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MercerFSAE C. Burch
03-12-2003, 03:36 AM
Well, after many months of waiting and anticipation it has finally arrived - the 2003 Formula 1 season. I'm curious as to what everybody's favourite team and driver is and who they think will be the winners and losers in 2003.

My favourites:

Driver: R. Schumacher
Car: BMW-Williams

Here are my predictions:

Winners List - M. Schumi as #1 and R. Barric #2
David Coulthard will take third with Kimi fourth.

Now beyond that it is really up in the air.

Renault and BAR both look really strong this year, as does Sauber running with last year's best eninge and a brand new wind tunnel to make a great chassis. Williams' car this year seems to be well off of the pace and this might be a dissapointing season for the team. I think these teams will fall in this order:
Renault 3rd
Williams 4th
BAR 5th, if only because J. Ville is going play mind games with Button all year long while they should be working together as a team.

Miniardi, Jaguar, and Toyota will be cleaning up the rear as usual, though Toyota should get better as the season progresses and Minardi and Jaguar might actually get worse(if that is possible).

-Chris

MercerFSAE C. Burch
03-12-2003, 03:36 AM
Well, after many months of waiting and anticipation it has finally arrived - the 2003 Formula 1 season. I'm curious as to what everybody's favourite team and driver is and who they think will be the winners and losers in 2003.

My favourites:

Driver: R. Schumacher
Car: BMW-Williams

Here are my predictions:

Winners List - M. Schumi as #1 and R. Barric #2
David Coulthard will take third with Kimi fourth.

Now beyond that it is really up in the air.

Renault and BAR both look really strong this year, as does Sauber running with last year's best eninge and a brand new wind tunnel to make a great chassis. Williams' car this year seems to be well off of the pace and this might be a dissapointing season for the team. I think these teams will fall in this order:
Renault 3rd
Williams 4th
BAR 5th, if only because J. Ville is going play mind games with Button all year long while they should be working together as a team.

Miniardi, Jaguar, and Toyota will be cleaning up the rear as usual, though Toyota should get better as the season progresses and Minardi and Jaguar might actually get worse(if that is possible).

-Chris

Chris Maher
03-12-2003, 12:19 PM
That first race was amazing...best I've seen in a long time.

But my fav's are Juan Montoya and Williams.

As much as I'd like things to be different...I think MS and RB will take 1 & 2 for ferrari.

#3 JPM
#4 DC
#5 Kimi
#6 R. Schumacher

1 Ferrari
2 Mclaren
3 Williams
4 Renault
5 Sauber
6 BAR
7 Toyota
8 Jordan
9 Jag
10 Minardi

Chris Maher
Secretary,
University of Central Florida,
Society of Automotive Engineers
info@ucfmotorsports.com
www.ucfmotorsports.com (http://www.ucfmotorsports.com)

vinHonda
03-13-2003, 08:51 AM
BAR will improve. W/ Nakamoto heading Honda's engine program, and Willis basically making the new 005 a Williams... and Villeneuve behind the wheel.... BAR will be a threat.

They lost out in Melbourne because of Jacques lost radio... and a bit because of the wrong tire choice.

But I wouldn't count them out. Those of you deeply involved in Formula SAE know that it is PEOPLE who make the difference... w/ Nakamoto and Geoff Willis... BAR is going places.

Vinh

University of Toronto Formula SAE Racing Team
www.fsae.utoronto.ca (http://www.fsae.utoronto.ca)

Moeye
03-13-2003, 12:34 PM
Other than the usual top finishers, BAR is going to be very competitive this season. From the Australian race, I can't speculate how the 03 season would go. Hopefully, the Sepang circuit will have more ideal conditions and give all of us a better idea.

MercerFSAE C. Burch
04-10-2003, 04:07 PM
Well, the season is 3 races old now, and I'm keeping my top 8 predictions the same. Ferrari 1+2, McLaren 3+4, Renault 5+6, and Williams 7+8.

Here are the current points leaders.

Kimi Raikkonen - McLaren - 26points
David Coulthard - McLaren - 15
Fernando Alonso - Renault - 14
Jarno Trulli - Renault - 9
Giancarlo Fisichella - Jordan - 8
Juan-Pablo Montoya - Williams - 8
Michael Schumacher - Ferrari - 8
Heinz-Harald Frentzen - Sauber - 7
Ralf Schumacher - Williams - 6
Jacques Villeneuve - BAR - 3
Jenson Button - BAR - 2
Mark Webber - Jaguar - 2
Nick Heidfeld - Sauber - 1

-Chris

Charlie
04-10-2003, 10:57 PM
What is this Formula 1? Is it based on FSAE, except bigger cars and graduated engineers? Sounds interesting. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

-Charlie Ping
Auburn University FSAE 1999-present

MercerFSAE C. Burch
04-11-2003, 04:59 AM
... and really, really big budgets.

