Formula Renault 3.5 Monza - Round 1

[formula_fan]

I was looking forward to the races this weekend but I have to say they were both extremely disappointing.

In the first race, Stevens drove well and I think him and Merhi were about the only two drivers to not go off at some point in the race. It was a shocking standard even without the Sorensen mess.

The second race was at least slightly better but I find it hard to get excited about the championship when the calibre of driver is so low this year.

Sainz at least looks the complete class of the field, he will surely win this championship with ease if his car can hold together.

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

I think we'll see a few winners this season.

[Hawkwood]

Originally Posted by codename_47

Definitely Ja'fa (cree!), and the stewards have agreed.

However he himself thinks he should be allowed to move into the car that's got an overlap alongside him and expects it to move out of his way, based on his press statement.
I know drivers have to have a degree of self confidence to get them to the top, but the way he puts it borders on the delusional!

Jafaar got blamed for Sorensen randomly turning into him in the middle of a straight?!

[wsrgo94]

Well, DAMS seemed to have picked up from where they left off, but I'm a bit flummoxed at Nato's lack of pace as opposed to Sainz. This was they guy, who nearly beat Kvyat to the Formula Renault 2.0 Alps title 2 years ago, and wasn't too far off Stoffel Vandoorne in F4 Eurocup 1.6 (now French F4) four years ago. He has gone away pointless from this weekend, while his teammte nearly crushed the opposition in EVERY session.
Pleasantly surprised with Martsenko. Buller needs to improve his race craft, I remember him having 2 consecutive jump starts in British F3 last year, and his little tiff with Stevens was nasty.

[Rf1 Fan]

Originally Posted by formula_fan

I was looking forward to the races this weekend but I have to say they were both extremely disappointing.

In the first race, Stevens drove well and I think him and Merhi were about the only two drivers to not go off at some point in the race. It was a shocking standard even without the Sorensen mess.

The second race was at least slightly better but I find it hard to get excited about the championship when the calibre of driver is so low this year.

Sainz at least looks the complete class of the field, he will surely win this championship with ease if his car can hold together.

Sainz has a Dams car, don't forget that.

I was rather impressed by maturity in close battle from Gasly.

[formula_fan]

Originally Posted by Rf1 Fan

Sainz has a Dams car, don't forget that.

Good point, is there a big disparity between the cars?

It's odd that the best drivers on paper were scattered around the field. I'm surprised Merhi wasn't stronger, even though he was 2nd in race 1 it was mainly thanks to the misfortune of others. Also Webb and Sorensen were nowhere whilst Stockinger, Ghiotto, Jaafar and Martsenko were all strangely quick most of the weekend.

[Rf1 Fan]

Originally Posted by formula_fan

Good point, is there a big disparity between the cars?

It's odd that the best drivers on paper were scattered around the field. I'm surprised Merhi wasn't stronger, even though he was 2nd in race 1 it was mainly thanks to the misfortune of others. Also Webb and Sorensen were nowhere whilst Stockinger, Ghiotto, Jaafar and Martsenko were all strangely quick most of the weekend.

i tend to think that dams has an edge.

We could see the numbers of Pole done since the introduction of Dallara T12 per team or the average grid position for the lead car.

[Mekola]

The promotion of Eric Boullier from Dams to F1 with Lotus and now McLaren has something to do with Dams dominance in lower formulae???

[bella]

was very interested to see the speed trap figures for the sessions. obviously some got tows where others didn't, but there was a surprisingly big difference...

for what it's worth, i thought the jaafar/sorensen incident was a racing one - two drivers do something daft at the same time and it ends in tears. it didn't really require a penalty in my eyes, just a very serious chat. the difference is that sorensen is a firm racer but isn't prone to doing dumb things, whereas jaafar has an inherant aggressiveness in his driving and racing that requires everyone else to give him a bit of room. so perhaps from that point of view it made sense to give sorensen a slap, but not jaafar.

it was good to see stevens finally capitalise on good fortune and score a win, especially given how much pace he had last season. but i think we all know what would have happened if sainz' car had worked. still, that's how titles are won and lost - the opportunistic stuff.

in webb's defence, it looked like he was in "bring it home in one bit" mode from saturday qualifying onwards. nato is making absolutely no sense at all to me either. sorensen's figures in the speed trap were very telling.

martsenko went really well at monza last season as well, same with sirotkin. the former is an interesting case because whenever you watch him trackside he looks like he's really fighting the car and wasting a lot of energy, grip and speed. and yet in these cars, at monza, that translates somehow to a very competitive lap time.

