Button won in Melbourne. Can he keep the momentum going? What can Kimi really do? Hamilton still looking fast
Some of the highlights I've seen in the last few days include: Kimi reckons a podium finish should be on for him Vettel reckons McLaren are the top team right now Hamilton reckons he will bounce right back Massa is getting a whole new chassis (and how many teams can do that at this time of year!?) Alonso expects to struggle again Brawn reckons his top heavy design division is really working There will be just a single DRS zone in Malaysia, along the main start/finish straight And the Malaysian Grand Prix is the only race never to have seen the safety car deployed!
Yeah I read about the Massa thing. To me that sounds like as if Ferrari want Massa to have no excuses whatsoever this weekend. So if he's rubbish I can see him going. Remember they paid Kimi off to get rid of him
I expect some good stuff from Williams and Lotus this weekend - it will be interesting to see how these two teams, which by all standards were pretty crap last year have managed to pull themselves to such a high level. I also hope for Kamui to get a decent place in the points again. I really like the way everything has been shaken up, but I imagine that it will just be a few months until it will be Red Bull and McLaren domination week after week.
Yeah first few races should be close then once the money dries up a bit from the smaller teams then the bigger teams start dominating. I am a bit annoyed at how much Red Bull are bragged up these days. Sure they were a smaller team who built up but I just don't like them.
I think this is a very serious perception problem that Red Bull have. And I think it is getting to be a very big problem for F1 as a whole. Red Bull started out as Stewart that became Ford who branded it Jaguar. Stewart won a race and were where the likes of Mercedes and Force India are now. Jaguar sort of flopped a bit, but they did have some serious backing behind them, and ended up not unlike Williams of 2010. As Ford started to run out of money as a whole the F1 team had to be the first to go. They may have only sold it on for a $1 but in the first three years that Red Bull had the team they poured close to half a billion dollars into the team. Red Bull have never been a "smaller" team. And Red Bull aren't the only ones with this problem. Mercedes and Force India have it too. OK so they have not been ultra successful as of yet but if and when they do they will have it as bad as Red Bull do now. F1 is such a forward looking sport, both in terms of technology and drivers and the area's they race in that too many fans now know nothing of the history of the teams. Even Ferrari and McLaren suffer with this. A poll conducted a few years ago showed that just 9% of fans under the age of 34 knew that Ferrari road cars only exist thanks to Enzo's desire to go racing and a whopping 82% thought that the racing team existed to help the road car division build better cars (the rest thought there was no connection between the two). McLaren faired even worse and over 90% of fans thought that the team had been formed by Ron Dennis when in fact he started as a mechanic before going on to start a F2 team with a fellow mechanic Neil Trundle and that it was the cigarette company Philip Morris who got Ron Dennis's growing motor racing company to take over the fast failing McLaren team that was in F1 at the time and that was in fact formed in 1963 by a New Zealender called Bruce McLaren. Last year when the McLaren MP4-12C was entered into the GT3 championship last year I jokingly opinioned to an old old die hard McLarenfan friend of mine that maybe the MP4-12C would emulate the old Can-Am cars and be more successful than the F1 team. Well if I did. Hours and hours of arguments later said friend was totally gob smacked to learn that his beloved team was not the sole invention of one man and that yes they really had built those "bloody stupid looking American cars". My point is that the when the teams attract a disproportionate amount of the news cycle without seemingly done a all that much to earn it a healthy knowledge of where the teams have come from can help in off setting that. Mercedes, the team that Schumacher drives for now, got it's start as the most British of all British teams, Tyrell, in 1970!
Exactly my point. MP4 means Mclaren Project 4. Now I'm not sure if it's because the F1 division is the 4th project or Ron Dennis is the 4th project and say the 27 is the 27th car he's been there for. History is all but gone in F1. GP2 in some ways is like that. I couldn't tell you anything about any history the teams have. It's mad how so many think that the race cars were there to develop road cars which in many ways is true but as you say Enzo went racing first and made road cars to fund it. He said himself he'd happily rip people off so he'd get more money to go racing. Compared to you and Chris I'm a late F1 follower. I watched it a bit between the ages of 6 and 10 but didn't understand that much but them my interest waned when Schumacher was beating everyone. Think it was 2005/6 when I started watching again. But even I know about Ferrari history, Stewart GP, Tyrrell etc. I have a toy Tyrell P34 and I bet if you show that to a modern day, recent f1 fan they won't know what it is. I posted this picture on Twitter a few months ago and only one person tweeted back and given how many F1 fans follow me I thought was amazing.
