Giblet wrote:
The 05 and 06 tires can't really be compared. The tires needed to last the whole race in 05, and the Michelin's were far better then the Bridgestones that Ferrari were using. The rear BS's were almost gone by the end of the race, and had no grip.
So Renault should be blamed for a fckup between Ferrari and one of their closer collaborators?
Giblet wrote:
The other huge advantage that Michelin had, was that they had a larger contact patch due to the square shoulders on the tires. This meant that when the suspension was loaded, the contact patch became larger than the BS's, which gave them a tertiary advantage.
A squarer profile doesn't make for a larger contact patch when loaded, or it'd be copied everywhere. Not least that when Michelin were asked to change theirs, they produced a better tyre. Which only one team made significant use of.
Let alone that tyre design isn't that simple (as if some BS techs are reading this and saying to themselves 'ah! of course! why didn't we think of that earlier!')
Giblet wrote:It is common knowledge that BS let down Ferrari in 05 and for the most part 06. Michelin won all 4 championships during this time, which makes them the uber tire for that period.
No, it means a team running Michelin tyres won both championships in both years.
It doesn't imply a causal relationship between the tyres and the team's competitive performance, or the engineers involved would have taken a two year holiday.
Giblet wrote:
I thought all that was obvious and common knowledge.
Common knowledge? That's it?
Or that Michelin had their fair and prominent share of fckups in 2005 particularly.
Or that Rory Byrne retired as lead designer, and Ferrari's 2005 car was the first primarily designed by Aldo Costa.
Or that a car's dynamic and aerodynamic parameters are designed quite tightly around the performance envelope of the tyres... there's no doubt that if you bolted the Michelin's on the Ferrari, you'd have had a greater performance disparity than you saw on track.
Or that other top teams left BS and went with Michelin as they were not guaranteed the same technical working relationship the Japanese supplier had with Ferrari - which in 2005 was pretty much isolationist (what... Ferrrari, Jordan and Minardi on BS? Team Red couldn't have asked for greater exclusivity if they tried), and that one of them particularly - being better resourced and recently more competitive than Renault - did not do as well with an equally top-line driver.
Or that tyres in 05 and 06 were completely different, and Renault took the crown both years... despite Ferrari coming quite close second time around (and Byrne's involvement being a little more prominent in the second attempt)?
Or that Renault, in 05/06, pioneered some particularly ingenious aerodynamic solutions on their cars.
I thought all that was obvious, common knowledge too. Your obvious, common knowledge must be lesser.
Best of luck to RK. Renault seems to be able to turn a poor start around better than most. Hopefully they'll start 2010 with a competitive car and we'll get a better idea of what RK can do.
