Qualifying

MinardiP1

Well, what else can you say except that's damn pathetic for a new car - testing or no testing you can usually tell straight out of the box if the car's any good and it looks like Tredozi & Co. can't even do a good copy of someone else's machine let alone come up with a new idea.

Why couldn't Stoddart commission Brunner to at least supervise? :mad:

We have a current spec just-off-the-podium V10, two solid drivers, yet still can't get within 3 seconds of a Jordan? WTF is going on! :mad:

MinardiP1

Oh hooray for small mercies - Monteiro just allowed us within a second with a crap lap of his own. :rolleyes:

MinardiP1

Looks like i'm posting alone here, so.......

WEBBER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

printscreen

I was shopping.. how bad was it?

theweatherman

Im dissapointed but the cars didnt even look like they were attacking the circuit at all we didn't even go near the curbs which is important at Imola. One good thing tho i kept getting glimpses of the ForzaMinardi banner.

Linus

Albers was second fastest in the speed trap. But over the rest of the lap the Minardi cars were just soooooo slow. Minardi is just lacking in downforce.

Apologi

BTW RTL mentioned the Minardi fan clubs present at the circuit. :)

I was dissappointed with the speed of the car, though.

Petroltorque

P1 the problem is that there are 2 posts on this thread. I just had my 2 cents worth on the practice thread.
Its a complete utter shambles. Diehards will say its setup, but both drivers got the maximum out the car. The team did not seem to run many laps in practice either so they were hardly looking for setup were they?
My question is it worth ploughing money into this chassis to solve its problems. Its going to cost an absolute bomb.
Regards the design team. The problem is there is no designer. Tredozzi is a project manager and Tilley has no design experience. Ryton is the only person who can save us.

Petroltorque

Oh forget the speed trap speeds, all that means is either the car has minimal wing or no downforce. Its downforce that you need, that keeps the car going forward during turnin and SLOWS you down in the speedtraps!!!

Linus

Oh forget the speed trap speeds, all that means is either the car has minimal wing or no downforce. Its downforce that you need, that keeps the car going forward during turnin and SLOWS you down in the speedtraps!!!

Isn't that exactly what I said ;)

dst

Stoddart said to atlas that they hope to know the car better in Canada and USA and maybe then the will get close to the Jordans

Stoddart targets a race finish
While aiming for Jordan's pace longer term

What an utter load of crap! When is the last time you saw a new car slow out of the box make the type of performance gains in season he's talking about without MASSIVE investment (which Minardi don't have). He should be looking for a quick car which he can make reliable!

How old is that elusive Jordan? 2003? Something is going on which underfinance doesn't completely explain. I was expecting a quick car with a touch of unreliability, which should be the major side effect of not testing, a 'la Arrows 2002. Slow from the get go even McLaren had an extremely difficult and expensive time with.

[Edited on 23/4/2005 by dst]

Ger

Stoddarts comment that he doesn't expect the cars to finish the race looks to me as a excuse for a piss poor car. Lack of testing is a problem. You cant just "Open the box" and hope the car will be on song. However the downforce issues are not terminal and can be rectified a big problem I think is the 04 gearbox. Not the best idea on the new car. Also The way the car is handling looks like the ballance is screwed up. Brakes are another issue. All in all very dissapointing. Specially for the team

MinardiP1

Time to have an old fashion lynchin'

quig, you know what to do. ;)

TasM

THey must really no nothing about this new car. THe comment "...when a change to suspension settings took significantly longer to complete than anticipated." regarding the second practice session means they are changing everything on that car, not just the aero. I hope (though that hope is fading) that there is REAL potential for this car. I won't give up just yet.

THose qual times though, the top 10 in within a second. And Webber saying that he thought he could have gone a little quicker in Sector 1. Tomorrow will be interesting :P

MinardiSquad

So far they did 45 laps this weekend and they improve the car with a second, still it is not enough and there must be many work to do to get it faster.
A little fact is that CA was faster then last year, Bruni did a 1,26,4 in the pre quali.
At the San Marino track you need a lot of downforce so it is not strange that a car with less then 400 km is very difficult to find the wright balance.
I hope they can do a lot of km in next test sessions in Mugello and i hope they ill get a main sponsor for the rest of the season so they can test the car more and more.
I think we must crossed owher fingers and give the guys owher support.

