F3 Euroseries 5 & 6 - Norisring

[gomick]

Alexander Sims won the pole in a wet qualifying session...

[bella]

...and jules bianchi took another win in the first race too. second was sims, third was coletti. gutierrez was 4th, which is an improvement on the rest of his season so far. tandy did well in qualifying but finished 20 out of 21 - does anyone know what happened there?

autosport says hartley ran into the back of bottas - if that's true it's interesting to see he's still making the same sort of mistakes he made in bf3 last year.

[bella]

...and coletti's been excluded from the rest of the meeting for hitting bianchi after the podium. i'm sure bianchi was being very catty but crikey...

[Andy77]

It is really too bad that Premiere, the soon to be Sky Germany, does not show F3 live anymore

[gomick]

Originally Posted by bella

...and coletti's been excluded from the rest of the meeting for hitting bianchi after the podium. i'm sure bianchi was being very catty but crikey...

Was there an on-track incident between them during the race?

[bella]

nope, apparently not - italiaracing has a bit more of an in-depth explanation which obviously could be nonsense or it could be right. apparently it has something to do with the masters and bianchi losing pole; bianchi called coletti names (i believe he was questioning his mothers profession..) which wound coletti up enough to smack him with his handbag.

that's totally open to correction though!

[Go_For_Pole]

Originally Posted by bella

autosport says hartley ran into the back of bottas - if that's true it's interesting to see he's still making the same sort of mistakes he made in bf3 last year.

it was true and totally unnecessary. Hartley is frankly disappointing.

[runshaw]

Originally Posted by Go_For_Pole

it was true and totally unnecessary. Hartley is frankly disappointing.

Indeed, his year so far in both F3 and WSbR isn't living up to expectations, he has shown little class. Alguersuari deserves the Red Bull F1 reserve driver role more if you look at his results in the last 18 months. He has done a much better job than Hartley! Note that Jean Karl Vernay and Stefano Coletti (former Red Bull Juniors) are both in the top 6 of the championship, current Red Bull drivers Maki and Hartley are on the fringes of the top 10...

[Go_For_Pole]

Yeah but at least Maki is showing some fire, witness race 2 yesterday. Pity about the penalty, he deserved better.

[ivanalesi]

Jaime mentioned something about focus and F1, now Brendon has F3, WSbR and F1 reserve driver. F1 reserve driver means simply a free trip to GP weekends with Paddock access. So you're wasting 17 weeks from your schedule. Btw, absolutely magnificent debut for Tandy considering how slow was this car!

[Ssom]

Personally I think Hartley was unlucky all weekend. Hit from behind by his own (Useless) team-mate in Quali, admittedly responsible for what happened in Race 1, but then hit from behind again in Race 2, forced to complete the rest of the race with suspension damage.

It's hardly fair to call him disappointing when the bulk of his weekend was ruined by others.

[Go_For_Pole]

Actually I think his whole year is disappointing, both in RWS and Euro F3. Agreed, not everything is his fault but then again have you seen anything from him this year that made you say wow? I don't necessaraly judge by the points table, I said wow for Vernay that drove with half of his diffuser hanging off, the same for Maki (who generally has a nightmare year) who was mega in the last few laps of race 2.

By the way, how can Gutierrez and Bottas crash with each other under yellow flags (Bird - Sims incident) and get away with it?!

[nickyf1]

Can anyone explain the ART rear wing?! I usualy dont watch F3, but it caught my eye on Autosport.com.

[runshaw]

What about the rear wing?

[bella]

art ran without the top half of it from halfway up the endplates onwards in a few sessions - i think gutierrez and tambay and bottas (can't find pictures of bianchi's car rn) had it like that for race 2, and bianchi for the free practice session at least. the norisring is a high speed track, albeit a little one, and there's not really any corners apart from hairpins and a couple of giant chicanes avoiding 70 year old bits of building! other teams seem to have tried leaving out the wing element completely, but have used the normal full length endplates.

sorry, that's a really poor female explanation

here's a picture on autosport.com - http://www.autosport.com/gallery/photo.php/id/1311825

edit - i've edited this about 100 times already adding other people running the non-wing - prema ran coletti with the half-endplate as well at some point. also there's a picture of bianchi running without the adjustable bits of the front wing as well. this is very interesting...

