Australian Grand Prix 2010, Melbourne - Race 2/19

JRS said:
I seem to recall people telling me that Massa would get his rear handed to him by Alonso and that Alonso is so much quicker that he would have no trouble besting Massa on-track.

Seems like that was slightly premature.
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I think that is whats happening, Alonso is so much faster than massa. If this was the old ferrari days and Massa had let Alonso though, Alonso would have been dropping Massa at atleast a second per lap.

Massa was all over the place.

Or if this was last years regs Alonso would have done massa in the pits and been on his way.

I think it's pretty obvious why he got stuck behind massa and it wasn't because massa was faster. To put it another way Alonso managed to catch massa and sit on his backside for most of the gp despite being dead last at one point.

Massa isn't even in the same class as alonso.
 
FrankJH said:
There is no reason at all (as suggested about the Ferrari's above) to suggest that with Button leading as he was, even IF Lewis was able to get ahead of the three other cars ahead of him (which would be a huge task to begin with) why he would automatically be able to get past Button
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He wouldn't have got past Button. The problem with aerodynamic downforce the way it in 2010, the car behind has to be so much faster than the car in front, its not even funny. And there is no way that Hamilton would've been 3-4s/lap faster than Button (which I think would've been a requirement to get past Button, judging by the fact that Hamilton couldn't get past Alonso, who was about 3s/lap slower than Hamilton, up until Hamilton got on Alonso's tail).

What killed Hamilton's race was the 2nd pitstop. And even if the 2nd pitstop hadn't happened, I just can't see how he would've got past Button. Remember, Button doesnt have the flat speed of Hamilton, however, Button makes very few mistakes. I just can't see how Hamilton would've made it past Button, without Button making a mistake.
 
sunama said:
What killed Hamilton's race was the 2nd pitstop.
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It wasn't the second stop per se, it was the loss of track position. Which put him within striking distance of Mark Webber's nosecone unfortunately.

Hamilton seemingly drives damned near every lap of a race at 11/10ths. This means he generally uses tyres up quite quickly. When McLaren called him in for that second dry tyre stop, this must have been in the back of their minds.

It was the right call with what they knew at the time. In hindsight....not so good. But hindsight is always 20/20, and the post mortem for that should have been conducted behind closed doors - not aired on a radio frequency that FOM could broadcast to the entire ******* world.

Mind, if I was feeling really belligerent, I could point out that Hamilton had his race 'killed' by his poor performance in qualifying. But I'm not, so I won't ;)
 
There is also the very good point that no one yet knows what Hamilton's tyres would have been like by the end of the race had he only stopped once

I think even though he stopped twice, there was a passing comment that the set on the car looked pretty dreadful, imagine what they would have been like (and lack of 11/10's pace that would have incurred) had he only stopped once, he MAY have been sliding down the order pretty badly (from his net 2nd) as others were treating their tyres a lot kinder , or potentially losing less to those around them
 
I don't think any of the tyres would have looked good since they were all losing 1-2seconds per lap on them. But I doubt that it would have come down to tyre failure. Hamilton clearly thought that his tyres would have made it to the end of the race, and if McLaren had any information from the telemetry to the contrary they'd have told Lewis about it...
 
They did have information to the contrary Setroc - the car with the '1' on its nose. That one seemed to be doing just fine on one set of dry tyres.

Was this down to the driver? Was this down to the setup? Was this down to being out front rather than scrabbling in dirty air? A combination of any of these?

Guess we'll never know for sure. But the fact is that Button made one set last a good distance and didn't lose a massive amount of speed. And a decade or two from now, the only thing anyone will remember with any great clarity is the result!
 
JRS said:
Mind, if I was feeling really belligerent, I could point out that Hamilton had his race 'killed' by his poor performance in qualifying. But I'm not, so I won't ;)
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Exactly. Even as a Hamilton fan myself, this is what I was thinking. He should have qualified better TBH. I seriously can't believe how much the police thing affected him. It happens to thousands of people every day. People get nicked for far worse things... jumping red lights etc. He could have laughed it off and had a joke with the cops and bystanders - by nooo!!!

Really though - he shouldn't pay the fine. Let them wait for it until next year. And sue them for slander with the "****head" comments along with all the other leaks to the press for what should have been a private police matter.
 
sunama said:
He wouldn't have got past Button. The problem with aerodynamic downforce the way it in 2010, the car behind has to be so much faster than the car in front, its not even funny. And there is no way that Hamilton would've been 3-4s/lap faster than Button (which I think would've been a requirement to get past Button, judging by the fact that Hamilton couldn't get past Alonso, who was about 3s/lap slower than Hamilton, up until Hamilton got on Alonso's tail).
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Every time I hear how much faster Hamilton was than Alonso the figure seems to get bigger. Watching the live timings he was anything between 1.2-1.9s faster than Alonso while catching him. First time I heard it here that figure was 2s, then the next time was 2.5s and now it's 3s :p Hamilton had one lap when Alonso made a mistake behind massa where Hamilton was 2.6s faster than Alonso. Other than that one, he was always within 1.2-1.9s until he got in the dirty air. And let's not also forget that when Hamilton was rear ended by Webber, it looked like Hamilton had gotten close enough to Alonso to make the pass.

I'd also say that Alonso is harder to pass than Button. So if Hamilton did get behind Button I think he'd have had a chance to take him, but getting behind him was never going to happen anyway..
 
From what I recall (correct me if I'm wrong), the Ferrari radio operator, informed Alonso that Hamilton was 3.5s behind him. The very next lap Hamilton was right behind Alonso, at which point Hamilton was struggling to maintain the same lap times he was doing before he caught up with Alonso. From what I recall, Alonso did not make a mistake which allowed Hamilton to catch him up in that single lap.
 
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