TheDriver

This feels like getting one's nuts kicked in.

Judging by looks, the car isn't bad. Judging by times, it's horrible. It's still early, so perhaps we'll see a change. However, after the shakedown plus friday and sunday practice, one would have wished that a baseline could have been achieved.

Haven't seen ANY video footage, so a bit hard to say anything reasonable. However, with at least 60bhp more power and the engine CoG 50mm lower, we're 3secs off Jordan.. Given that the 04B was already terrible by anyone's standards, this is just unspeakable.

My sympathy to the team, the mood must be unbearable. No other way than to pick up the pieces and keep working.

Minardus

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

IMOLA, ITALY, April 23, 2005

The second day of competitive running for the Minardi F1 Team’s new PS05 chassis ultimately turned out to be a positive one, drivers Christijan Albers and Patrick Friesacher putting in strong performances in the afternoon’s first qualifying session for Sunday’s San Marino Grand Prix. The day, however, had not been without its ups and downs for the Faenza squad. It had started well enough, both drivers reporting progress on chassis set-up during the first of the two morning practice sessions. Unfortunately, the reality of running two brand-new cars came crowding in during the second, Albers’ chassis sidelined for the 45-minute session with a gearbox problem, and Friesacher’s when a change to suspension settings took significantly longer to complete than anticipated. The “learning curve” with the PS05 is necessarily steep at this point in its working life, but viewed in a positive light, every problem that is resolved at this stage also increases the team’s knowledge and understanding of its new car.

CHRISTIJAN ALBERS
Position: 19
Time: 1 min 25.921 secs Chassis: PS05/01
“I’m a little bit annoyed with myself, as I made quite a few mistakes on the qualifying lap this afternoon, but I’m happy that we’ve been going quicker every time out so far this weekend. There is no doubt we have made progress with the car, which certainly felt better today with the changes we made, and I think we should be able to go quicker again tomorrow. I’m looking forward to the race, which hopefully, we’ll be able to finish, and to next week’s test, when we will aim to find more time in the car. Finally, I just want to thank the guys again. They’ve been working some really long shifts, and it’s impossible to say too much about the huge effort they’ve been putting in.”

PATRICK FRIESACHER
Position: 20
Time: 1 min 26.484 secs Chassis: PS05/02
“We found a little more grip today, and the car felt good. I think it has a lot of potential even though, so far, we have done such a small amount of running. There is more work to do on the set-up, but we are definitely heading in the right direction. As for the qualifying lap this afternoon, everything was going well until I slid slightly wide at the last chicane. If not for that, I think we would have had a reasonable time. Tomorrow is another day, though, and our aim will be to have a good second qualifying session and to finish the race.”

PAUL STODDART, Team Principal, Minardi Cosworth


“Despite finishing today’s first qualifying session in P19 and P20, all things considered, the Minardi Team has a lot to be proud of this weekend. The morning sessions were dogged by mechanical gremlins, which are to be expected when one considers this is the first serious running for the new car, but it is clear the Minardi PS05 chassis and Cosworth TJ2005 engine package shows significant potential, as evidenced by Christijan’ second-fastest speed through the circuit speed trap this afternoon.”

Petroltorque

I know things look down, but I think its time to hire a design consultant to look over the teams numbers and tell us where we're going wrong.
DST's right, the sort of incremental gains the team have made are already tailing off. On the positive side is the car has matched the unmodified PS04 times from February.

dst

I just watched the replay and that car looks diabolical! Undriveable.

The commentator made the point that this car is designed for the V10 Cosworth so what are Minardi going to do when the V8's come on line? Might've been better off to just use the old car and build a new chassis designed for the V8's.