[runshaw]

Oh yeah see what you mean, just been looking at several pictures. It looks like one of those really low down force configuration rear wings (like they use in GP2 at Monza). It isn't just on the ART cars either, just noticed Atte Mustonen and Johnny Cecotto had them too. From what I can see it looks like all the ART cars had them on during race 2.

[bella]

also worth a look is signature's modifications in the pictures of mika maki's car. the only team to run with the full minimum front and rear wing setup seems to have been art - everyone else who ran without the rear wing seems to have opted to keep the adjustable bits of the front wing in place (technical there again bella, well done ).

the extra bits of vertical bodywork around the mucke team's wingmirrors is an interesting addition too. (can you tell i just spent a full hour at least looking at pictures of the cars? dear god, i need a life...)

this is why i think f3 is excellent - outside of f1 its really the only place where you get sideways thinking. it's a shame sideways thinking is always expensive though

[Go_For_Pole]

Those vertical bits of Mucke that you mention are the default 09 Dallara parts, right? It's just that almost everybody in the Euroseries has removed them.

Also teams tend to do away with the flickups in front of the rear wheels, especially in low downforce tracks. The monoplane rear wing has been run for many years by Italian teams in Monza, I remember seeing it for the first time in 1992 but it could be even older than that.

Other interesting mods are in Signature cars: a horizontal fin near the mirrors, the vertical fin on the engine cover (this has been run for quite a while).
and in HiTech cars: complete front wing - under the nose arrangement dubbed "the tunnel"

Also many teams have a refined aero treatment in the airbox area and near the exhausts.

So bella there are more people that need to get a life obviously

[sceptic]

Originally Posted by Ssom

Personally I think Hartley was unlucky all weekend. Hit from behind by his own (Useless) team-mate in Quali, admittedly responsible for what happened in Race 1, but then hit from behind again in Race 2, forced to complete the rest of the race with suspension damage.

It's hardly fair to call him disappointing when the bulk of his weekend was ruined by others.

Originally Posted by Go_For_Pole

Actually I think his whole year is disappointing, both in RWS and Euro F3. Agreed, not everything is his fault but then again have you seen anything from him this year that made you say wow? I don't necessaraly judge by the points table, I said wow for Vernay that drove with half of his diffuser hanging off, the same for Maki (who generally has a nightmare year) who was mega in the last few laps of race 2.

Hartley has been dropped as Red Bull's reserve driver for the rest of the season, and replaced by Jaime Algersuari.

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by sceptic

Hartley has been dropped as Red Bull's reserve driver for the rest of the season, and replaced by Jaime Algersuari.

Who, incidentally hasn't exactly been what you would call stellar himself in WSR?

I think they're just moving drivers about to give them different experience in and out of the car.

[bella]

Originally Posted by Go_For_Pole

Those vertical bits of Mucke that you mention are the default 09 Dallara parts, right? It's just that almost everybody in the Euroseries has removed them.

i don't know, this is where i'm slightly out of date. they look pretty nasty on a f3 car, it shouldn't *ever* aspire to look like a world series car that tried to look like a f1 car.

[JOWT Blog]

Originally Posted by chunterer

Who, incidentally hasn't exactly been what you would call stellar himself in WSR?

Although I wouldn't term his results as stellar, Alguersuari has done fairly well by only finishing outside the top-ten in two races. Or in other words, he has finished inside the top-ten in 71.4% of his race starts to date in 2009---which certainly isn't bad.

It will be interesting to see if the substitution has a positive effect on Hartley's results.

[bella]

Originally Posted by chunterer

Who, incidentally hasn't exactly been what you would call stellar himself in WSR?

there's a q&a with alguersuari on the autosport site and he makes a good point about there being a lot of drivers who have been in fr3.5 for a while, and it makes it a lot more difficult to get results compared to f3 last year where everyone was a n00b and making mistakes left right and centre. i've paraphrased considerably, but he's got a point.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/76636

[jedrinck]

Would anybody know the approximate tire pressures in F3 Euroseries? I bought a used set of the Kumho spec tires from Mücke Motorsport to try them on my FRenault which is only a trackday car now.

[strider]

Originally Posted by sceptic

Hartley has been dropped as Red Bull's reserve driver for the rest of the season, and replaced by Jaime Alguersuari.

This is such exciting news for the F3ES.