised a lot and saw little.

Even before that, McLaren have always been a bit too optimistic:

http://uniquespecialists.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26206

 

Yes, I think there is some truth in that Jose.

 

McLaren will win, Simples... haha! I can dream.

Honestly, the car is heavily radical, they'll be there abouts season end.