Australian Grand Prix 2013, Melbourne - Race 1/19

I think teams would have been very clear to their drivers that if they wrote a car off during the race today, all likelihood will be that they wouldn't have a car to race in Malaysia. That must have been playing on their minds somewhat during Q1 on the rainy Saturday too.

F1 teams can rebuild cars within 24 hours, it wouldn't be a problem. I remember Maldonado making a mess of his front end last year in Melbourne.
 
I thought it was a good race and a good win for Kimi, not reading too much into it though. I don't think Red Bull started very well last year but as soon as they got on top of the tyres they quickly got back to the top.

Mclaren will do their normal, start badly and finish well and everyone will bang on about how well they develope a car during the season. Big deal, you lost another title by building an average car for day 1. Get rid of whitmarsh and get someone in with some balls to get on with the job of building race cars instead of worrying about corporate image.
 
zzzz I find F1 so boring these days. First race always conservative, looking forward to scraps later in the year. Well done to Kimi though and Lotus-Renault. Nice of Daddy to get Max a seat in the also ran :D
 
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F1 teams can rebuild cars within 24 hours, it wouldn't be a problem. I remember Maldonado making a mess of his front end last year in Melbourne.

Front end, yes possibly. Although you have to wonder how many spare front wings the teams take to Australia - I can't see it being more than 3 per driver. One too many front wing accidents and suddenly there aren't any left - and the factory is going to be hard pushed to lay up another one, cook it and freight it to Malaysia in a day.

I'm pretty certain that the midfield teams (and possibly some of the higher budget ones too) haven't taken any more than 2 chassis out with them. In fact, at this stage in the season, there may not even be more than 2 chassis in existence - they're living prototypes remember.

One of the reasons Button fell further and further behind during 2009 is that whilst the other teams would eventually use 2 or 3 chassis per driver, he was stuck with that one. By the end of the year, it was well used and had 2 or 3 times the flex that it had in March when it was brand new. In fact, if JB'd crashed and damaged his chassis at any one of the first 4 or 5 flyaway races in '09, he'd most likely have been sitting the rest of them out.
 
I watched the race in full earlier today. The main thing I wanted to see was not for Vettel domination. We certainly got that. I'm happy. Felt good for Hamilton doing well. I wanted him to do better, but I suppose he generally is a good qualifier, and sometimes punches above the cars true performance. He was never going to hold on to 3rd, so I suppose 5th is overall not bad. Especially when you look at where the Mclarens are! Yowchers. That's gotta feel great for him.

Alonso did well. Initially he was the one not having the run of pitstops and traffic, but then it turned and Massa didn't make the best pitstop timings I felt, which is probably what cost him a podium.
Webber is a joker. I really like the guy and want to see him do well, but jeez, does he not pratise his starts? He very reliably loses 2-3 places during his starts. Schoolboy? It can't possibly be that he weighs more can it? I know he is the largest or tallest driver. I'm thinking the difference would be absolutely minimal with the 700+bhp these cars have on tap.

Raikkonen - awesome. One of my fave drivers. Wanted him, Alonso and Hamilton to do well.
 
Yeeeeeeeeeeees

Finally. After supporting the endstone team for 10 years this is the first year I have since 2005 that I have thought this might happen

Lotus aren't the pure fastest but they are fast.. And crucially.. Are light on their tyres!

Ferrari, red bull and lotus all look like likely championship contenders at this point. Ferrari look dangerous particularly

Mercedes seem to still be hard on their tyres.. Can't win like that with these regs
Gf is not happy, being Mclaren supporter.. How can they make a car worse than last year with so few changes?

Concerned with why RG was so slow. Hope it was a problem as he has always been fast.
 
Yeeeeeeeeeeees

Finally. After supporting the endstone team for 10 years this is the first year I have since 2005 that I have thought this might happen

Lotus aren't the pure fastest but they are fast.. And crucially.. Are light on their tyres!

Ferrari, red bull and lotus all look like likely championship contenders at this point. Ferrari look dangerous particularly

Mercedes seem to still be hard on their tyres.. Can't win like that with these regs
Gf is not happy, being Mclaren supporter.. How can they make a car worse than last year with so few changes?

Concerned with why RG was so slow. Hope it was a problem as he has always been fast.
 
My thoughts..

  1. That Lotus is running an immense suspension setup to be able to keep it so low from lap 1. Rarely do we see a car sparking on the ground in this era, especially toward the end of a GP. I look forward to scarbs coming out with something about some weird and wonderful "must have" setup.
  2. Schumacher must have installed the Benetton launch control on the Ferrari when he joined, and forgot to uninstall it when he left.. those are some crazy starts.
  3. lolWebber really is poor off the line. I'd hate to be behind the guy on the grid, it's no wonder someone didn't punt him off at the first corner.
  4. Reports that the KERS on Webber's car failed. Have they continued to make it from cheese?
 
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Uncanny, isn't it?

He's had that problem since forever. Was also notorious for qualifying the Jaguar high up then going backwards or blocking for 30+ laps :p

I thought it was because they were so slow each car spanned two camera shots.

That would be Caterham (with an old car and the desperation of hiring Ma Qing Ha as a reserve driver for $$$), Marussia seem to be doing a lot better.
 
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I think teams would have been very clear to their drivers that if they wrote a car off during the race today, all likelihood will be that they wouldn't have a car to race in Malaysia. That must have been playing on their minds somewhat during Q1 on the rainy Saturday too.

Here's a very interesting graph - an interactive and clickable one that compares laptimes for any driver throughout the entire race. It's interesting to look at the consistency of some drivers versus others!

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2013/03/17/2013-australian-grand-prix-lap-times-fastest-laps/

Thats interesting because if you check Sutil he improved his times for longer than I thought after the pitstop then clearly had a terrible terrible lap, which got him back into Hamilton then he sped up faster than just petrol being dropped towards the end which is why Di Resta couldn't get him. He had to have gone off or spun, something on that lap, yet BBC and Sky missed it completely, wasn't mentioned despite them having lap data available and Brundle started proclaiming the softs were dropping off and he'd miss out on the points totally.

Coulthard gets credit for realising something happened with Grosjean/Vergne, but we saw nothing, Brundle missed it completely but you can see Vergne, Grosjean, and Perez who was right behind them all lost time exactly when that happened, Vergne passed, then they had some kinda incident and Vergne dropped back, up to whatever it was, Vergne was actually doing pretty well. Catching up to Button close enough to maybe get past him, and catching up and passing Grosjean is impressive.

Very little happened in the race, yet they missed Sutil having an off despite being a major player for most of the race, and a key points battle for 9-12th. Really shocking coverage.
 
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