F1 Monaco GP 25th, 27th - 28th May '17

Joe Pineapples

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All sessions live on Channel 4

Thursday
08:55 - Practice 1
12:55 - Practice 2

Saturday

09:55 - Practice 3
11:55 - Qualifying

Sunday
12:00 - Race

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Gonna miss this as will be on holiday. Will check in to see if it's worth a watch when I get back.
 
At work all 3 days, will take some skill to avoid the results till I get in !! , really fancy Ferrari for this one , or maybe even Redbull ....
 
Have amended the Practice 1&2 day (Channel 4 timetable) to Thursday, which is normal for Monaco. Nearly caught me out (again).
 
If the weather's decent, the race might be nothing more than a few hours of procession - but we said that about Barcelona and look what happened there :D.

Ordinarily I'd have said Ferrari would be in a strong position; as mentioned above - a short car has the natural benefit of being agile in short, tight turns. However... the updates Mercedes brought to Spain, and most importantly the weight bias change they'd achieved along with the mechanical traction out of slow corners, might reap some rewards despite the car being as long a double decker bus. It's an interesting one. I'd predict a Ferrari front row in qualifying, and Hamilton being sandwiched by them in the race.

The unknown here is Red Bull. They've always produced agile cars, but as much as they've caught up on qualy pace, race pace still has them nearly a minute behind the race winner. Monte Carlo's one place where a horsepower deficit is nullified, but the issues appear to go deeper than that, the chassis isn't quite there, but it's improving hand-over-fist; if Max and Danny Ric can mix it with the top two teams, qualifying will be a good show.

At McLaren...who knows - Button's not expected to work miracles, but the car's improving with each weekend and the horsepower deficit gives the team maybe its best opportunity for points, if the chassis is as good as many believe. Some points or a DNF, followed by Jenson performing a reverse somersault into the harbour or some such silliness, he can go full James Hunt this weekend :laugh:.
 
Hi Chevyronfuel,

Just wish to ask you something since you are probably the only one here who has actual working experience in tyne motor racing/F1 arena - do you think the McLaren/Honda relationship will last or soon falter?

I ask as McLaren must be losing tons of sponsorship monies & deals from lack of results which in turn must/will affect the budget for further/future R&D? They must know that it will take at least a few years before the Honda engine gets anywhere near competitive & that has got to raise concerns for the long term - can McLaren afford to be wandering aimlessly for say the next 3-5 years before Honda are able to produce an engine capable of podiums?

My view is that 2019 might very well be a cut off point if the 2018 season does not produce meaningful results but that is just my thoughts at present.

I was reading about over at the Indy series how badly the Honda engines were doing against the Chevrolet ones for quite some time & the reasons given by the teams was the very conservative & closed, dogmatic approaches Honda continued to take despite things going from bad to worse - they just would not/did not listen to the teams & were extremely resistant to implement outside assistance or changes that were not their own.

Things only really changed (& changed very dramatically) when an F1 ex-Ferrari Head of Engine Development was brought in to get the engine competitive which worked wonders.

I read that Ilmor is now helping Honda with the F1 engine apparently but even then, I doubt it will be anywhere near a rapid an improvement due to the complexities of both the engine & the rules in F1 compared to that of the Indy series.

Maybe if Renault have a decent power unit in 2019, McLaren might have no choice but to go with them - I cannot see Mercedes giving them engines again - just my take but then again, it's all about the money in F1 so anything can happen!

Suave!
 
Hi Chevyronfuel,

Just wish to ask you something since you are probably the only one here who has actual working experience in tyne motor racing/F1 arena - do you think the McLaren/Honda relationship will last or soon falter?

I ask as McLaren must be losing tons of sponsorship monies & deals from lack of results which in turn must/will affect the budget for further/future R&D? They must know that it will take at least a few years before the Honda engine gets anywhere near competitive & that has got to raise concerns for the long term - can McLaren afford to be wandering aimlessly for say the next 3-5 years before Honda are able to produce an engine capable of podiums?

My view is that 2019 might very well be a cut off point if the 2018 season does not produce meaningful results but that is just my thoughts at present.

I was reading about over at the Indy series how badly the Honda engines were doing against the Chevrolet ones for quite some time & the reasons given by the teams was the very conservative & closed, dogmatic approaches Honda continued to take despite things going from bad to worse - they just would not/did not listen to the teams & were extremely resistant to implement outside assistance or changes that were not their own.

Things only really changed (& changed very dramatically) when an F1 ex-Ferrari Head of Engine Development was brought in to get the engine competitive which worked wonders.

