Bottas is on a one year contract. Why, when he is so highly thought of ? Because Mercedes stated that they wouldn’t buy anyone out of a contract for 2017. However, they did a deal with a Mercedes engined team (which is less than flush) with a cheaper engine supply deal (ideally not simply for one year).
Freddy is out of contract at the end of this year. If a deal can be done, it is simple not to extend Bottas’s contract. Fred gets his dream drive. QED.
I thought Merc said they wouldn’t pair Ham and Fred, too volatile…
So unless Ham leaves Merc, then there’s no way they’d employ Fred at the mo…
I thought that they said that it would take some complex management rather than NO.
There was a story about that Vettel already has a Merc contract.
This is what I’d suspect to happen.
As much as I’d (adopts Keving Keegan voice) LOVE IT if Mercedes paired Fred with Lewis, i feel sure that if they were interested in him, then he’d already be sat in a Merc right now.
Vettel seems the shoe in, which - unless Lewis goes to Ferrari still leaves no obvious opening for Alonso … unless he goes back to Ferrari
I think ‘mechanical grip’ is generally the part of the grip related to the mass of car. So proposals about increasing mechanical grip are really about reducing downforce. So the cars are less affected by running close to other cars. The more significant factor might be that the aero gain from clever investment might be reduced, so the disparity between the competent and incompetent designers is lessened.
But I don’t find I care too much. I’m actually more interested in knife edge technology.
Paul
Where’s the popcorn emoji ???
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And apropos nothing much at all, in the wet the dominance of aero is exaggerated, lack of power rendered less significant, which I think means wet races are interesting because they expose the less complete driver, and equalise the raw mechanical side a bit, especially the engine.
I’ve had some experience of driving in the wet, it’s a bit ‘like ice, like ice, cool, full throttle! Why won’t you fucking stop? crunch, fuck.’ I’ve just had a nostalgia trip on YouTube… But it’s OT, since we were using an ex-IndyCar engine.
Paul
Hi Paul,
Good to see you adding to all this.
You are right re the consequence of reducing the effectiveness of the aero will bring cars closer together, mainly because it is such a big differentiator at present and that allows the more talented aero engineers to make the difference really count.
To your point in the wet, another way of looking at it is that the tires efficiency in converting vertical force to lateral and or longitudinal force is reduced (for the reasons that I have given). In this case the aero importance is reduced in some ways but increased in others. This is why the Williams was always bad in the wet because they did not and still do not understand some aspects of vehicle performance.
The net result is that the vehicle (grip vs power vs stability) has changed dramatically, and is changing as the conditions change, which does mean that the best drivers stand out more than in normal conditions. It also means that from time to time a mid field car can time things right and get the tyres in an operating window, that others have missed, and be really quick.
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Well it will be an interesting season I guess. I still want cigar tubes (modern strong ones) with shit brakes personally 
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And the Scalextric flipper.
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No brakes, engine/downforce only?
It’s obvious that using a precise, useful in engineering terms, definition of ‘mechanical grip’ leads to increasing it being a nonsense idea in terms of improving ‘the racing’. More rubber, grippier rubber, resurfacing tracks with embedded tin tacks, all will increase the benefit that good aero brings.
Perhaps the FIA should just prohibit front wings. And see what the teams came up with.
Paul
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Yes, it made no sense at the time and now the drivers are complaining about the inevitable.
Given time Ross Brawn can sort this out. But it will be an evolution to get there, not a revolution.
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Absolutely agree. By which time people like me who love threads like this (even though I struggle to keep up, which makes it even better) , love the build up, love the start, but then get to catch up with 40zz’s up to the finish line will have lost interest entirely.
If it goes off terrestrial TV completely it will die in the UK at least. There is no way I would pay for any more Sky subscription other than the basic one we have.
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ftfy (from my POV)
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As obsessed as I am, Sky will get not a penny from me.
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I wonder if Honda are doing what they did when I was at Honda F1 in the 2000s They had 2 engine teams, with one team developing the engine for next year, and one working on the engine that they had developed for that year. This gave each team 2 years in which to develop and optimize an engine. They had the resource to do that, but it needed very good communication to make it really work and ensure that lessons learnt out in the field, were fed back to the team developing the next engine. We reckoned that there was a pattern and that one of the teams was considerably better than the others. They made the 2004 engine which was Honda’s best result from that era in F1.
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