I was reading the BBC's article on the postponement of the Bahrain Grand Prix, and this section stood out in particular:



Discuss.

I think all the teams will benefit.

It might help McLaren a little bit as they are normally good with improving there car. I cant see it helping any others.

Doesn't it give everyone an equal advantage?

The teams with slower cars have extra time to make them faster, but the teams with the fastest cars will have the same amount of time to make them even faster.

Theoretically, yes, but each car will have a different development cycle.

It will probably vary really, some faster cars will have a lot to gain, others very little. The same for slower cars, some will benefit loads, some not a lot.

Mer say deez rejoice.

If anything the smaller teams will be at a disadvantage perhaps. All their allocated 'spend' before the season start will be gone already, it probably being that finitely planned. The bigger teams might have a pot of extra to dip into given the new two week opportunity.

That said, a struggling team isn't necessarily a smaller team, and I guess the abscence of race 1 might leave a bit of spends to use...

Well Bernie is always the winner.

And if it will be the last race of the year, we will all be the losers.

Regarding teams : who knows what their development schedule is?!

Well if it happened last season with RBR losing points for lack of reliability, they now have an extra test to become more reliable and not lose those points and the win.

Still, at the end of the day they all still get the chance to compete in the same amount of races so its still fair competition.

I think he does include "not so fast" cars, not only reliability. After all he says fast and reliable. So in a nutshell everyone benefits excluding the fastest team atm, whoever that is. And it's not like they will stop improving either so yeah, pretty equal.

Losers:
- Teams on podium scoring early (maybe too easily)
- Their fans

Winners:
- Fans of teams that did not do well in testing (because no one is running away yet)
- Team who has good thing in making, but could not have it done for first race


Do not ask me to name names. This year all bets are off, and my twenty+ marriage to F1 is its infancy, because I simply have no clue how races will develop.

(BTW, I would like to talk to the guy who has his fingerprints on the idea how to build new Pirelli tire).

Winner: HRT
Reason: HRT get to test their new car.

Looser: Ferrari
Reason: Ferrari has a reliable and fast car. Other teams was more likely to have techical problems at the first GP.

All teams will of course benefit from the extra test, but I have a feeling that Ferrari was most prepared to go racing.

There's no extra test, just a change of track and dates.

I think the losers are likely to be the early season fast teams - the folks who would have done well in qualification. With Bahrain being a procession course, the winner would likely have come from the first two rows, subject to first corner shenanigans and reliability. We really won't know for sure who this is until Oz qualification.

The 'shadow' winners could be the circuits and promoters in good ole Europe - at least I hope so.

No real losers as such. More accurately, some relief for McLaren and Mercedes GP by the sounds of it.

I doubt it will affect them too much, any upgrades planned for the race weekend in Bahrain could be tested the same time they would have been.

I think most teams were aiming for upgrades for then anyway.

Ferrari is still working in the aero of the F150. They run the tests with provisional package. They said new aero will be build with tight work at the plant. Now they have plenty of time

Yeah pretty much this.

Ferrari used to be pretty well dialed in on that circuit. Felipe also said it's a shame the season doesn't start there. But he also said more important things are taking place that needs to be resolved and I agree. It's the right decision to call it off no matter how good the result could be for Ferrari.

It will be bad for teams who introduced a very visible innovation that appears to work, as everyone else gets more time to copy/test it

Winners: HRT (perhaps the only time we will see those words together)
Because they just might be ready in time for Bahrain, just like they said

It's an advantage for anyone with reliability fears as they've two weeks extra to find and solve the problem. We've seen in the past couple of years what a disaster a dnf can be in terms of deciding a championship. Even if you're pace isn't good enough to win, you've got to get the car home in the points.

Will there be an additional test in place of the Bahrain race (i know the Bahrain test was moved to Barcelona already)?

If yes, then certainly those who haven't yet made their cars work properly could benefit.

If no, then without running i doubt there can be much improvement made. CFD, simulators and windtunnel can take you just so far, you need a proper racetrack test time to put it all together.

Ferrari has no reliability problems and can work all types of the pirelli tyres. They can devote all that time to put into go-faster parts while the guys that dont have reliability or can make the tyres work will have to attend those problems.

Won't happen after the Barcelona test the teams will get their equipment ready for Australia.

