wsr red bull ring

[bella]

last one before the summer holiday

i'm interested to hear what people think about the first grid. in theory, it should be a level(er) playing field because nobody really has any experience here. on the other hand, the first rookie in the field is vandoorne in 6th place.

so is it that the guys into their second and third seasons are more able to adapt quickly because they're more experienced with the cars? or are we in the twilight zone?

on another note, there's way too many issues with track limits happening. it looks like a combination of racing drivers taking as much as they can get and the circuit giving them way too much...

[W.A Trichlorostyrene]

Good on Sorensen. Long overdue.

Originally Posted by bella

on another note, there's way too many issues with track limits happening. it looks like a combination of racing drivers taking as much as they can get and the circuit giving them way too much...

Yep. T1 just giving way too much. This is just asking for controversy. But then they just can't let those big speed-humps for WSR, they were dangerous enough for F3 and DTM. Oh well... I just dislike those big tarmac run-offs. Though some may argue they're a necessary evil. Perhaps they could put some grass between the edge of the track and the actual run-off. But that's an old can of worms.

[p-matt]

Great to see Sorensen get a win finally, but what on earth has happened to da Costa lately? We're seeing none of the raw pace he showed at the back end of last year, and he's not even looking like winning a race right now. I was particularly surprised when he fell back behind Buller yesterday, as normally it's Buller fending off quicker drivers at the end of races.

Speaking of which, Buller has been mightily impressive. He's never been the most adaptable driver (see his awful GP3 season last year) but when he gets in a car that he's comfortable in he really flies. Being from Northern Ireland myself, it's very disappointing to see that his achievements aren't even registering here, much like with Adam Carroll before him. I hope Zeta partners Buller with Sainz for the rest of the year because both have been very quick in more powerful machinery than they're used to.

I reckon Magnussen will stretch his legs from here and take the title quite comfortably now.

[bella]

yeah, i think buller's done a pretty good job too, he's got to be one of the dead certs for a full season next year. to be fair to him, the old gp3 car was a bit of an acquired taste so you can't really blame him for not getting on with it!

sorensen was absolutely superb all weekend, in the same way vandoorne was in moscow. nobody was going to beat him. and melker's consistently there or there abouts - right now you'd put him ahead of stevens in the "random unlikely potential winner" rankings. having said that, and judging on last year's form i'm expecting stevens to win in hungary next time out.

i don't think magnussen's going to run away with it. vandoorne just had a ropey car weekend, i reckon he'll be back full spec at ricard and take both the wins there. he was good there in the eurocup, which is unscientific but hey, part of the battle is whether a driver is comfortable with a circuit or not.

you're right about antonio felix da costa though. he's kind of been a victim of his own success, it was never going to be easy this season and by making such a good impression last year he kind of stitched himself up! i'm not sure it's so much that he's been unlucky with the car, but there have been some unfortunate things go wrong that have taken good points away from him. the same thing has happened to everyone else though... look at vandoorne's weekend!

[Mekola]

Hope Portugal's economic turmoil won't be related to the "stitched" Félix da Costa. Somehow I see that economic interests by companies and organizers are related to the success of certain drivers in certain series... even F1. For example: a devastated Mercedes Benz in reconstruction needed new world markets and Argentina opened them the portal of Latin American market... Fangio's success is so linked to that.

[bella]

i know what you mean, but i don't think it matters what nationality felix da costa is - or for that matter, what nationality any of the drivers are who are coming up behind him in the red bull juniors programme. i think if there were political reasons within the series and between them and his sponsor and all that sort of thing we'd have seen a completely different story at the weekend with his reliability issues.

leading on from that, i think the change in engine has been a bit of a disaster. it was obviously overdue a change but as it stands, it's casting a bit of a shadow over the series. in my opinion anyway.

[chunterer]

Sorensen delivered in a massive way last weekend, and right on que... Fantastic to see and underlines how competitive it is out there this year.

Could he drive his way into a Lotus seat next season if he keeps it up over the remaining 6 races? Maybe not, but Gravity will surely assist him move to a bigger series next season if he can.

Unless Red Bull are absolutely sure about AFDC, I would be royally hacked off if he gets into an STR next year after such a ropey season. I mean, those mechanical issues aside he's only looked properly competitive on 2 or 3 occasions.... That ain't F1 potential in my book.

Sainz came in and delivered strong performances in both his weekends to date and this was after he started to get a few doubters after failing to dominate British F3.

Maybe Carlos Jnr, as with Antonio last season and JEV in 2010, these cars are simple enough bits of kit for a half decent driver to come in, do a few races and make an instant impression with but doing it all season is a different matter altogether.

Is this a reasonable thought process i'm having or am I barking up the wrong tree?

[bella]

worth remembering with da costa that there's been a few issues with the car aside from the occasions in which he hasn't been able to compete with the front guys. it's not *all* him failing to produce the pace we've come to expect, but there is an element of that.

one off or mid-season new drivers usually do really well in race 1 then drift backwards from there. that's always struck me as an odd pattern to repeat quite so frequently. it's only when someone is a long way out of their depth (like agostini, bless him) that it's not so much the case.

the cars are generally very similar, the only real differences are whether a team decides to gamble on a lower downforce setup (eg fantin did that in austria), or stick with more wing. from there it's just subtle power differences between engines really, iirc. i'm not sure they're particularly simple, but the tyres aren't as hard to figure out as gp2 for example, and being spec wotsits they're not going to be challenging by nature anyway.

ideally i think sorensen needs to win a title before f1, and in his case bearing in mind what the engine issues for the first few races did to his momentum, a third year in 3.5 wouldn't be a bad thing. otherwise there's not really anywhere else to go without risking far too much.

