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Still related to that, an interesting article on F1Technical about engine allocations and stuff.

TL;DR version: Renault brought an untested engine to Melbourne. Ricciardo's engine blew in practise, so he moved onto his second ICE so he could race. Verstappen's first ICE blew up in the race. Renault will have an upgraded spec engine for Malaysia, which means that Verstappen's second ICE will be the upgraded one, but Ricciardo will have to move onto his third ICE to have that upgraded one. Consequently, two races in he'll be on 3 out of 4 ICE's allowable, and for the other Renault-powered drivers even if they didn't blow an ICE in Melbourne to be able to use the new, improved one they'll have to basically scraped their previous one and move onto their second allocation.

TL;DR of the TL;DR version: Sucks to be Renault-powered.

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I'd probably be in the "let's stay on the 2nd allocation, run it detuned, and have more time to make sure the tokens spent on the upgrades are worthwhile" camp. Essentially making Malaysia a test run of sorts – we saw how close JB got to a point while running so far off the pace, so sacrificing race number two might not be as bad as it will most likely be later in the season. Plus, always good to have a self imposed penalty rather than an FIA one!

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Him being so close to a point was kind of down to both Lotus cars being out from almost right at the start (which would have been running ahead of him reliability/Maldonado-not-being-able-to-drive notwithstanding), Ferrari cross-threading one of Raikonnen's wheel nuts and Bottas not racing. I'd imagine even Manor would have a shout at beating them too, so I don't think he'll be getting much closer to points-scoring any time soon. I think I'd be inclined to turn the wick up on the engine a bit and see how it goes...

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I wasn't really commenting on the McLaren pace, more making the point you've remade that circumstances are presenting themselves to those who finish the race.

I.e don't use a third engine for DR (who we were talking about), just turn down his 2nd allocation and make sure engine #3 has upgrades that work reliably for race 3.

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Aaaaaah, right, I get you. That's not a mindset that's going to see them getting up the pecking order long term though in the sense that it'll theoretically harm their development. We'll see - I think they're pretty f**ked regardless (saw a rumour before (that I may have posted in here?) about Honda claiming they were 6 months behind their development schedule).

Rowan - think it's a 10-place grid penalty? So it'd just be rolling over grid penalties from race-to-race I'd imagine.

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Turns out that they don't roll over any more, but become time penalties:

At the end of 2014 several drivers suffered severe grid penalties for engine changes, some of which carried over multiple races. This will no longer be the case in 2015. A grid drop will still apply for changing certain components after drivers have exceeded their initial allotment, but any unused penalty will be converted into a time penalty for the race rather than carrying over to other events. This will also apply in the case of changing an entire power unit, previously resulting in a pit-lane start, with a cumulative penalty for each component being installed and, if necessary, a time penalty for the race.
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Ha, saw that earlier and then went onto a massive rant about Jolyon Palmer not having a drive while someone who can't even count three words and crashes most weekends does. Not my best use of time today.

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Bearing in mind how kind of tongue-in-cheek the Lotus social media team are, they must have almost sent so many "Pastor Maldonado is a f**king retard" related posts over the years but decided against it at the last second. I'm sure they're aware of the fact that he's definitely not the best driver to have, but I guess all dem oil monies he brings (well, brought...) in area what's paying their wages.

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Absolutely, not under any illusions about why he's there, I just wish it wasn't so. Obviously it'll never be possible to just have the best 20 open wheel drivers in the world competing in F1 on a relatively level mechanical playing field, but it'd be nice. Enough utopian dreaming for one day, though!

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Bearing in mind the 'development' driver they hired earlier this year, I don't think Lotus are going to be the ones to lead that charge any time soon ;)

EDIT: Nice timing - just got an e-mail from F1Racing who are doing an "Ask Marcus Ericsson" feature. You can ask him any question you want...

EDIT #2: Interesting piece on the F1 site: http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-website/en/latest/features/2015/3/race-performance-ratings-explained--australia---cornering.html

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The technical directive about the fuel flow shenanigans applies from the next race, so maybe Ferrari just upped it for one last hurrah? ;) It seems the strategy was what really cost Mercedes though, rather than it outright being a Ferrari bossing of things. It seems Vettel's a bit different now he's at Ferrari so I don't really mind him winning now.

Interesting both Toro Rossos beat the Red Bulls. That happening in the same weekend that another constructor beat Mercedes = a gigantic f**k you to Christian "Wah wah wah equalise the engines" Horner. Do your job better, dickhead.

EDIT: Unrelated, but it's impressive just how detailed F1 car design is, even down to blown wheel nuts.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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