Sunday, April 15, 2007

BahrainFormula1

I am a fan of formual1, not just because its car racing and one team looses and other wins, but more of because it involves so much of planning, execution, strategy, skills, innovation and definitely risk taking ability on part of everyone. It starts with testing where the team tries to understand the car, the track, the weather, the competition, the tires etc. Anyways, Bahrain race was amazing, Ferrari's and McLarens, both had a very good package, during the first two legs Ferrari's seemed to dominate and during the last leg McLarens. Though there is no explanation why different team dominated during different legs, here is what I think

a) First two legs both the teams had soft tyres
Now for this race after Malaysia heating problem, Ferrari's used rear brake cooling inlets. So with soft tyres they as everyone could, can speed well but while decelerating where G force goes as high as 5G, Ferrari's had an advantage. Ferrari's would have been able to decelerate faster which produces more heat, in a heated environment (Bahrain) but innovative cooling system helped to compensate that. McLarens would have struggled during decelerations.

b) Last Leg.
Last leg was with hard tyres, that means deceleration is limited by tyres, no more excessive heating by hard decelerations and Ferrari's loosing its advantage. The result do substantiate this theory, with McLarens gaining 3 seconds everylap, relative to Ferrari's.

The question that I am not able to understand is, why McLarens did not include any additional cooling knowing that Bahrain is a hot track ? Also why Ferrari's seemed not so competitive without the cooling advantage ?



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