[ivanalesi]

May be Fantin being far less experienced or fast compared to Rossi plays some role. Often drivers need someone to push them and compare data to choose the right direction, if they can't do it with Fantin who has a few points, then it might be hard for Da Costa to take all these decisions w/o a reference. He started very well at Monza where Da Costa won and from then on...

[bella]

really? i didn't think rossi was within a country mile of da costa at the end of last year, aside from the fastest laps he put in once his race had gone tits up for whatever reason.

being fair, if a driver needs a quick teammate to push him along or help him make setup decisions he probably doesn't have much business being a formula 1 driver.

[ivanalesi]

Rossi was capable of getting on the podium and he was very fast with the previous generation, so he must have been a lot bigger help than Fantin w/o any such experience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not on the Rossi being the next American in F1 bandwagon, but often having a good reference teammate helps.

[bella]

i do agree with you on that, though it's definitely not the case with everyone - look at sorensen last year (and i spose to a point this year), he had more teammates than wayne rooney but he was still damn quick when the car was working.

[ivanalesi]

Yes, may be Da Costa is like this, but even on his good weekends he hasn't been as fast as last year. It's not like the quality of the field is much better, I think he'll have a deep self analysis about it during the winter

[Go_For_Pole]

In fact this year he has been as he has been in all his single seater career bar last year. Remember 2011 GP3 season?

[bella]

i've read that sentence at least five times and i still can't figure out what you mean!

you mean, his results have been very similar to the rest of his career. which is... (for those of us too busy pretending to be busy at work on a friday afternoon and who don't have time to research what his previous seasons were )

[Go_For_Pole]

Haha ok, I will try again AFDC is in this level of single seaters for ages. Before 2012 there were very few occasions that he showed huge potential. Sure, he was there or thereabouts but that's just about it. Some argued that it was lack of budget that was holding him back, a problem that was affecting his team/series choices. Fair enough but still if you look at his 2011 GP3 season where he raced for Status together with Sims, he was outshone but a driver that is now fully off F1 radar. So it's rather odd to see AFDC now being touted as a potential Toro Rosso driver especially given his current form.

[bella]

ah yes, now i would have to agree with that sentiment, but with the condition that i simply don't know the ins and outs of his predicaments at any stage.

do you think red bull perhaps cocked up with the choice of team?

[Go_For_Pole]

Can't possibly tell, nowadays I am sadly too far away from paddocks to know if/what changed in team Arden during the winter. But somehow I struggle to believe that Arden would give a RB driver anything else than their very best

[ace007]

If it wasnt for last year set-up push (exactly during the F1 summer break), da Costa would never have won a race in WSR. That Arden car benefited from the seven-post-rig from RBR and was 2 sec faster than any other car... which was a bit too obvious to anybody understanding the basics of racing. So they leveled the field this year and da Costa is not so special anymore... RBR knows exactly that and we might all be surprised in who they name next in the STR!

[JohnMiller]

A seven post rig does not in itself make a car faster. And if they found 2 seconds then it must have been shocking before.

[bella]

'so they levelled the field'

do please explain how this was done...

[ace007]

Let's just say that some teams are quick to react... The conclusion being that I am not surprised da Costa is not as fast as he was in the second part of last year's WSR. And as pointed earlier, his GP3 campaign is there as a reminder.

[bella]

you'll have to excuse the scepticism, that's the kind of thing i'd say when i didn't have the full details of the situation to skim over the stuff i didn't know/wasn't told/don't understand

of course he's not as fast as he was at the end of last year, relative to the rest of the field. for whatever reason, who cares exactly what that is. this is motorsport, there's always some kind of shenanigans or "unfair advantage", depending on who you talk to and how bitter they are about it. every single bloke on the grid has his own side to it, and if you're going to obsess over one drivers side of the story then you should at least seek to find out what the other guys think to balance it out. imo that end of season run flattered arden far more than da costa.

what was impressive about da costa's half season was that he was able to capitalise on having the best car on the grid pretty much every race. this season we've seen vandoorne and sorensen do the same when they've had the best car. nobody seriously thinks da costa is that much quicker than everyone else, unless they're either a really poor journalist, or a really big fanboy.

the only thing you can use gp3 for is proving that someone is very good. using it as a stick to beat someone with is like calling someone stupid because they can't solve a rubiks cube in 2 minutes

[ace007]

My remarks are in fact coming from paddock discussion and info, nothing personal against da Costa per say. I thought it was interesting to mention a well discussed fact that people from outside might have overlooked if not present in the WSR paddock last year. At the end of the day, I just wanted to challenge the idea of his "automatic" graduation to TR as I believe other candidates outside of the RB academy are right now more worthy of a look (Sainz Jnr behind to young in my view).

[bella]

i have to agree with you about sainz and to be fair, quite a few in the f1 forum do too where we've discussed the whole "who's next at str" situation. arguably it's a bit too soon for sainz to end up in f1 which is where i suppose da costa fits in.

the biggest problem as i see it was that the reason for the improvement in arden and da costa's form last season wasn't reported at the time, so those who didn't follow the series (especially in the f1 media) didn't really understand what was going on aside from da costa suddenly peeing all over the rest of the grid. they reported that in the usual OMG terms and voila, we have the current situation where there's an air of disappointment about da costa's season. which really is daft. when he's not overdriving and the car is behaving he's up there and on it.