Serious question: When can they change power plants and to what extent? Given the new rules.
Russell makes it interesting (spoiler alert)
- Thread starter LineArrayNut
- Start date
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2020
- Messages
- 721
I'm very curious as to what the Aston could do if it had a functioning engine.I personally don’t think Red Bull will be competitive any time soon. After losing Adrian Newey that was a huge loss for them (although he’s not exactly helping Aston Martin at the moment either)
After six races they get ADUO if a manufacturer is 2% or 4% behind the leader. They can upgrade the engine, but it's not a complete replacement. Not sure how the cancellation of Dubai and Saudi Arabia GPs will impact the timing. Hopefully Ferrari can bring some engine and aero upgrades to close the gap to Mercedes so we can see four drivers duke it out. I suspect some of the gap can be closed by going with a larger turbo, but Ferrari would lose some of its starting line advantage. Mercedes is also probably sandbagging on engine power, so Ferrari would need to target another .6 - .8s in pace, which is a huge leap. Otherwise Mercedes would just turn up its engine when Ferrari gets closer.
Last edited:
wemay
Site Donor 2023
100%. Life was glorious when his team was dominating but now that the tables have turned...."this isn't racing"
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2020
- Messages
- 721
Nice read. Thanks. Yeah Ferrari is too close. Maybe they can hire Max to sandbag for them. (
sorry)I read this morning that Ferrari believes that they have proof that Merc is sandbagging their engine performance to keep Ferrari within the 2% margin, denying them the ADUO window. If they have that proof, and that's a big if, then Merc can be in serious trouble. That's very much against the rules.
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2020
- Messages
- 721
Source?
It's not a great source. I saw it from a Ferrari page on social media somewhere. That's why I caveated it with it being a "big if". Seeing how much Merc sandbagged the preseason, I wouldn't be surprised if they still were in some way.
It's also kinda convenient how close the Ferraris are to the Mercs in the first two qualifying sessions, and yet Merc is consistently 2-3 tenths faster in Q3. We'll see, though. I wouldn't bet money on Merc getting any sort of penalty.
