Kyle Edwards5 said:I don't quite follow your logic about these engines having identical torque curves—especially when you consider how differently they handle pre-loading and their non-standardized ERS setups—just because they all put out the same power.
It’s actually pretty straightforward; when you measure engine power on a dyno, what you're really measuring is TORQUE. A simple way to think about it would be using an electric brake motor where the stator sits on bearings and is held by a single lever to prevent the engine being tested from spinning it. You just measure the force needed to hold that lever steady, multiply it by the length of the arm, and there you have it—your engine torque in Nm. You could technically do this manually for various RPMs to find that balance point, though most people just let a computer handle those thousands of data points. In a real shop, the equipment is more sophisticated, but the physics remains exactly the same.
Once you have that mountain of data points, you just apply this formula to every single one:
HP = (Nm * RPM) / 5252
...and that gives you the power curve. It's that line we all obsess over when we're shopping for a car, even though it doesn't tell you much, and that peak horsepower number listed on the spec sheet is even less useful in the real world.
To touch on your point, having an engine that puts out the same power at, say, 12,000 RPM versus 15,000 RPM isn't the same thing at all. The first one will have higher torque, which means no matter how you tune the transmission, it’s going to feel more powerful. Every single point in that RPM range matters in the math, which might only lead to a tiny difference in peak numbers, but it makes a massive difference in lap times. When you throw fuel flow limits for different RPM bands, varying turbo boost, and complex ERS systems into the mix—all while trying to smooth everything out without losing traction—trying to extract maximum performance becomes pure science fiction.
If Ferrari pulls off a win tomorrow, or heaven forbid Kimi actually jumps him in the standings... it’s going to be an absolute disaster, just endless complaining over the radio and Lewis losing his cool... and then the whole season is basically ruined from the start.
Honestly, I think Ferrari might be the only way to actually get Nico back in the game.
Yeah, I honestly think it's just too much for both him and Rosberg to handle; when you have a car that's that dominant, where they're just lightning fast on a single lap and have those quick pit stops, they aren't even really a threat anymore... it doesn't make any sense
To be honest... you're absolutely right. I think Kimi was a total class act, and honestly, there's nothing anyone could say against him or anything he did wrong.
Man, this is just incredible... I know there's a lot of luck and random variables involved, but it feels like the true spirit of competition is finally returning to Formula 1. Mercedes is clearly reeling right now; even in their wildest dreams, I don't think they ever imagined being embarrassed like this so early in the second race of the season.
It looks like he started from the pits, but honestly, he’s probably five spots lower than that for sure... there's really no point in hugging the racing line unless you're on a qualifying lap.
Kimi should have just held his ground when he went to overtake Marcus Ericsson instead of backing off; you can't really blame him for that one. There wasn't much room to give him space without getting overtaken yourself.
I’ve been following F1 pretty consistently since back in 2004, though I'm definitely a bit older than most of the crowd here. It seems like there are so many young fans sharing their takes lately, and I sometimes find myself wondering what's actually so thrilling about watching people drive in circles for ninety minutes at a time.
To be honest, I think you're right. This whole thing really only makes sense if there’s some actual good news or hope regarding Honda... or if things start falling apart over at Mercedes, which honestly wouldn't be surprising if Rosberg manages to snag the title. It also clearly places a massive amount of pressure on Ferrari, and I can't help but feel like that eventually hurts the whole team because everything starts revolving around just one person. On the flip side, Ferrari has Vettel now, who is much younger and clearly has a longer future ahead of him, so it probably makes more sense to build around him rather than someone who might run out of patience.
What's really scary is how much everyone is gambling here; you have Lewis Hamilton taking a huge risk moving to a McLaren team that's currently struggling and is such a massive question mark for next year, while Vettel is heading into a clearly underwhelming Ferrari where there's zero guarantee they'll make any real progress. Then there's Mercedes, where the tension between the drivers is so high that the whole setup feels like it could crack at any moment.
Regardless of how it plays out, next season should be pretty interesting to watch, though I suspect Mercedes will come out on top in the end since they seem to have at least a slight edge in both car and driver talent, allowing them to keep their championship momentum going no matter what happens.
I still honestly feel like this was 99% just pure bad luck, because to me, it looks obvious that Nico Rosberg was just trying to squeeze out to the outside line so he could cut back to the inside a few corners later... and if you look at this gif, you can see just how "little" he actually missed his mark by, maybe just a couple of inches, and we all know they can only really track where the tires are, not the nose or the wing. It feels like a total racing incident, but the media has turned it into this massive scandal and now everyone is making a huge deal out of it for days. That said, I do think Rosberg needs to show Lewis Hamilton that he can hold his own, because up until now, he’s always kind of stepped aside, just like we saw in Bahrain when he let him pull away even though they were neck and neck.
It’s hard to really assign blame here, but I guess there are ways to look at it... personally, in cases like this one, the driver is just sitting in the car helpless while the mechanics should have had everything ready on time. It's kind of similar to what happened with Mercedes; you can't really blame the crew for getting into an argument with each other, but the team still ended up losing out on points.
TBF, you've been posting pictures after my last comment, so would it be possible to get one from right before the start? Specifically when they're filming the whole grid... that final moment before the feed switches to that side camera. I'm just really curious if I caught it correctly that the car was already running (I think in that shot I saw the mechanic who starts the engine walking away from the car).
steelmaker83 said:...teams should honestly be docked points for mistakes like that, rather than just making the drivers sit through penalties during the race.
Just my two cents... I honestly don't think Nico Rosberg did that on purpose, nor do I think anyone is truly at fault here beyond just a bad call on positioning. It looked to me like he just misjudged his line and was trying to swing wider to get a better exit out of the corner. From what I could see on the broadcast, he only clipped him by maybe two or three centimeters, which is just a split second of error; if he’d actually intended to hit him, he would have veered toward him first instead of staying steady. Even though Lewis Hamilton definitely held his line, he clearly saw Rosberg coming up on the outside. Even if Rosberg were handed a stop-and-go penalty, if they were in different teams, people might be screaming for justice just to keep the points even, but since it's all happening within the same camp, it'll likely just be ruled a racing incident and left for them to sort out internally.
As for Fernando Alonso, from what I gathered, they got the car fired up, but they got totally tripped up and spooked by those loose cables on the side, though once they were given the green light, they just went ahead and cleared those wires away.
It would honestly make more sense if they used one turbine and a separate wastegate. Though, if everything were designed perfectly, they could probably skip the wastegate entirely by using the MGU-H to basically "brake" the turbine and charge the batteries at the same time.
Is it just me, or does everyone seem to be drawing the exhaust setup completely wrong lately, with one part looking like a turbine and then another weirdly connected to the MGU-H? These illustrations look pretty bizarre to me
I'm pretty sure about this. That part below the yellow section, the light blue one, is actually a massive intercooler. That yellow component is just a bit bigger than a hand, and honestly, if we tried to run an intercooler that size, I think it would cause more headaches than it's worth. On standard street cars, they're usually much larger than that.
You can see the scale here at the 0:58 mark. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuBB2F6IutQ
And then there's this at 1:40. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFHmYFlbFn8
It's pretty much the same setup across the board, where one side handles the engine cooling and the other is dedicated to the intercooler, while all those smaller openings are meant for the battery, the ERS, the transmission, and things like that.
cosmiccyclist8 said:you can see it isn't the case with Mercedes-Benz. that yellow circle marks the intercooler. it looks the same for Renault too...
I think you might be mistaken there, because that yellow highlight definitely isn't the intercooler, since the cooler would need to be way larger to actually make any kind of difference, so it's probably just some sort of oil cooler or something similar.