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

Originally Posted by bella

for what it's worth, i thought the jaafar/sorensen incident was a racing one - two drivers do something daft at the same time and it ends in tears. it didn't really require a penalty in my eyes, just a very serious chat. the difference is that sorensen is a firm racer but isn't prone to doing dumb things, whereas jaafar has an inherant aggressiveness in his driving and racing that requires everyone else to give him a bit of room. so perhaps from that point of view it made sense to give sorensen a slap, but not jaafar.

I find that interesting. In my eyes, Jaafar did nothing wrong (Sorensen claiming "he should've moved with me" is plain stupid in my view. It wouldn't have happened if Sorensen had never moved). However, he definitely paid the price for his error. The memory of sliding down the Monza start/finish straight upside down with fluid everywhere and cars going by will probably leave a bigger mark of Sorensen's race craft than the 5 place grid penalty.

[Rf1 Fan]

Originally Posted by bella

was very interested to see the speed trap figures for the sessions. obviously some got tows where others didn't, but there was a surprisingly big difference...

for what it's worth, i thought the jaafar/sorensen incident was a racing one - two drivers do something daft at the same time and it ends in tears. it didn't really require a penalty in my eyes, just a very serious chat. the difference is that sorensen is a firm racer but isn't prone to doing dumb things, whereas jaafar has an inherant aggressiveness in his driving and racing that requires everyone else to give him a bit of room. so perhaps from that point of view it made sense to give sorensen a slap, but not jaafar.

it was good to see stevens finally capitalise on good fortune and score a win, especially given how much pace he had last season. but i think we all know what would have happened if sainz' car had worked. still, that's how titles are won and lost - the opportunistic stuff.

in webb's defence, it looked like he was in "bring it home in one bit" mode from saturday qualifying onwards. nato is making absolutely no sense at all to me either. sorensen's figures in the speed trap were very telling.

martsenko went really well at monza last season as well, same with sirotkin. the former is an interesting case because whenever you watch him trackside he looks like he's really fighting the car and wasting a lot of energy, grip and speed. and yet in these cars, at monza, that translates somehow to a very competitive lap time.

Do you have an explanation for the difference of speed between Gasly and Buller in Qualy and race pace.

Gasly seemed to have a very conservative way to use new tyres but very quick in older tyres.

[formula_fan]

The incident was surely Sorensen's fault? Whether Jaafar is inherently aggressive or not Sorensen pushed him to the edge of the track and continued to move until they hit. No excuses for that, he had almost the whole width of a track on his left and Jaafar had an overlap, he shouldn't be expected to back off.

[bella]

Originally Posted by Biscuits In A Red Bull

The memory of sliding down the Monza start/finish straight upside down with fluid everywhere and cars going by will probably leave a bigger mark of Sorensen's race craft than the 5 place grid penalty.

in the long term definitely. that sort of thing catches up with you in the days afterwards when you start to look at the replays and see how close it really was to being curtains. but honestly, sorensen's done (proper) formula ford, he's had years of racecraft experience, he's a smart lad and it was just a misjudgement in a situation where someone else made an iffy decision too. this wasn't a display of outrageous, aggressive racecraft that should be stamped out immediately. it was a racing incident, but one that those involved can be learnt from.

forgive me for having a rusty memory for something so recent, but wasn't it jaafar who pitched stanaway into the air at spa?

[olev]

Originally Posted by Rf1 Fan

Do you have an explanation for the difference of speed between Gasly and Buller in Qualy and race pace.

Gasly seemed to have a very conservative way to use new tyres but very quick in older tyres.

None of the values given in these speed traps matched the real speeds of the cars. In FP1, there were cars on medium downforce reaching higher top speeds than others on low downforce. In qualifying, when everybody was on medium downforce, some of the top speeds were plainly impossible to achieve with the gear ratios for this downforce level. Not even with a massive tow.

