at "grew up"!

If one looks at Hamilton's gremlins this year, they have occurred before the effect of driving style could be taken into account (see analysis above), in qualifying or near the start of races - presumably mechanics check everything before a car goes anywhere near the track.

Rosberg also started out in karts, often racing against Hamilton (even sharing a car to races).

 

I was looking at the overall reliability and speculating about undetectable cumulative wear and tear from aggressive use of the car. No mechanics can stop undetectable problems arising e.g. that brake failure. I doubt they have the means to check for material fatigue in every single component. There's always a first time for anything.

After Hamilton's engine fail in race one and Rosberg's park-up at Monaco (did we ever get a reason?) there were no issues at all until race seven: Canada (Ham) brake failure; Austria (both) brake issues; Britain (Ros) gearbox failure; Germany (Ham) brakes in quali; Hungary (Ham) engine fire in quali; Spa (both) race damage; Monza (Ham) start gremlins.

If this analysis (paralysis!) is correct there could be more failures to come. Or can we expect a trouble free run in? Either way, let's hope for good clean racing and that Spa is not the deciding difference. If it is, that will be another memorable piece of Champion's driving to add to an infamous list.

 

second verse of this wierd al song is very apt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urglg3WimHA

 

If the driving style affecting reliability argument held any water, he'd be getting failures towards the end of races, which simply hasn't been the case as I've outlined above.

Rosberg's park up in Monaco was down to a missed braking point (something he seems prone to at the moment), certainly a problem relating to driving style.

 

Not necessarily, unless they replace every component on the car for every race which I don't think they do.

Any parts that are left on the car from race to race could be building up towards a stress failure. I read your analysis that failures occur early in the race but some parts affected by driving style that have been left on the car from race to race might fail at any time if the effect is cumulative.

I wonder if commercial aircraft are analogous? There they keep individual component history on maintenance and lifetime (LTB?) But I would have thought with just two racing cars they could easily do that.

 

Every part on an F1 car is similarly logged and monitored.

 

Don't forget they don't tend to use the same engines or gearboxes for consecutive races so those are completely stripped down and rebuilt for each race weekend (and I would suspect that thorough monitoring takes place throughout the weekend as well).

 

They don't even use the same engine through a race weekend - teams often use a high mileage engine on the Friday, and switch to a fresher one for Sat / Sun.

 

You may have noticed my lack of input in the geeky discussion re: fuel and driving style efficiency ... ffs F1 should never be about that crap

 

It was more a discussion of how an "aggressive" driving style such as Hamilton's may or may not lead to reliability problems rather than one about saving fuel but never mind!

Then again, thinking about it, F1 is incredibly geeky, it explains much of the moronic comment one reads, particularly on the newspaper websites, fortunately that's pretty rare here.