Sorry I didn't elaborate more. Still feeling odd after having teeth out http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/mo...rs-F1-team-to-stump-up-700000-to-Aerolab.html So they could lose up to 4m in the end and not to mention this
Ah that! Well for a start Force India have lept on the the fact that the judge did allow that that Aerolab used a few left over CAD designs for small parts to get a head start on the Lotus (as it was then) car. Force India have dumped this on the FIA to sort out, hoping no doubt that the FIA will see it in the same light as the McLaren-Ferrari "spygate" thing. Which will never happen. Also there is still a court case dragging it's sorry arse through the courts in Italy about much of the same things that have been settled in London. As for the team, well, yes, but Force India could eat that £4m relatively easily. Mallya did line up a whole new part owner of the team last year, despite at one point telling anyone who would listen that he would never sell a dime of the team. Well actually he never sold a dime of it. He just made more shares in the company and sold those. But even today that still confuses the hell out of so many F1 commentators, especially the ones who couldn't tell the difference between a dollar and a pound. I will agree that it seems as if the airline, of all of Mallya's companies, seems to have come off worse as his attention as remained on his F1 team. His prime businesses, his alcohol group, seem to be doing very well indeed. Anyway, after that massive diversion there, back to this weekends GP! Massa has basically said that he couldn't give a left handed, raspberry flavoured, flying toss what the press think of him and Schumacher has backed him to deliver Alonso carries on damping down expectation forgetting that he drives for Ferrari and the tifosi expect them to win every race by miles! Autosport claims that the FIA has declared the Mercedes rear wing/DRS/F-Duct thing to totally legal... This is not the last we have heard of this... Lewis Hamilton insists that he was only pissed at himself for mucking up the run down the first corner at the Australian GP... And in general I think this race has every chance of being as good as the first one! Rain or no rain!
Massa may not care but Ferrari do. Buy saying last week he was hoping to just get into the points is not the Ferrari way. They've given him a new chassis so if he does badly he can't blame the car. Part of me does feel sorry for him but surely he's had enough chances now? The Tifosi had it good with Schumacher constantly winning but before then they had a really bad spell and it took Ross Brawn Schumacher and his team to get them on top. I'm sure Red Bull and Lotus will continue moaning about it but if the FIA says it's fine then it is. Bit gutted for Lotus and their suspension tech could have been good to see. Lewis seems a bit better but him throwing a strop for only being 3rd is silly. If that was Grosjean he'd be still grinning. The minute I see he groupies in the pits again (excluding Nicole) then I know he still has work to do.
Massa still rubbish. Will they keep him until Kubica is better or wait until next year and get Perez?
Qualifying 1 Hamilton 2 Button 3 Schumacher 4 Webber 5 Raikonnen (will drop 5 places) 6 Vettel 7 Grosjean 8 Rosberg 9 Alonso 10 Perez Overall no bad. Vettel set fastest time on hard tyres so will be one to watch
Narain Karthikeyan had the slowest time of 1:43.655 so only less than 2 seconds off the top GP2 time. All cars will be racing tomorrow as everyone made the 107% rule time of 1:43.974
Gareth's musings... And we've got quite a lot to muse over this weekend as well, and not just on the track either! But to start on the track we've got the headline act of Hamilton and Button locking out the front row, with three drivers from three different teams all snapping at their heels. Given how everyone seems to be concerned about the tyre wear levels you have to feel that history will favour Button to come out on top again. Maybe not from the exit of the very first corner but over the course of the race his slightly less abrasive driving style should allow him to nurse the first set of tyres long enough to get the undercut. Of course this would be the perfect time for Hamilton to demonstrate that he too can do the whole "quick but smooth" style of driving and of I think he has it in him somewhere. It's just the question of if at this, just the second race of the season, he can drive for the championship and resist temptation to rip his tyres to shreds at some point! So that's the McLaren pair. What of the second row? Schumacher and Webber. Well as far as I can see the Mercedes car has the edge if it rains but over the the course of the race I have to feel that Schumacher could be looking at fifth at best behind both McLarens and both Red Bulls. As Vettel has opted to qualify on the hard tyre and go with the suggested idea from Pirelli as I think Vettel and Red Bull could see that pole or second were not possible with even the prime tyre they then decided to maximise the strategy and go with the harder. Of course Vettel is said that this was just down to balance issue. Which if true could see the middle part of the race being very interesting indeed for the current world champion. Could we possible see him run two stints on the harder compound and then just the last few laps on the soft when the car is at it's lightest and the track has the most rubber on? The Lotus is obviously a very well balanced car despite the power steering issues that Kimi was mentioning in the build up to this race and given a not terrible start could well be the biggest challenger for the best of the rest after McLaren and Red Bull. Schumacher and Raikkonen at it gain, only this time in a Mercedes and a Lotus! WOW! Sends a shiver down my spine at just the thought of it! Grosjean in the other Lotus was also very quick again and seventh will only go to cement his chances at beating Rosberg and the Ferrari boys. I think we can expect a strong race from both the Ferrari's. Both of them are hard starters and I think we will see both of them inside the top ten at the end of the first lap. As for the rest of the grid, well as Martyn pointed out we shall now have a full grid after the HRT drivers both made inside the 107% time, but only just. And the midfield. Well Senna seems to be contemplating a two stop strategy. Which if he can pull it off without all the attendant tyre wear issues could see him earn a few points. And the fight for whatever few points are on offer at the end of the race is going to be just frenetic! May we even see another last lap tussle? At least this track does provide some very good over taking right at the end of the lap!
