Lance Stroll, Racing Point, Circuit de Catalunya, 2020

Racing Point expect to wait months for appeal decision

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: Racing Point CEO Otmar Szafnauer it not expecting a quick resolution to the multiple appeals which have arisen in response to the team’s penalty.

What they say

Racing Point has appealed against the FIA’s decision to fine and dock them point, while Renault and Ferrari have also submitted appealed. Szafnauer is eager for a chance to “clear our name”:

[There’s] no indication on timeline. I can only go by my experiences from in the past and it seems like these things usually take a couple of months.

I think a big part of it is getting the right judges, clearing their calendars, making sure all the judges – I believe there’s five – can come together at the same time. These are busy people that have day jobs, too, so it’s a little bit based around that as well as preparation. So I don’t know, we haven’t been given a timeline, but just from past experience it’s usually couple of months.

We want to clear our name. You saw what the stewards have said and we want to go ahead and have our day in court to clear our name. We did nothing wrong. The stewards admitted we didn’t do anything deliberately and the rules were unclear.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Snapshot

Johnny Herbert appeared in a 1981 Ensign N180B for a historic Formula 1 race at Brands Hatch last weekend. After a smooth run in the opening race, gear selection problems forced him out of the second.

Comment of the day

IndyCar’s decision not to take up the opportunity to end the Indianapolis 500 under green flag running has prompted debate:

I think part of it was that they simply didn’t have time to throw a red and then go through the restart procedure with only three laps left. You can’t just send them out the pits and go green next lap as they need at least two laps to get the tires up to temperature from cold and I think the engine/gearbox also needs to be brought up to temperature to stop them falling into a safe mode.

They may have also considered how effective the tow had been on prior restarts and that doing a white flag restart would have left Sato at a big disadvantage with no opportunity to try and recover from it as when getting passed into turn one you tend to lose momentum and not be able to respond into turn three and four.

I guess you could argue that ending it under yellow also decided the race but would a restart with a virtually guaranteed lead change have been fairer?
@Gt-racer

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24 comments on “Racing Point expect to wait months for appeal decision”

  1. COTD: I think the decision to allow the race to finish under yellow was at least in part due to how long it would take to rebuild the barrier that Pigot crashed into.

  2. The thing about comparing the aerodynamic concepts is, presumably the Honda is no Mercedes, right? Red Bull being where they are indicates that the high rake concept has merit.

    The biggest burning question to me is why does the car setup suit Max so well compared to his rivals? Gasly’s performance improvement since reverting to the Alpha Tauri (and conversely Albon’s comapritive drop) surely can’t be purely mental.

    I don’t know why Multi 21 is still being asked and talked about, talk about beating the dead horse. I feel like that’s Webber’s one claim to fame now that pops up yearly, and it’s not a very attractive one. Still I guess, better than asking why he threw it all away at Korea in 2010 🤷‍♂️

    1. Crazy. Why would anyone ask him about Korea 2010?! We saw what happened – there’s no additional insight to be obtained.
      Multi 21 however was clearly a different experience from Webber’s POV.

      1. And what “additional insight” is there to be gained about Multi 21 at this point? What different experience? Stop arguing for the sake of it.

        1. A lot of people still don’t know Multi 21 started with Webbo mindlessly trying to spoil Seb’s title bid in Brazil the previous year. Seb has a strong sense of justice.

          And a lot of people don’t know last year Seb helped Charles win Spa, then in Monza Charles ducked out of returning the tow. Hence Sochi.

          And this of course gave the young megastar 2 wins while leaving Vettel painted as the obstructive one. So Multi 21 did have a kind of relevant echo.

          1. Both incidents were the result of a very well paid driver acting like a petulant child? I’m being mean of course but the point is Vettel does have a destructive streak in him, not too dissimilar to Alonso.

    2. Watching Verstappen on board especially in the wet it’s clear that Newey didn’t have the luxury to make the car drive on rail like in Vettel era. RedBull only priority is how to make it fast. Unfortunately only driver who had years experience on that can drive it. I’m not saying after two session Albon would be matched Max pace but he will be closer then.

      On Multi 21, it’s all about many journalists think that’s the highlight of Webber carrier, which should be seen as insult to him.

      1. On Multi 21, it’s all about many journalists think that’s the highlight of Webber carrier, which should be seen as insult to him.

        Spot on! @ruliemaulana

        Webber should have answered: “yeah that was a questionable win by Vettel, but let me tell you about my nine GP wins. For instance my win at ….”