I read that Ilmor is now helping Honda with the F1 engine apparently but even then, I doubt it will be anywhere near a rapid an improvement due to the complexities of both the engine & the rules in F1 compared to that of the Indy series.

Maybe if Renault have a decent power unit in 2019, McLaren might have no choice but to go with them - I cannot see Mercedes giving them engines again - just my take but then again, it's all about the money in F1 so anything can happen!

Suave!
It's a tricky situation for all involved really. The benefit recently was the announcement of Sauber using Honda engines next year. The glass half full approach would deduce that means more R&D that would benefit both teams. The glass half empty approach would deduce it leaves McLaren with a way out of the deal (on a performance basis) but still leaving Honda with a customer for their engines (they wouldn't be seen as leaving their power unit supplier out in the cold).

At this moment in time, they're improving hand over fist, and probably enough to warrant another year of working together. Certainly McLaren's theory was that if you can weather the storm and put up with a few bad seasons, when Honda get their act together, suddenly you'll be in a position of being the only team with an engine sought after by the rest of the grid, and the envy of Mercedes and Ferrari.

That element somewhat diminished with the Sauber deal as it left the possibility open to other teams becoming customers, and IIRC, the original deal had some sort of exclusivity clause about supplying to just McLaren.

The troubles in Indy are very similar; the Honda motorsport division is full of very talented people, but they're quite insular and not receptive to outside influence, even when it's legitimate help from those who've trodden the same path in previous years and encountered the same issues (harmonic resonance in turbo impeller shafts etc).

The crux of the situation now, is whether McLaren have a high enough pain threshold to withstand the reputational damage of having what's perceived as the slowest car on the grid, for season after season. Probably 85% of their issues are power unit related - every driver who followed Alonso on track in Barcelona, commented that the McLaren chassis looks every bit as competent as the Mercedes and Ferrari, so a large part of the problem could be fixed with more power.

The byproduct of fixing the power unit though will be a car than might start handling very differently. With a underpowered car, they often handle quite well - the minute you turn the wick up, it can become a little less compliant. At the moment the drivers can be a bit more hamfisted with the throttle on corner exit as there isn't a tidal wave of power on offer to upset the rear. It's more driveable than it was (in terms of power spikes in random places), but it just doesn't produce the power to provoke the car, which would unmask a chassis shortcoming / issue.

My personal prediction on the 'marriage' as it were. It'll get to the end of this season, with small but marked improvements throughout the year, and Honda will bring a monster of a power unit to the party for the start of 2018. Where it goes South for McLaren, is that Alonso might be successful in Indy, and fancy having a crack at that some more - so might not be in the seat next year. He's had years of extracting speed out of a car that just shouldn't have been there, and is likely to be getting fed up.

With the Renault move seemingly blocked off, that leaves him with an option of maybe Haas, or perhaps a return to Ferrari. For me, that's one of the key ingredients of the McLaren-Honda dynamic. Alonso is the one currently ensuring the team achieves some kind of results on track, be it in qualifying, or by way of putting in 110% during a race.

Over the course of time, very few drivers have moved to teams with underperforming cars and gotten on with the job of improving the car, getting results and winning races (and championships). The closest scenario to the one facing Alonso, was when Schumacher moved to Ferrari. 1996 was a torrid year, with a dog of a car, which MS dragged around and extracted performance which just didn't seem achievable. In Alonso's case, it's like Groundhog Day and the improvements have come so slowly, that 3 years down the road, they're no further along than they were at the start (caused primarily by the power unit re-design for this season, undoing most of the previous seasons of R&D).
 
Based on FP3 times so far, Vettel's in a different post code this weekend. If Mercedes are sandbagging it's an odd time to be doing so; Bottas hasn't had a great time of it for a few years at Monte Carlo. Max is doing a good job in the Red Bull, controlled but aggressive everywhere.
A 15 place grid penalty for Jenson...he'll feel like he's never been away... :facepalm:
 
The race pace differences on Thursday were huge too. Ferrari had something like half a second a lap on Mercedes
 
Hamilton looked completely out of that the whole time.

Yes Ferrari! Top work from Kimi, deserved. The Red Bulls seemed to fall away pretty quickly
 
Shocker for Lewis. If its a gremlin setup issue, then its happened at the worst possible track. Hope he gets a bit of luck tomorrow to get further up.

Glad for Kimi.
 
