Michael Schumacher holds the pole records at Suzuka

(Times deleted due to a severe case of Brain Fart! See trench's times immediately following!)

What's your prediction for pole time in 2002?

 

Those numbers are the Indy USGP pole times, BOB.

For Suzuka:
2000 pole 1'35.825"
2001 pole 1'32.484"

My prediction is MS with a time of 1'30.670"

Cheers, BT

 

As the latest reports call for a dry weekend in Suzuka, I am saying Schumi pulls the pole at a time of:

1:30:150

Anyone have any thoughts on today's suggestion by Max Mosely that in order to make F1 more interesting he suggets "driver swapping". That is each driver would drive each car once. In my opinion it is simply preposterous. Almost as ludicrous as Eccelstone's suggestion that the points leader should be forced to carry and extra kilo of lead ballast for each point he is ahead of second place!! I say the blame should fall to Mc Laren and Williams for allowing Ferrari to become so superior. They were lazy and ignorant and now there are "enjoying" the fruits of their non-labour.

 

The driver swapping idea is ludicrous - I'm not super fond of the weight penalty idea either (although it is used in a number of other series, but usually not a top-flight type series).

The problem with this year is that the Williams chassis was crap (perhaps intentionally sabotaged last year by an outgoing aero-engineer) with a great motor, while McLaren had a great chassis with a crap motor. McLaren hired Ferrari's gearbox man for next year. Hopefully his input to the gearbox and the rear-end of the car, combined with a new motor from Mercedes-Ilmor (which should hopefully have fully recovered from losing Paul Morgan last year) will allow McLaren to be more competitive next year. Another problem with 2002 was Michelin - their tires pretty much sucked compared to the Bridgestones (especially since they were optimized for the Ferraris).

Cheers, BT

 

Trench,

You raise some excellent points. I do think much more is required to catch Ferrari though. Even though the McLaren chassis was an excellent aerodynamic package it still can't compare to the aerodynamics of the Ferrari. And although the BMW did produce more HP than the Ferrari the engine proved to be incredibly unreliable. Moreover, no one is F1 today is even close to Schumi in terms of driving ability. As for the tires, Michelin will be forced to continue to split their efforts between at least two top teams next year whereas Ferrari continues to have Bridgestone at their singular disposal. The bottom line is when we break down F1 into its main componnents Ferrari has the edge in all areas (Car, driver, tires, team). Unfortunately, the immediate future doesn't look any more competetive that the recent past. MB is taking the right approach in taking control of Ilmor but they can't realistically remedy their problems in one year.

 

M.S. 1'29.897




I hope next year is better for McLaren

 

Whoa! Did I have my head up my butt on that one, or what? I thought something was wrong, as I was practicing the Suzuka Circuit in "F1 2002" last night and my best time was 1:45XX... a LONG way from 1:11:708! Somehow 1:32:484 sounds more reachable

This weekend, I'll guess high: 1:30:890.

The driver swapping idea was simply STUPID. Tantamount to asking a bunch of businessmen to spend millions on their trophy wives, then require them to swap bedrooms. DOA!

I agree with trench... it's all in the packaging, and this year the also rans had it all wrong. Put that BMW race motor in the McLaren aero package with Montoya driving, and Schumi would have had his hands full. But that's wishful thinking.

Really, I don't see why anything drastic needs to be done to handicap Ferrari. No one imagined that other teams could recover following McLaren's numbing 15/16 race wins in the '88 season, either. But several did catch up (Williams, Benneton, etc.). And those catch-up years were pretty entertaining, too (with Mansell, Senna, Prost).

 

MS 1'30.288"

I can't believe that was a serious suggestion from Mosely. It's more likely he was trying to underline the importance of doing something fresh for next season. Wait, I've got it..let's promote the idea of limiting engine revs to 7,000. But since it's too late to make that kind of change for next season there must be something non-technical we can do....

 

I last wrote that I thought there was no need for weight handicapping, on the premise that the teams catch up to the leader over time, citing the 1988 season as an example. However, the more I think about it, the more I start to understand the genesis of the weight handicapping idea... because there is a stark difference between the 1988 and 2002 seasons.

In 1988, it was clear by midseason that it was going to be a McLaren romp. (They didn't lose a race until Round 12 in Italy). However, through the first eight races, the victories were evenly distributed among McLaren drivers, Prost=4 to Senna=4. Even at the end of the year, Senna won the championship with 8, only one more victory than Prost's 7. My point is, that while you knew a McLaren was going to win 15 of the 16 races (the boring part), you couldn't always predict which driver would win, and that it was a square fight between two equal drivers (the interesting part).

2002 was a different matter (actually 1999-2002, but let's not overreach). Ferrari's single-minded focus on Schumacher to the exclusion of its other driver is substantially different and more ominous than the boredom of the season in general. The Austria team orders fiasco was Ferrari's way of saying, "Not only are we going to win the championship, but Ferrari will gleefully pull the puppet strings on which driver gets the team's nod." No tact, no apologies, no fun for the fans, thank you very much. :p

And Schumacher's throwing the USGP to Barrichello (whether by design or accident) is just another statement that Ferrari can and will toy with the game all it wants to. :p :p

The driver's weight penalty as FIA's idea for laying down the law to Ferrari that there's no sense biasing your efforts, since your favorite driver will be saddled with an overwhelming weight penalty by mid season. It is, afterall, a two-car team sport for all but one team. As long as Ferrari continues to thumb its nose at the rest of the teams and the sport's officials, such ideas will continue to surface.

Of course, Ferrari can avoid this by trying to fit in, but they're too stubborn for that. Stay tuned...

 

Bah, the times on Speed are all backwards!

I have a feeling that either McLaren or Ferrari will break into the 1:29's. I am going with 1:29.9xx

 

Pole time: MS with a 1'31.317"

Winner of the final game of 2002: MB-BOB

By the way Bob, I completely agree with your assement on handicapping. If Ferrari had let RB and MS race it out, the FIA wouldn't even be bringing it up. Although, with the 2-way telemetry they could easily botch a race for RB without any obvious on-track shennanigans.

Congrats, BT