It was a shame, given that speed traps are normally not available,, even though it's been a common request from the teams over the past years with all the engine problems that has plagued the series.

[Rf1 Fan]

Originally Posted by bella

in the long term definitely. that sort of thing catches up with you in the days afterwards when you start to look at the replays and see how close it really was to being curtains. but honestly, sorensen's done (proper) formula ford, he's had years of racecraft experience, he's a smart lad and it was just a misjudgement in a situation where someone else made an iffy decision too. this wasn't a display of outrageous, aggressive racecraft that should be stamped out immediately. it was a racing incident, but one that those involved can be learnt from.

forgive me for having a rusty memory for something so recent, but wasn't it jaafar who pitched stanaway into the air at spa?

jafaar was in british f3 at that time.

[Rf1 Fan]

Well Gasly just said they went the wrong way on set up side.He felt that he drove badly this week-end , he did not exploit the car completely.He was not able to be on the limit in qualy.

http://www.ffsa.org/article.php?id=2...medium=twitter

However in race trim it was better.

[bella]

Originally Posted by Rf1 Fan

jafaar was in british f3 at that time.

you're completely right, it was huertas. my apologies

[p-matt]

Originally Posted by Rf1 Fan

Do you have an explanation for the difference of speed between Gasly and Buller in Qualy and race pace.



Gasly seemed to have a very conservative way to use new tyres but very quick in older tyres.

Isn't that typical Buller though? Fast in quali but unable to hold that pace in the race? In saying that, his race 1 pace was decent and in race 2 was compromised by that clash with Stevens that it's tough to judge.

[bella]

Originally Posted by olev

In qualifying, when everybody was on medium downforce, some of the top speeds were plainly impossible to achieve with the gear ratios for this downforce level. Not even with a massive tow.

It was a shame, given that speed traps are normally not available,, even though it's been a common request from the teams over the past years with all the engine problems that has plagued the series.

'sactly. but this is clearly exactly why they've never been released. it's a huge can of worms that realistically needs to be solved in private between teams, organisers and engine providers. we can discuss it till we're blue in the face, but all that happens is that different parties get competitive about who's been wronged the most.

[chunterer]

So Sainz luck curse may be his undoing this year and give someone from a less 'on it' team a window..

It will.be tough to beat him in that pace advantage, but then it can't be like that every round?

Stevens drove beautifully in race 1 as Sainz did on Sunday. I actually thought Stevens was doing a well judged race coming through and not doing anything rash but clearly felt he had to get past Buller in a hurry as the recivering Merhi was looming?

A couple of drivers surprised me how anonymous they were and a couple really surprised me how strong they were.

Merhi looked single seater rusty but clearly he will be a challenger this year. Sirotkin could be the real dark horse. Ghiotto looks a good racer and i haven't seen Stockinger drive that well for years! Rowland is bound to improve as no doubt will Nato and Sorensen.

Yep plenty to look forward to this year no doubting that.

Martsenko blew me away with his pace

[bella]

i'm not sure if nato *will* improve to be honest. there's got to be more to his situation than meets the eye though, he's clearly not as slow as his results suggest. very keen to be proven wrong on that front though.

would like to see stevens in the championship running too, but on the face of it it doesn't appear that it's going to pan out that way. in fact, i'm not sure there's a natural opponent for sainz in the same way vandoorne brought it to magnussen last season.

on a bit of a stirring it note, it's a bit funny that they've not included the top speed trap stats sheets with the timing booklet on the results site

edit: what i MEANT to post was that renault's stance on carlin non-participating and the other teams struggling to find 2 drivers is good. it's especially good that it's being said in public too : http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/113482

[Go_For_Pole]

Well, that's one very small positive step, more importantly they need to make their series viable for their teams again.

[Juntos]

I feel sorry for Gasly. Arden is definitely not that top team in FR3.5.

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

[QUOTE=bella;3392296]it was a racing incident, but one that those involved can be learnt from.QUOTE]

You must have something against Jaafar, because for me it was at least 75% Sorensen's fault...

(whatever that percentage is meant to mean anyway...)

[Beryl]

She certainly does if she still claims he made an "iffy decision" to contribute to the incident. Jaafar did nothing wrong, so perhaps his iffy decision was getting up that morning.