With the issues for Hamilton, McLaren's performances went somewhat unnoticed. 9th and 10th was quite good, shame about the grid penalties coming their way. Kimi was faultless in Q3, Seb a bit ragged (particularly at the hair pin and again at the last couple of corners). A tidier lap might have seen Seb on pole - I got one prediction right of a front row lockout though :smashin:.

Down in 14th (before penalties elsewhere), Hamilton - strange one. The car's not inherently poor or lacking in pace, Bottas did a cracking job with it. It does seem overly sensitive to setup changes though. For Hamilton to leave it that late in Q2 when other cars are out on track in do-or-die mode, there was always the chance of a yellow flag scuppering a lap.

Tomorrow will be interesting, it's hard to see him doing much from that far down the grid, particularly with the wide-boy cars on narrow streets. It makes for an interesting spectacle though, fingers crossed he doesn't get his raced ruined by clumsy moves by others, it needs very compliant behavior from both parties to achieve overtakes around there.
 
This is a very strong Ferrari car we have here , was wondering how it would perform in Monoco this season. Seems the red beast is back and really Track/driver friendly . Team orders I expect for tomorrow from the Ferrari Team as a one/two finish with Seb first would be the best possible results for them. Kimi may be a lil peed off end of race if so , hey could we even tell though :D.
 
Hi All,

Well done Kimi - that was a masterful qualifying from him & very glad that he was able to get poles again.

Feel really, really bad for Jenson though - the guy gets in an unfamiliar car after a 7 month absence from racing & manages to get it to 9th which is pretty amazing only for it to be all wiped away with the grid place penalty forcing him to start in last position.

I have always like Jenson & was really hoping that he might be back next year as he has a contract but this, if anything, might just even further solidify his stance to stay away from F1.
 
:eek:, bugger , that Sauber looks in bad shape , hope the driver is ok .
 
Glad to see Pascal's ok. Hopefully it's not brought that back injury back. It was nervy waiting to hear anything.

Great to see a Ferrari 1-2. Sucks for Kimi but Seb was the faster man. Otherwise a bit of a dull race.
 
Gonna come right out and say it. I bloody hate the Monaco weekend , yup I know it's a street circuit and the prestige and history of it. The cars have evolved to the point that they have out grown the track ( not only this one I might add ) and I hope the new owners force a change on this front.
 
Gonna come right out and say it. I bloody hate the Monaco weekend , yup I know it's a street circuit and the prestige and history of it. The cars have evolved to the point that they have out grown the track ( not only this one I might add ) and I hope the new owners force a change on this front.

Hi,

I kind of agree with you - was thinking about this the other day as well & whether Monaco should be an F1 circuit anymore. It seems it is there for the tradition & as an "event" for the world's rich, powerful & famous to have a good day out rather than a track that offers any genuine F1 racing for either the teams, drivers or fans. Unless there are crashes or failures, it seems very likely most cars will end up in the same positions they start with.

Suave!
 
I've never been a fan of Monaco. Qualifying is interesting, the onboard pole lap is incredible but races aren't.
 
Glad to see Pascal's ok. Hopefully it's not brought that back injury back. It was nervy waiting to hear anything.

Great to see a Ferrari 1-2. Sucks for Kimi but Seb was the faster man. Otherwise a bit of a really, really really really really dull race.


I've just re phrased that for you :)
 
A textbook race for Ferrari overall. The odd talk of controversy and team orders is bizarre (Sky F1 mostly), the numbers speak for them self in terms of lap time in clean air. The net result though is that Kimi's got his mojo back enough to banking good points for the team, as Seb seems to have 3 10th's in hand most of the time.

Button's race...awkward. I thought it was a nice touch to have Alonso on the radio prior to the race, with some good humour between the two. Jenson seemed relaxed about the whole thing, but his move on Wehrlein was a bit optimistic at best, clumsy at worst. Fortunately it was at a low speed so no harm done in terms of head and neck injuries for Pascal.

Hamilton's race; a bit less aggressive than I expected. Smart driving overall but he didn't seem to have much pace for much of the afternoon. The points difference between him and Seb might come into play later in the year. Ferrari have penalties to take eventually, so had to maximise today's account, job done on that front.
 
I know Monaco has never been a place for overtaking, but with the new cars it reached an all time low this weekend. The last twenty or so laps hinted we might see some late action but even the daring Max could do nothing behind Bottas, even on fresher tyres.

:boring:
 
Glad I missed it then.
Monaco has been boring for years. Any track with almost zero opportunity to overtake is pointless for the fans.
 

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