Didier Beaudoin
04-11-2003, 05:15 PM
Big budgets???

What the hell does it mean? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_confused.gif http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_confused.gif

Didier Beaudoin
Team Leader -
École Nationale d'Aérotechnique

Marc Jaxa-Rozen
04-12-2003, 02:51 PM
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Big budgets???

What the hell does it mean?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Euh...que les budgets de F1 sont plus gros que les nôtres? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Didier Beaudoin
04-13-2003, 10:31 AM
http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_razz.gif I know, it was pure sarcasm..

Didier Beaudoin
Team Leader -
École Nationale d'Aérotechnique

MercerFSAE C. Burch
07-07-2003, 09:21 AM
Ok, season's half way through! Figured I might as well put in some new observations.

Where the heck did Williams come from? They basically sucked at the beginning of this year, now they are dominating races like Ferrari did last year. Is it the tires, the aero - what gives?

Question number two... and this one is logic defying. I was watching the track times and split times of the cars via www.Formula1.com (http://www.Formula1.com) and I noticed something very weird indeed. Right after the Williams cars pitted, on the first complete lap after getting all tanked-up with fuel and putting fresh tires on, they set the fastest laps of the race (about 1.15.500). Then by the 4th lap after pitting they settled to about 1.17.500 and gradually whittled that time down to 1.16.000 by their next pit stop.

This doesn't make sense, really, as the cars are coming out of the pits with a 30kg weight penalty and should thus be slower, not 2s faster, than when they entered the pits. Is Michellin perhaps doping the tires with some ultra-sticky compound that wears off after a few laps? That might explain why the Williams cars set such a blistering pace in qualifying, despite having at least as much fuel as the Ferraris.

Any thoughts?

Chris

Banacek
07-07-2003, 01:18 PM
As far as Williams is concerned, I'm not sure when they introduced their latest car, but I'd bet it coincides roughly with their performance improvement. I also hear that the Michelin tires have made some leaps and bounds over the course of the year, especially ahead of the French GP. This should stress the importance of tire choice for all you FSAE types.

Fresh tires is also probably the reason for the improved lap time post pit-stop.

That said, Williams never really 'sucked'. With the exception of 2 or 3 races, they've had a car in the top 4 all season.

As for big budgets, the last figure I heard (circa 1999) was on the order of $25,000,000 per F1 car for production (compare with about a 1/3rd of that for Indy and CART). Yes, that's right folks, 3 orders of magnitude more than our little spiced up golf carts. Has anyone seen a figure more recent than this? I'm curious if the new rules have brought this down a bit or if every other aspect of the car improving has continued to make it more expensive.

Banacek
"A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn."

MercerFSAE C. Burch
07-07-2003, 02:02 PM
I've heard that the top money teams like Ferrari, Williams, McLaren, and Toyota spend upwards of $300million/year.

If the cost of a single car really is around 25mill., that means that you could purchase the entire rights to the CART championship for less, at around 20mill.!(According to Autoweek)

-Chris

Eddie Martin
07-07-2003, 08:37 PM
The performances this year have been a bit of a roller coaster. First McLaren was up there with there updated 17-D and then Ferrari came on strong with the 2002 and 2003 GA. Now Williams is at the front with there FW25.
Williams have been running this car since the start of the year. It had early problems with its aero package but after a lot of work they seem to have got it running nicely. McLaren are still running an update of the 2002 car, the new the one is taking forever to get race ready. I think most of the performance is about how well the tyres are working and how well they work on each car and with each driver.
I don't know why the Williams would be faster after a pit stop. To hazard a guess i'd say they were at the limit pushing to get track position, they would have had fresh tyres and at Magny Cours the surface is abrasive so the tyre can go off quickly.
So maybe they came out of the pits pushed hard for track position there tyres went off a bit and they settled into a comfortable race pace??
Hopefully Montoya and Kimi fight out the championship and keep it away from Ferrari. Also hopefully Webber gets a podium or two he has been running well.

Banacek
07-08-2003, 05:06 AM
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Hopefully Montoya and Kimi fight out the championship and keep it away from Ferrari. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Am I the only one that wants to see M. S. get another championship?

Banacek

MercerFSAE C. Burch
07-08-2003, 12:02 PM
Probably the only Canadian, at least!
-Chris

Banacek
07-08-2003, 07:14 PM
We're not all Villeneuve fans up here (At least not Jacques :-) Maybe if he was a bit more competitive (or at least if his car was). For the time being he's not earning his $20 someodd million.

banacek