Great race, but methinks that Vettel's going to have an easy title this year.

Luckily, the rule changes in 2013 could hopefully disrupt what I think will be a 3 year title streak.

Heidfeld's car :

I've supported Petrov along with my wife since he started, he's come good now, not bad for an ice racer eh?

Annoying that only now do people see his talent, because he's always been good.

Anyway, the race, nice to see that the kers and drs didn't play a major part in the overtaking when Button finally overtook Massa he was the quicker car anyway, so to a degree 'deserved' to pass anyway, so that particular overtake doesn't bother me. I think Kers does have an affect on how close the cars can follow each other though which is good, it means the kers basically negates some of the dirty air quality which has proven detrimental to the following car in the past.

Shame that Sauber got disqualified, Perez did a good job, although his strategy won him that position you have to commend the guy, how on this earth did he manage to keep those soft tyres good til the end of the race!?


Anyway, silver lining, Di Resta gets points.

In conclusion I think it was a great race, the first race always has a few battles, I think although Massa was slow he did a real good job defending from Button in the beginning but typically the usual suspects are bound to say it was a precessional race and boring etc. Seriously, stop watching F1. If you watch action on track and not via the pitlane, Moto GP is for you. STOP WHINING THAT RACES ARE BORING (when in the case of THIS race, it wasn't).

We had Button closing down Massa, Alonso closing down them both, Petrov and Alonso jumping Webber in the pitstops and Hamilton also catching Vettel at one point. If this doesn't excite you, then you need to find another sport to be negetive towards.

Buttons pass on massa was solely down to kers and drs though He had saved over half the remaining kers energy to use at the beginning of the main straight and then continued with the recharged energy once he crossed the line

Quote from DejaVu :

Buttons pass on massa was solely down to kers and drs though He had saved over half the remaining kers energy to use at the beginning of the main straight and then continued with the recharged energy once he crossed the line

It was but he still needed to get a good run out of the final corner to make it stick. The DRS and KERS just makes the tow effect more useable, in the past few years the turbulence created negated any kind of slipstream effect.

I'm glad that the kers and DRS don't soley dictate the overtakes over the course of a race though, it's not like a driver uses DRS and will get by easily, they still have to APPLY the manouvre, it's not a simple 'push 2 pass'. Because everyone runs KERS, it's how a driver applies it, some may use their KERS power around the whole lap, others may just use on the full throttle sections, so technique of the KERS can alter the track position, but I don't think EVEN with DRS that the overtakes are just push2pass manouvres.

Well, not everyone runs KERS exactly. Red Bull might just have some AA batteries rigged up so that it's nice and light and then they don't even do anything.

Anyone else think the Lotus Renault [that's the Renault that's sponsored by Lotus, not the Lotus that's sponsored by Renault] sounds awesome?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHeUoji7HQw

Quote from Kova. :

Heidfeld's car :

Oh dear...

I heard he caught the pieces of the MSC&Algy crash?

Btw:

FECKING RAGEQUIT! Some dumb Sauber workers on duty!

Quote :

http://www.videoportal.sf.tv/v ... 65829f89-a92f-4b55-9e2...

Report on Swiss TV SF(Swiss German).

The wing should have had a radius of 100mm, but it was less.

"There was no advantage", Peter Sauber said.

"How they didn't detect that mistake in Hinwil, I don't know".

So, it's the people's fault at Hinwil for not checking.

On top of that, the cars at the race weekends only get checked as random sample, not always.

Quote from BlueFlame :

The DRS and KERS just makes the tow effect more useable, in the past few years the turbulence created negated any kind of slipstream effect.

err....

The turbulence made it tough to follow closely in the corners. And then on the straights they just weren't close enough. Now the same thing applies in the corners, but the gap closes faster because there is less drag with DRS activated.

But it's still not incredibly easy to pass, but it makes it more likely. I don't know what more people wanted from that race, I was fairly entertained.

DRS should prove a good deal more significant at Malaysia; if used on the pit straight then it is on a longer straight between two hairpins.

