If You Waste Your Time Watching Just One Video Today, Let It Be This One

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

This has been done before — most notably by Top Gear in the Stewart-Ford days — but this time it’s live, and real, and fantastic.

Part of the greatness of this video is that you can clearly see the difference in cornering speed between the AMG SL and the Aussie Supercar. After all, they have similar power, with the street car probably having a bit of an edge through most of the rev range. But real race tires, a proper cage for stiffness, and brutal alignment settings make a BIG difference.

Meanwhile, Coulthard simply destroys the sedans. Surely he wishes he could be driving alongside Seb Vettel in this year’s RB. It’s tempting to suggest that he really wouldn’t do any worse than Mark Webber and might in fact be more amenable to the idea of helping Red Bull defend the fourth driver title for the young German superstar. As it is, however, given the fact that the car can’t be full race-spec, can’t be optimized for Coulthard, and can’t have had enough time in his hands for him to be fully comfortable with it, it’s reasonable to assume that the Red Bull, unlike the other two cars, probably left five seconds on the table.

Or more.

This year, I’ll be writing about F1 for TTAC on a semi-regular basis. If you want me to cover anything specific, let me know in the comments. Thanks!


Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

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  • Carrya1911 Carrya1911 on Mar 21, 2013

    Here's my question to the TTAC commentariat: While I think all of us can admire the engineering and speed of a Formula One car, if you had your pick of driving one of those cars around that track, which would you pick? Personally I'd go with the Aussie V8. Open wheel racing is great, but I find myself drawn to racing that features "real" cars. I'd personally rather drive the ALMS GT cars than the prototype cars.

    • R H R H on Mar 21, 2013

      F1 car no question, although I'm actually afraid I might kill myself in one :)

  • Bludragon Bludragon on Mar 21, 2013

    To answer the question of what you should write about, I think something of real value you could add to the multitude of sites that report race results, gossip, interviews, etc is to take some event of interest from the race and do an in depth analysis of it. For example, a particular incident, or well executed pass, a short video clip and then some explanation of what the drivers did well or not so well. One of the things that stood out for me in terms of driving last year was how Alonso approached passing cars on older tires. Whilst most commentators simply said "look how much faster his car is", or "look how much more traction he has on exit", what he often did much better than most other drivers out there was apex later than normal in order to effectively use the extra grip of his tires to pass the car in front. Other drivers in a similar position but following the same line as the car in front struggled to pass as the extra grip was wasted in the corner whilst blocked by the car in front. Another thing that would be interesting is to analyse the way different drivers, or different cars take a certain corner, with a discussion of what is working well or not on the car, and what the driver is doing about it.

    • Hurls Hurls on Mar 22, 2013

      1. I'm happy to hear you'll be covering f1 Jack 2. This is a great idea (bludragon's recco) 3. I'd love driver profiles in terms of technique. For example, I recall an interview with button in which he discussed his style and setup versus Lewis'; you're good at discussing technique for non racers, so insights into things like that.

  • Mad_science Mad_science on Mar 21, 2013

    I'd love to know how today's F1 laptimes compare to the history of laptimes on a given course.

  • Vaujot Vaujot on Mar 24, 2013

    Well, the Malaysia GP offered some in-team drama between Vettel and Webber and, to a lesser degree, between Hamilton and Rosberg. I look forward to Jack's take on that. I wouldn't be surprised if that take was: Vettel going against team orders while Rosberg obeyed them is the difference between winning three championships and possibly winning none.

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