Vettel/RBR
Vettel will be more difficult to beat this year, than in 2010. In 2010, the other teams had the advantage of Webber taking points away from Vettel. This year, its going to be tough, as Webber has had his golden season (in 2010) and I don't expect him to be able to reach those dizzying heights, when he won 3 races in a row.
If RBR know what's going for them, they will shackle Webber and allow Vettel to lead the team, just as Ferrari are doing with their drivers.
McLaren
Great stuff from them. After making massive changes and reverting back to a less complex (simpler and older) exhaust system, they have clawed back a lot of the time they seemed to be losing in pre-season testing.
Contrary to popular belief, I expect the gap between Hamilton and Button to be larger than it was last season, for reasons which I have previously explained.
It was little silly for Button (above all people), to expect to get away with gaining an advantage over Massa, when did the illegal overtake. He is an intelligent racer, which means that even if his team (who aren't particularly bright) didn't realise what was about to happen, Button himself should've made the decision.
When it comes to strategy and race decisions, McLaren really are shockingly bad. Hopefully, Button will learn from today's error.
It is also great to see that Mclaren are now able to manufacture their carbon fibre parts with controlled flexing (see Nathan's video above).
DRS
A lot of people before this race were predicting that passing would be as easy as pressing a button to pass the guy in front. I argued that this was not going to be the case and low and behold, as we saw today the DRS is not a "push to pass" button. It merely allows the car behind to get closer. This has the effect of making racing that bit more exciting.
The DRS is doing exactly what it was designed to do...ie. if the car in front is only 0.5s-1s/lap slower, DRS won't allow you to overtake (easily). The driver behind will still need to get stuck in and use skill to overtake.
Dannyjo, I remember you stated that KERS + DRS = easy overtake...well I hope you now agree with me in that this is not the case.
DRS has worked exactly how the FIA expected it to - it brings the driver behind closer to the car in front and gives the driver behind a better opportunity to make the pass. The button is not designed as a "push-to-pass" solution.
Multitasking and cockpit workload
What I did find interesting today was that MSc who claimed that the workload (with all the buttons to press in 2011), is no different than it was in previous years. Well MSc, for whatever reason, you seemed to struggle, in comparison to your younger (play station generation) team-mate. Is this just a coincidence? The top 3 drivers today, all happen to be youngsters. Even Alonso, who is now 30 years old seemed to be struggling with KERS (see below).
Did anybody notice that Alonso seemed to be forgetting to use the KERS button? His team were repeatedly reminding him to use the button more often. Could this be a result of the extra workload in the cockpit? Could it be that Alonso hasn't yet got a hang of pressing so many buttons? There clearly is an issue here, otherwise his team wouldn't have had to remind him so often, to use the KERS button.
World Championship Prediction
I initially went with Alonso and Hamilton to finish in the top 2 positions this year, but after seeing Vettel and RBR's advantage, it would be brave man to bet against Vettel winning the title this year. I still believe that it will be close (with Hamilton, Alonson and Vettel), but RBR with their 0.8s/lap advantage, are looking pretty good...especially now that Vettel has regained his mojo (ie. he has now beaten Webber for about 5 races on the trot now), which means that it is unlikely that Webber will take too many points away from Vettel.
MSc
I really do wonder if MSc will last the entire season. Why on Earth would a 7 time world champ continue to race in a racing series, where he is getting beaten by his less experienced team-mate? From today's showing, if anybody is going to win for Mercedes, it is going to be Rosberg...not MSc. He is merely tarnishing the reputation which he worked so hard to build in his first career.
Anyway, on to Malaysia in 2 weeks, where I believe we will see a Ferrari revival.
. Didn't bother with the forum though. Is that on iPlayer somewhere?
, though I still don't get why they have Massa TBH. What was with Webber parking his car and not doing the return lap?
. Same with KERS, should be unlimited on the time you can use it. If you want to lug around a massive dynamo and battery so you can KERS it out of every corner then fair enough to you.