What did everyone think of the new commentary team?

I thought that Martin could've done the whole race on his own, he's good enough in both of the roles, DC was a little quiet but he'll definitely get more into the role. Didn't feel that the race was long despite it being boring in parts, it was like a listening to a chat between F1 fans unlike Legard's shoutyness and stupidity last season. Though it seems the BBC like stop-go penalties for whatever reason, Martin twice said Jenson would get one and they even said he got one in their race report

maybe they should stop going on about them (especially when they didn't happen)

I am with Boothy about the commentary team, I enjoyed it and it was like 2 fans talking about a race as it happened. 100% improvement over leggard and I am sure Coulthard will get more comfortable chatting during the race.

Overall the race was alright, nothing amazing happened but was the procession that some of the new tracks are.

Roll on two weeks.

Quote from Swiss-Spirit :

Oh dear...

I heard he caught the pieces of the MSC&Algy crash?

I read something like that on some websites

Otherwise a another pic :



E: again another pic

Quite amazing he brought it to the finish. I'm a bit surprised he never got black&orange flagged though.

Quote from GreyBull [CHA] :

Quite amazing he brought it to the finish. I'm a bit surprised he never got black&orange flagged though.

I think Black and orange flag is for people that has loose part and is in a danger for other people.

Luckily Hamilton didn't get that

Yea, I imagine that hole in the sidepod would create massive ammounts of drag, on the up side I'm pretty sure his engine was nowhere near overheating tempreatures though.

You'd be surprised! The radiators will be designed to work at a certain pressure differential and flow rate. Change that (and this damage would have changed that - possibly decreasing the pressure differential) and the air won't cool properly - the air might go around the radiator rather than through it, or spill out of the sidepod intake.

Bearing in mind F1 engines probably run in the 110-120°C region (cooling system under considerable pressure, as demonstrated by Jenson when attacked by Seb), a little change in cooling could be race ending.

In short, Heidfeld was lucky. Sort of - maybe he'd have preferred damage related retirement to a poor finish.

Quote from JPeace :

I disagree, I think that the Red Bull does not have the massive performance gap it did this time last year - and Hamilton could keep hold of him despite a broken floor tongue, which would have resulted in a massive loss of front downforce.

Your forgetting that Redbull didn't even have their KERS system on in Melbourne, i think once thats working you will see a bigger gap.

Quote from Mustafur :

Your forgetting that Redbull didn't even have their KERS system on in Melbourne, i think once thats working you will see a bigger gap.

No, the car was based without KERS in mind. Their KERS system if they ever impliment one, will only be for one lap as a battery that doesn't recharge from what they keep saying.

Quote from BlueFlame :

No, the car was based without KERS in mind. Their KERS system if they ever impliment one, will only be for one lap as a battery that doesn't recharge from what they keep saying.

Huh? KERS was used in practice but was unreliable so they did not use it for the race. The only people saying it was a short term kers or "start kers" were just speculators.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/90310

Quote from BlueFlame :

No, the car was based without KERS in mind. Their KERS system if they ever impliment one, will only be for one lap as a battery that doesn't recharge from what they keep saying.

The car was based with it in mind, the only reason why they took it off for qualifying and the race was due to reliability.

The RedBull through the high speed chicane was a good 17kph up on anything else if I recall correctly. Translate that to the more aero dependant tracks and the RedBull could disappear into the distance.

One saving grace is that McLaren have rushed through some developments so there is room for improvement there. Also they seem to be good on their tyres. And Webber proved that the RedBull isn't automatically rapid.

I just don't think Melbourne gives much representation of the season to follow. McLaren have potential in their car that they haven't developed. The Renault is quick, but Petrov will still need a bit more time to acclimatise to leading a team and making the most of it. Mercedes I think will be quicker at other tracks judging by the cars apparent strengths and weaknesses. And Red Bull look as though they might be a bit harder on their tyres.

Perfect. Fast cars that eat tyres. Slower ones that look after them. Unpredictable racing.