If they're taking the race off of the calendar, then the biggest losers by the end of the season will be the runners-up in the WDC/WCC if the title is won by a close margin. Obviously, in this scenario, the biggest winners will also be the WDC/WCC.

And I can't recall a time when an equal opportunity for all the teams has ever resulted in smaller teams gaining ground on the larger teams. I am against the testing ban and think the teams should be able to test more often, but when the larger teams have as much time to test as the smaller teams you'll always have an uneven playing field because the top teams have more resources and personnel.

Can't think of any winners other than the citizens of Bahrain .
Losers?
The Bahraini Royal Family,
"starved" F1 fans looking forward to the Bahrain GP,
any F1 team with Bahraini shareholders (McLaren),
other F1 teams with autocratic/despotic rulers or elite who are major stakeholders

Yes, Ferrari has struggled a lot in Aussie GP, speciall with changing conditions. I see SV walking in the (Albert) park.

Hispania win because they have more time to find a driver.

/thread.

Winner:: Adam Cooper

Winner: formula one, who has only lost the most boring circuit amongst many almost-as-boring races. Actually "they" could do a 6 or 8 races season at the most and keep it decent.

Losers: the people who were killed during the uprising. And the Lybians, if you consider that Bahrain was only one of the dominoes and not the most painful.

You open a new topic and you post a link or a quote and then you say "Discuss". You pretty much just wanted to open a topic.

People dying in Bahrain these days and you 're discussing about possible winners that could come out of this situation. And this is not yesterday, this is not the past. This is today, this is now.
Pathetic and sad.

loser: Mark Webber

you just watch.

Of course it;s an opportunity to improve their relative situation for the teams that have been busy with the most of ironing out bugs and finishing base development. For example tbe new teams and maybe McL and MGP.

At the same time, it offers a relative advantage to the teams that were more conventional with their designs this year in that now they have more time to mimic competitors' innovations for inclusion into their own cars. So in this sense it might be advantageous to Ferrari relative to McL, Renault, RBR, etc.

In other words, it's hard to tell.

I'm not sure that there will be winners and losers from this. Yes, there will be some extra development time, but there's no test in place of the Bahrain Grand Prix, so no opportunity to check whether extra developments make sense. So, it's a possible pitfall for all.

Care to elaborate?

hah! he's cursed at the Australian GP no matter where it falls in the calendar. Never is there a surer race for him to have a bad weekend. He used up all the good luck available for that race in his first race. Fair enough, Stoddy would have sacked him three races later coz he didn't have the cash, so Webber did get a full F1 career out of it.

We end up with the same amount of pre-season test days, so how does it help anyone? I suppose they get an extra two weeks to design pieces for Melbourne but that's it.

The winners will be anyone with a problem with an otherwise fundamentally sound car, that can address that problem in the extra time provided. Maybe Williams can address their tyre degradation, Mercedes their traction, McLaren their "switching on" of the tyres, Lotus their reliability.

Team that are already looking good could work on what ever weakness they have compared to their closest rival.

He needs a race to settle - his first race of the year is almost inevitably poor. That's why I loved Melbourne being removed as season opener.

Couple that with the pressure he's under racing at home, which means he will likely try too hard..... it's gonna end in tears one way or another.

Yeah I guess he's had a pretty poor Melbourne track record. Still, let's hope the tears will come because he got champagne in his eyes on the podium

Losers - Ferrari and Red Bull. Both teams more or less ready to go with aerodynamic packages which they would build upon.... Problem is lots of parts of their cars which are hard to redesign were signed off when late running teams were still working out what they best approach was.

Big winner - Mclaren. All the parts they delayed signing off gained more dev time. Now all they need to do is complete bits like the front wing in the extra time they now have.....

If Mclaren do well at the first GP, it won't be because they were sand bagging. It will be because they hadn't finished the car, when everyone else was saying they look a bit behind the pace.....

As they were very good developing their car in the second half of 2010, with Ferrari and Red Bull clearly falling behind. Yes, you are right, it will only benefit McLaren.

Providing the race isn't rescheduled I think Red Bull are definitely winners here. 2011 is shaping up as Ferrari v RB and Bahrain (remember we are back to the old track layout) is an engine track where RB will have expected to struggle.

Has a replacement been scheduled for the Bahrain test yet?

Yes. Barcelona March 8-11
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/89601

Winners; The image of F1.
Loser; The Bahrain Monarchy.

Cheers.