        1. @coldfly or “let me tell you about Newey and Marko brawl at… “

        2. @coldfly, but the multi thing clearly showed Webber lacked the mentality to become WDC.
          Maybe that’s what they try to show?

    3. Red Bull has the second fastest car with the third best engine, so I’d argue their high-rake concept is working quite well.

      1. 3rd best engine is debatable, could as well be mercedes, honda, renault.

      2. @paeschli as others note, is the Honda engine necessarily “the third best engine”?

        During a presentation that Yasuaki Asaki, the Head of Honda PU Development, gave back on the 23rd June 2020, he was very confident that they’d matched Renault for peak power in 2018 and comfortably overtook them in terms of peak power over the 2019 season. In fact, he seemed to think that the late 2019 spec Honda engine was pretty close to, if not matching, the late 2019 spec Mercedes engine in terms of peak power. (https://car.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1261006.html – article is in Japanese).

        With that in mind, I suspect that Asaki would be a bit insulted to be told that he has produced “the third best engine” – he’d probably be fairly confident that Honda’s got the second best engine at least and that they’re very much up there with Mercedes in terms of raw power.

        1. Peak power and raw power are of course not the same as usable power that gets a car to the finish line weekend after weekend. In that respect it would seem Mercedes is still tops, and then all I can say from there is that if the Honda pu is still behind the Renault one, then my goodness what a potent combo is RBR/Newey/Max, to have beaten both Mercs in one race and be splitting them and have Max ahead of VB in the WDC standings otherwise. Oh what they could do with that extra performance the Mercedes pu provides.

  3. I’m not a big indycar follower but I don’t understand why people are angry about the lack of red flag. With 3 laps to go and massive repair job needed, had they red flagged it people would have complained that the repair job took too long…

    1. People will complain either way, welcome to life.

      1. @pastaman

        Best comment right there. sad

    2. @fer-no65 some seem to be complaining because they were hoping for Scott Dixon to win the race, and a red flag with a restart afterwards would have given him the best chance of winning.

      Some have noted that the complaints seem to be more magnified for Sato’s victory compared to other drivers who have won under similar circumstances though – Dario Franchitti, for example, won all three of his races under “caution lap” conditions due to accidents, but nobody has questioned the legitimacy of his victories.

    3. If someone needs medical attention and is on the side of the track, then the race should stop. Easy. “But there’s three laps to go in the race, you want everyone to wait for hours until to get a race result?” If there’s three laps to go or such like and for some reason you can’t restart the race within a reasonable length of time, e.g. the time the race was expected to finish plus a bit more then stop the race as it is. F1 has rules about how to deal with races that didn’t run their full length, so presumably Indycar does as well. A race is all about people driving fast safely, and that safety bit shouldn’t be compromised. If you’ve got medical people on the side of the track then that’s your priority. You don’t need to do X number of laps to get a result. Yes, people will be disappointed, yes people will be disadvantaged, but the important thing is someone was seriously hurt and dealing with that is your priority.

  4. The visor on the Indy cars looks so much better than the F1 solution.

    1. Didn’t the drivers complain over overheating in their cars with the lack of cool air passing over their heads?

      1. Cornelius Rowbarton
        25th August 2020, 11:08

        Yes hence the big pipe attached to their providing airflow. I agree it looks much better, but I can’t imagine it would work well at Singapore in the wet!

        1. As someone around here who all along has posed as an issue the drastic aerodynamic affect such a screen would have to F1 cars that are much much more aerodynamically designed, I was very intrigued to hear the commentators on Sunday speak to how this screen has caused a need for different setups, which tied in with how some drivers just seemed to suddenly and surprisingly lose it and spin out or go into the wall, no doubt affected by turbulence from cars ahead.

          You can’t just slap a thing like this on a car and not have it make a huge difference, but especially to F1 cars. I continue to maintain that they could not possibly put an aeroscreen on an F1 car without completely redesigning the car front to back. The aero effect would so drastically change how air would go around the airbox and the sidepods and hit the rear wing that the front wing would have to be completely different too. And therefore the floor too. Would air even get into the airbox above the driver’s head to feed the pu?

          And interestingly, with the completely new and revised cars coming, which would have been an ideal time to design for an aeroscreen, they’re still not doing it and rather are going to have designed-in halos that should look less bolted-on.

  5. Really disagree.

    Halo looks much better in my opinion, aeroscreen looks very awkward.

    However, I’m of the mind that which ever is safer, should be used. If it’s the aeroscreen then that’s the route the FIA should take.

Comments are closed.