Tag: kvyat

2016 Spanish Grand Prix – Some Pre-race Sangria

It is Saturday night on the East Coast of the United States. The Spanish Grand prix is tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM.  Europe means 8 AM sunday races… yes!

If the F1 season was a football game we’d be starting the second quarter. The team has established a 4 race baseline and are starting to up their expectations. Grosjean and Gutierrez qualified 14thand 16th.  Both cars made it out of the first qualifying session and were eliminated in the second. Yes it is racing and second place is the first looser.  Getting both cars into Q2 is a reasonable expectation or target for success.

Coming into Spain our hopes were raised just slightly because Catalunya Madrid is the only track on the schedule that the team had performance data on.  Grosjean complained that the car was undrivable during practice. They dialed the car back to the Sochi setup and started over. Romain seemed happier with his performance. Or perhaps he was just in a more guarded mindset during the post qualifying media scrum.

The Haas F1 team seems to be consistently qualifying into the area of 12th to 16th positions. Their consistency and reliability have been the hall marks for the team so far. Gains by Mclaren and Renault will keep the mid-pack pressure on the team.

But for the Spanish Grand Prix… again I expect at least 1 car in the points. My target for the team is to have one car in points per race. To maintain that goal we’ll need to see both drivers in points at some point since they have only 1 race so far without a driver in the points.

I expect Grosjean to be in points. He is going to extend the range of his tires and maximize those mediums. He has 2 sets of Hard Compound Pirelli’s. Will we see hard compounds in the race?

prediction: Grosjean in the points.

Not a very exciting journal entry. all of the excitement this race was about Max Verstappen replacing Dany Kvyat at Redbull. I predict a critical mistake by the over zealous Belgian.

 

2016 Russian Grand Prix – Post Race Wrap

Again, the Haas F1 Team delivers. Both cars finished the race and Grosjean landed in 8th. My expectations were exceeded by the team scoring points. But I think we are going to get used to this real quick and the bar will continue to notch up.

The race review I am about to write seems like a repetition to my pre-race analysis, because my pre-race analysis was consistent with what happened.  Since it’s a journal I can say things like that. So…

Turn 1 was a bottleneck, Vettel was knocked out going into turn 2 by Kvyat . Grosjean was off with a jack rabbit start and in a safe position from the turn 1 contacts. Gutierrez found himself in trouble with the Force India car of Nico Hulkenberg and was forced to change his nose when the smoke cleared. Under Caution Gutierrez did not seem to  lose much track position, but in the end he did not gain any either.

Grosjean’s performance, on the other hand, must be bringing the attention from other teams. I give my driver of the day to Jan Magnussen because he did the most with the least. But Romain carried the mail for Haas today.

The Mercedes powered cars were the biggest threat to Haas. The Williams and Force India’s are the teams Haas seems to possibly be on par with.   The Force India of Sergio Perez was on the tail of Grosjean for nearly the entire second half of the race, and the Haas car provided the necessary performance for Grosjean to fight. In all but the Chinese Grand Prix are we seeing that Grosjean’s Haas is in the mix, and winning their battles.

On the other hand, the 21 car is not matching the 8. As Guiterrez settles into the car he will improve.  But the driver selection was based on blind expectations, and an apparent obligation to escalate the Ferrari reserve driver. Was this an out for Ferrari? A courtesy for Haas? We have a long season ahead of us, and a proper evaluation can only be performed after the season. But in the heat of battle it is easy to get over zealous in our evaluations.  But at some point the delta between the two drivers will be  evaluated and it’s impossible to avoid the subject.

Grosjean definitely got the jump on Guitteries when they went green. That put Grosjean into a better position and ahead, and allowed him to emerge unscathed from turn 1. Again,in the pre-race review I mentioned to watch the difference between their two starts. But Grosjean seems to be a master of starting, and that is a trait he brings at Lotus. But Gutierrez was lined up next

Based on the 2014 performance payout schedule, the fifth place team was Williams and  received $83 million dollars in FIA award payouts in 2015.  That is where Haas is on pace to finish.  for a team that is rumored to be operating in the $100 million range, the team could make  profit if they sell enough hats. … But seriously,  the team appears to be in a strong financial position as a result of their performance. Gene Haas was quoted somewhere as saying that paraphrase: Grosjean has already paid for himself.

So a great result. And again, I apologize to @RenaultSportF1  for a tweet comment.  It was made in the “esprit de l’occasion”.

Bring on Barcelona!