http://www.gptoday.com/full_story/vi...rmer_engineer/
Mark Webber is making a bold call and banking on Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel to take top spoils next Sunday in Melbourne.
Ferrari's pre-season performance in Barcelona has impressed many, but few see the Scuderia keeping the pace going when the lights go green on Sunday.
But Webber says the red squad will keep the momentum going, and Vettel is his favourite.
"Ferrari have been very good at performing when the grandstands are empty in pre-season,' said Aussie Grit.
"Then the season starts, the Italian influence comes into play and they get panicky and do wacky stuff."
"I think Vettel will win. In previous seasons Lewis has been more comfortable with the car than he is this time. The Mercedes has been more dominant at this point previously.
"Ferrari had a great pre-season and are ahead of where we expected them to be. Red Bull are there too so it will be really close. Those top-three teams are going to be on a pretty similar level."
Webber isn't putting many chips on his former team for now, expressing a few doubts about Renault's ability to provide consistent power to the Milton Keynes outfit.
But he is a big fan of 19-year-old Max Verstappen.
"Verstappen's the dark horse. He's phenomenal for his age. He has that win-at-all-costs arrogant streak.
"He is good in all conditions. It's like he can see things in slow motion and has time to react. It's great to watch.
"The jury's out on that Renault engine in the Red Bull lasting the course of the season. That's the only bit I'm worried about for them and it's hard for me to pick between Ferrari and Mercedes.
"It's going to be fascinating."
Looking at the M/Benz and the Toro Rosso's front end suspension design, you can see that that their idea does not come without any penalties. They have altered and raised the wishbone mounting points at the hub assembly to aid airflow at the underside. The problem is, the arms and outer mounting points are now exposed to much greater lateral forces, that the designers would have beefed up the components to compensate. Otherwise, they'd simply fail almost immediately the minute they went out onto the track if they did not strengthen anything! This increases the suspension's unsprung weight, which means stronger spring rates and shock absorber settings are required to counteract the increased force from the heavier mass each time the wheels hit a bump. As a result, expect to potentially see a level of untidiness when watching these 2 different cars riding over the kerbs - this will have a knock-off effect on all their previous settings where they will be trying to compensate for this deficit. Designers are constantly shaving grams off their suspension designs in order to reduce unsprung weight to maximise control over kerbs, yet, they are probably looking at a 30% increase in weight of all the associated components to compensate for a design that's gone out of its way to induce excessive loadings by unnaturally increasing leverage on the assembly!
I can't wait for the weekend. I just hope we have a good year!!
"Big things have small beginings"
"Perseverence is power"
If its any consolation...I would'nt read to much into this....we will see in 2 days time.
Martin Brundle see's Lewis on the way out and he insists......
https://twitter.com/MBrundleF1/statu...18248359280640
I'm not getting my hopes up... they've been dashed way too often after positive tests. I'll wait for the results to start coming in before I start to believe Ferrari is faster than Mercedes or Red Bull.
Rest in Peace Leza, you were a true warrior...
No expectations here but with some luck perhaps a podium finish might be possible.
I am not going to hide the fact that Ferrari have not covered themselves in glory in the past few years, with 2014 and 2016 one of the unforgettable years Ferrari fans had to endure. During testing of 2016 Ferrari masked their performance by running on softer tyres and on low fuel to makes us think they have made improvement over 2015, but all the experts opinion on track was that Ferrari was difficult to drive on track and poor in low and high speed corners and having have to lift in the corners whereas Merc and Red-Bull had no problem. We all thought these experts were anti-Ferrari, fast forward 2017, my opinion when I first saw Ferrari was that this car is special and so far, I am not disappointed at all and I know the car will do well; it may not beat Merc but it will win races this year, this opinion is supported by people like Gary Anderson and other expert who said that Ferrari was very good in both low and high speed corners and was fast on all the tyres. Ferrari runs on medium tyre really impressed me because they could switch it on in the cold Barcelona track something Ferrari has struggled with in the past few years. My opinion is that Ferrari gave up development on last year’s cars early and really thought out how they will develop this car and in my opinion the car design is outlier compare to other cars and I know it works
People say Ferrari was running light, but Ferrari during 8 days of testing, ran several combinations of race stimulation and the car behaved very well on the turns both on short and long stint. The car was stable and much faster than I expected during testing.
We should also not forget that Ferrari was hindered by the stupid token system that made Merc add advantage over other engines. now that that is gone, Ferrari has built a very strong engine which from reports said we ran just one engine over the 8 days testing.
I am going to say Ferrari 1 and 2 this Sunday.
Last edited by Rob; 23rd March 2017 at 08:19.
Too much expectation may be tempting fate and for some of us anything other than a win will amount to failure....so I am keeping an open mind and hope that our faith will be rewarded!
I anderstand the "low expectation" approach, but I'm pretty sure that IF (HOPE NOT) we end up way behind Merc ,we will ALL be very disappointed!!!!
FERRARI FOR EVER !!!!!!!
Mercedes believe they are in bracket of 3 tenths behind Ferrari (worst case) to a tenth ahead (best case). I hope it's close, should be a cracking season
Mercedes and Red Bull Racing were reportedly forced to change their suspension systems ahead of the Australian GP as they did not comply with the regulations
if you have seen my comments last year when i gave Ferrari no chance because the car was absolutely rubbish, chassis wise and to this year where from the day one of testing I said this Ferrari is good, so far nothing is going to make me change my praise to the team for a job well done. Even if we don't win the championship I know we would win more than 3 races this year and for me I call this progress. But if we win the constructor it would be icing on the cake for the Ferrari team. I wish Ferrari a fruitful F1 season
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