Australian Grand Prix 2013, Melbourne - Race 1/19

tummelv said:
I know Mclaren said they had sacrificed being a quick car initially for a quick car over a season but they seem to be waaaay of the pace.
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Meh, I absolutely don't buy into the fact that a "new" car(with most of the old features anyway) automatically has better potential for development, there is equally as much chance that they can get the best out of some new part, as they find out the new thing they did sucks balls and there is no way to develop it into a useful thing for the car. Think passive DRS for Merc, it killed their season the more "new" things on a car the more chances of things that just won't work.

Either way I mentioned in preseason that, Button won a title with a car that just blew everything away for half a season and when everything caught up he didn't look as good. At Mclaren, well we've just been through a year where Button complained for half the season before they just used Hamilton's setup to make Button's car work better, Button seems awful at setting up the car and finding the sweet spot, none of that really comes across as great for a new car, nor a car with heavy development. The more changes the harder its going to be to find the sweet spot, and he couldn't do it at all last season. Unless Perez has Hamilton like skills at picking out a car setup I think they'll struggle to really get the best out of new development.

Its rare a car looks that off the pace and comes good, all your in season development just gets you back on par with everyone else(if lucky and assumign they don't all move on). Race pace is the thing though, Ferrari looked dogpoo in quali most of last season but race pace was another matter entirely. The Mclaren might be great in the race, but we haven't seen much sign of a great car in their race sims in preseason testing.
 
In all but one of the last five years, the first race of the season has been won by the car that came first or second in Practice 1. On those grounds it's between Vettel and Massa.

More seriously, it looks like Vettel has this one in the bag; but it's looks like Red Bull have the best car here with Ferrari, Lotus and Mercedes not far behind but, well, it wouldn't be the first time free practice has told a different tale to qualifying and race.

My prediction:

Vettel
Alonso
Webber
 
Mr Jack said:
In all but one of the last five years, the first race of the season has been won by the car that came first or second in Practice 1. On those grounds it's between Vettel and Massa.

More seriously, it looks like Vettel has this one in the bag; but it's looks like Red Bull have the best car here with Ferrari, Lotus and Mercedes not far behind but, well, it wouldn't be the first time free practice has told a different tale to qualifying and race.

My prediction:

Vettel
Alonso
Webber
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Remember though thats only 1 lap pace - the lotus and Merc reliability isnt thought to be 100% yet , and 1 lap pace means nothing in the race.

Saying that McLaren look so slow, they will be lucky to get a handful of points from Melbourne

It will be interesting to see if Massa can keep that kind of speed for 60 odd laps on Sunday

edit - just watched Ted's "portakabin" , the rear wing on the McLaren is ******* huge compared to RedBull . I heard Ted mention about top end grunt of the Renualt, but that surely cant account for all of that difference?
 
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I love Ted:o
one of Sky F1 greatest assets!

quite a disappointing showing by McLaren, and worrying problems for Merc, hopefully they iron them out for Qualy
 
Well, everything we 'learnt' from testing turns out to be rubbish! Who'd have thunk it :p

Red Bull are not slow
McLaren are not fast
Mercedes are not reliable
 
if this season is going to be another vettell walk in the park im not going to be happy. At least last season was a bit interesting at the start until the Red Bull found its feet.
 
This was not the FP results I was hoping to wake up to :(

I know two sessions is far from indicative of a whole season, but it's looking a bit ominous. Again.
 
Skeeter said:
Well, everything we 'learnt' from testing turns out to be rubbish! Who'd have thunk it :p

Red Bull are not slow
McLaren are not fast
Mercedes are not reliable
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No one who watched testing thought Red Bull were slow, they thought Barca didn't suit them great, and they are faster in Aussie than Barca. Different tracks, different situation. Due to several situations, they didn't really go for an ultimate one lap pace in testing, they did today. Mclaren were not remotely thought to be fast in testing, EVERYONE said they were slow, the only days they went "fast" they used either better tyres and lucky timing(Perez, super softs iirc), or people wanted to talk up Button because he did a "fast" time on mediums that wasn't remotely anything special.

Merc had two of the worst days, followed by plenty of good days, 2 lost days of testing doesn't mean good reliability, it means unknown. They went through the majority of two practice sessions without a hitch and lost 10 minutes. I'm 99% sure they stopped Rosberg as a precaution over what might have failed on Lewis's car, NOTHING might have failed on either car, it could have just been a mistake.

Lastly, Vettel did a qualy style run, low fuel, 2-3 laps, fastest lap on first fast lap. Hamilton did 10 laps, he did his fastest lap on lap 9 or 10 I believe, and he was only half a second down, that actually almost certainly adds up to Hamilton being faster on the medium tyre, 10 laps fuel is worth something along the line of 8/10ths of a second in pace, on top of 8 laps more wear on tyres that lose 1-2/10ths a lap. Hamiltons lap was actually pretty amazing, Massa's was close(I think he did 6-7 laps and faster lap towards the end) Vettel's wasn't impressive. Tyres more relevant to Hamilton than fuel as his fastest laps were end of the run, but he was still fast earlier in the run, he was fast throughout basically, so he showed pace with 10 laps of fuel on board, and still had pace with the fuel lower but the tyres worn as he'd done several full speed laps throughout the run. For a Merc compared to last year, doing a fast lap(faster than anyone but Vettel) on older tyres is a freaking massive sign of improvement for that car. The Merc was a complete dog on tyre wear last year, that he can be faster than all but a qualy run for Vettel after that long is a very very good sign.

On the super softs Vettel came the closest to doing an unimpeded run, but also after a couple bad laps of being held up, essentially super soft testing was a wash as no one with any speed had a clean first lap.

From testing and practice, Merc look very fast, Ferrari/Red Bull, toss up whose fastest but I suspect race pace will be with Ferrari even if qualy is with Vettel. Lotus don't look close to those three teams at all, and Mclaren look nowhere as they did all through testing.

Personally I think in quali it will be Hamilton/Vettel, with Rosberg and the Ferrari's and Webber fighting for 3-6. In race I think Ferrari/Merc will look very strong indeed, Lotus won't be very close and Red Bull will lose ground.
 
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It's not the iplayer list why can't they be consistent with their content.

EDIT: no that's not it. You've got it wrong. I'm looking for the full 90mins radio coverage
 
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drunkenmaster said:
I'm 99% sure they stopped Rosberg as a precaution over what might have failed on Lewis's car, NOTHING might have failed on either car, it could have just been a mistake.
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Lewis had the bib of the floor come loose, Rosberg was gearbox. I'm pretty sure that's been confirmed.
 
englishpremier said:
EDIT: no that's not it. You've got it wrong. I'm looking for the full 90mins radio coverage
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You should have said..and it's to early for moaning :D

Nismo said:
Lewis had the bib of the floor come loose, Rosberg was gearbox. I'm pretty sure that's been confirmed.
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Small problems for merc but I'm glad they had the now than in the race.
I see McLaren are missing Lewis already.
 
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