Horner appears to have bought Alpine, and sacked the entire senior management and technical team!
Thatāll be fun as theyāre switching to Mercedes engines and gearboxes this year.
Toto might give him a four cylinder dieselā¦
Anybody posting about Michael Schumacherās death (as posted on Social Media), do some research, give your head a wobble, then expect a ban.
This season will develop in a most interesting way IMO.
Firstly the probably biggest rule change for the chassis since skirts got banned from 1983 and also a significant engine rule change.
The aero changes are probably far more suited to the current way of working than ground effect was. In a competiion with almost no track testing having rules which were extremely sensitive to aero-elasticity led to most teams being shocked by, and some never mastering, porpoising because it is not predicted by either CFD or wind tunnel testing.
Also having aero super sensitive to areas where mesh size is crucial and limiting CFD running meant the theoretical analyses were pretty untrustworthy from day 1 but most, probably all younger than Adrian Newey, would not have expected what they got.
These rules are pretty insensitive to height effects on floor flow and aero-elasticity so there is a better chance the engineers get what they expect IMO, and that simulation can be closer to reality in the aero map.
The engine rule leading to more use of electricity will be fascinating too. An electric motor is in all objective ways superior to a piston engine so it will be interesting how they deploy the combination. Lots for both engineers and drivers to optimise.
Lovely but maybe a fair bit slower lap times but faster and less stable on the straight bits.
I very much hope it is good.
Been watching Ted Kravitzā talking heads roundups of the Barcelona testing, and the driver reactions vary between enthused and downright bubbling - within the constraints of what PR will allow them to say - leaving the impression that from their POV these cars are more entertaining to drive, which from this side of the screen should help with the entertainment factor.
Impressed that RBR seem to have hit the ground running with their āFordā branded powerplant, too. Dropping the MGU-H I suppose simplifies things somewhat, with presumed gains in reliability?
I think dropping the MGU-H simplifies but mainly changes things. Instead of the MGU-H charging the battery on the straight once boost is at the planned level the engine itself will have to do it via its generator.
There is absolutely no chance to recuperate enough energy and charge only during braking at 5g for a few seconds.
Ironically despite having dropped MGU-H because it was too complex to ever go on a road car Porsche now have 2 models using one.
It will be very interesting to see how the PUs compare when racing. Keeping the battery in its temperature window whilst using maximum electrical power will probably the most difficult to keep on top of.
One big mistake most enthusiasts and many competitors make is to assume having the fastest car over one lap is more important than it is.
That is partly because having the fastest car is difficult and many people have never worked in a team with one, and partly the way qualifying is broadcast and drivers (David Coultard) bang on about how much fun the qualifying lap is.
In reality having the fastest car is simply the top of the cliff at the beginning of a long climb to the peak of the world championship, and there are plenty more peaks to conquer yet that many people have never seen or been aware of.
A lot of this involves reliability and strategic operation you only really learn about after your car is quick enough to win.
The new rules will make this a much bigger deal IMO. Doing one quick lap wonāt need anywhere near as much difficult engineering as doing a successful race because of battery deployment. It will be interesting to see who can manage that best!
A good breakdown of the effect of the new technical rules is given in the document that can be viewed through this link:
Further to Frankās comments, I am expecting to see a lot of variation in performance from race circuit to race circuit as well qualifying to race.
Maybe by the end of the year teams will have optimised their cars and and their strategic operation enough to make for a bit more predictable racing.
Excellent link!
Looks like the race starts might be interesting at this rate.
The stage does seem to be set for some race-ruining turn-1 pile-upsā¦
I hope Iām wrong (and I usually am), 'cos I donāt follow F1 to watch a demolition derby.
Finally.catching up with pre-season
Absolutely.bonkers how badly Honda have shat the bed 
Itās a a shame, cos i like Lawrence Strā¦ā¦.oh
I have explained a few times on here in the past that the Honda powerplant will take some time to get right. But when they do it will be very good.
Their development philosophy is to build something, and then add counter measure after countermeasure until they get it right. I think that this approach is from the Honda founder, Sochiro Honda who wanted all his engineers to come up with ideas, build them, test them, fix the problems, and repeat this until the solution was really good.
Whereas most powerplant manufacturers try to develop a powerplant that is very good to start with and not need many iterations out in the field to get there.
I think it was Toyota who came up with the ācontinuous improvementā philosophy as that morphed into wider project management with approaches like Lean and agile etc.
So ā¦are the teams allowed to make changes to the engine and engine ECU firmware ā¦during the seasonā¦
For some reason I have got it in my head that at the beginning of the season the engines are sealed in a crate and thatās that.
Ian W post seems to say mods can be made .
The first pass of internet check I did cites Motorola as the originator of Lean Six Sigma - But it really was Toyota I was forced to do it when General Electric bought a company that I had just joined - Frustrating as it was at times it certainly quite quickly turned a sows ear into a silk purse - I learned to love it.
When I did the course we were given a full tour of JLR Castle Bromwich where they were making rhe F Type Jag.
It was amazing to see the whole plant running on the principles.