Homer

Come on, what did you expect? Beating Jordan at the first race? Stoddie himself said that the first race would be hard. Let's just write off the results and look forward to Barcelona. The team will test next week, they will find a good set-up and maybe test new parts for the car. And: Today, Christijan and Pat made a few mistakes in their laps, there's still place fpr improvement.

Forza!

dst

The complaint isn't that the car isn't fully maximized straight away, it's the depth of the hole that's the starting point. And no, I don't think challenging a 3 year old design over ONE LAP is unfair, on the contrary that should be the starting point.

I for one have never seen a midfield team let alone a backmarker introduce a car and make large, quantum leaplike performance gains, if there are that any can tell me about I'd love to hear the stories.

The shot of the team in the garage told me everything I needed to know and it certainly didn't jibe with the pap put out in the press release. Those guys looked pretty shook up.

Slow and unreliable is what we're expecting now huh?

Jello_Biafra

What feed are you watching dst? The car looks fantastic over the kurbs at a track where we struggled to do the same last year. It looked better than the Jordan cars, that's for sure.

silverghost

Looked better, everywhere except on the bloody stopwatch!

Imola's a tricky, technical circuit, no ideal place to debut an untested car, and the drivers made some errors, but 3 secs off Karthikeyan just won't cut it. We won't know until Nurburgring whether they have designed a real dud, a disaster, but we can see right now they haven't achieved the objective of designing a car to restore Minardi's technical credentials.

It feels disloyal to say this, it really does, but what else can you say?

Linus

The Minardi cars just need more downforce!

Manni

All teams have struggled with their design.

For example:

Ferrari
BAR
Sauber
McLaren
Williams

have all had some issues. Only Renault, RBR, Toyota have made any significant positive change in their package. We have the worst tyres on the grid too.

Treat this as a practise session not one to gauge overall performance. We're on a steep learning curve, it's going to be hard, but we make it harder by expecting over and beyond what is fair for a chassis and rules that are hard to grasp even for teams with unlimited budgets.

I think some people need to take a pill and give the team a little time to sort out what makes this go fast and slow. Personally. I'd love to borrow an experienced driver to test the car and give his feedback to us. This is what we are really missing.

max_torq

With such little running about all they could do is shove pyrometers in the tyres and collect data, making significant changes to suit the tyre temperatures would be very difficult in this time frame; when you consider the amount of running that TOIT do to get these critical parameters right, and even they stuffed it last race with their new car.

So lets be brave and relax; the body is slippery enough to get up to fast speeds without doing anything evil, and the drivers are able to be consistent near the limit.

Minardi might have hoped for better from the bigger engine, but the RBR cars aren't going real fast either.

Petroltorque

The problem is that the problem does not lokk like its going to be solved with aero work. They threw the kitchen sink at the car in terms of body work, new wing, sidepod winglets, airbox wing to nil effect. I'm guessins but it looks like a suspension geo prob that needs a redesign. The car was thrown by the kerbs and lack turn in response. As been said before no quick fix.
Best to go back to old fashion testing on the track and hire a proper designer!

silverghost

Mechanicak layout, formerly always Minardi's strongest area. If it is still like this after a two day test (assuming they have some reliable running at Mugello), then you would have to agree.

I've only got the times and Formula1.com's commentary to go on, but maybe that was a bit more encouraging. Friesacher closer to the Jordans (both of em), despite being first out on track, and Albers allegedly going much quicker until he dropped it. Naughty boy, a Verstappenesque faux pas at Variante Alta. Seems like no harm done though.

I suppose we just dust ourselves off and come out fighting as best we can.

Rime

Rule no. 1 when racing in wet conditions: DON'T BREAK ON THE WHITE LINES! :spank:

Petroltorque

From the replay it looked like Albers car was launched when it hit the kerbs at the variante Alta.
Although Barcelona is an aerodynamic circuit they won't make any progress if the platform is still unstable

Jello_Biafra

A source within the team says that once the gearbox is fixed that they can find 1.5-2 seconds over the 1 second that they already have over the PS04B.