Bahrain Grand Prix 2015, Sakhir - Race 4/19

[413x]

Means that Quali and the Race are at annoying times. They are both slap bang in the middle of beer/bbq time

Yeah if the weather is good I'm not staying in to watch it.
Wish all races were early morning!

 

[CSMonkeh]

Am I the only one amazed Pedro De La Rosa has the lap record?? No disrespect to the lad....

 

[smr]

Vettel won here in '12 and '13. If the Ferrari can maximise it's tyre life like before and do longer stints he could be a real threat. The Ferrari chassis looks very decent in sweeping corners too.

Cheeky punt methinks

 

[deuse]

Is that an attempt at humour? Or are you genuinely trying to make a point?

I r confused..

No grid penalty...

My bad. That'll teach not to try and read the net after taking 80ml of morphine

 

[Glaucus]

Do BBC not show fp1/2 can only see fp3 listed?

 

[drunkenmaster]

Vettel won here in '12 and '13. If the Ferrari can maximise it's tyre life like before and do longer stints he could be a real threat. The Ferrari chassis looks very decent in sweeping corners too.

Cheeky punt methinks

Ferrari have a small tire advantage only in extreme conditions, I would say Merc still have the tire advantage in almost all other conditions. If there are tracks Ferrari might use a better tire strategy it will be tracks Merc don't have a massive advantage in speed AND ones that are borderline on a tire strategy, ie 1-2 extra laps might turn a 3 stop into a 2, or a 2 into a 1. On any track in which Merc/Ferrari will still stop the same number of times, there is no pit stop advantage and Merc are just faster anyway.

Malaysia was a combination of temps giving Ferrari a marginal tire advantage(not big enough alone) but also temps high enough that Merc likely didn't want to run the engine in to high a power mode.

Ferrari have made a huge step but were just too far down last year to make that really a step up to Merc, a wet race, a bit of luck from a well times safety car, or a merc being blocked in qualifying, or just plain reliability will be required for Ferrari to beat Merc in most cases this year. Pure pace, tire strategy alone isn't going to cut it.


Last year most of the better cars did a 2 stop here, a pretty easy 2 stop in which the Mercs went crazy fast in the last stint and had a huge gap before the safety car. Ferrari aren't going to 1 stop it, unless they want to be ludicrously slow here, Merc can easily 2 stop here as can Ferrari. In generally normal circumstances here Ferrari have no chance.

 

[Shimmy]

Do BBC not show fp1/2 can only see fp3 listed?

FP1 Red Button, FP2/3 on BBC 2.



Annoyingly they aren't listing Qualifying and Race yet on their website..

Seems like F1 content online has taken a backwards step this year :<

 

[Danthus]

Wooohoooooooooo b2b F1 weekends, love it! Will be at the BTCC on Saturday so I'll have to record Qually.

Thanks Shimmy

You will only need to record Q1.

 

[Danthus]

Vettel won here in '12 and '13. If the Ferrari can maximise it's tyre life like before and do longer stints he could be a real threat. The Ferrari chassis looks very decent in sweeping corners too.

Cheeky punt methinks

We saw the real pace of the Mercedes car last year for the first time at Bahrain.

A repeat of the same would be great.

 

[Danthus]

I think we need a more beefed up version of last year's battle at the front, but where Lewis and Nico take each other out, resulting in a red 1-2... To put Lewis under some vague pressure this year.

Or even funnier, Rosberg tries to punt Hamilton off the tack but loses his front wing.

Would love to see the interview afterwards.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

We saw the real pace of the Mercedes car last year for the first time at Bahrain.

A repeat of the same would be great.

The only time we will see this is if one of the mercedes finds itself out of position and in clean air. Alternatively if rosberg pushes hamilton, but that doesn't seem to be happening this year.

 

[Danthus]

The only time we will see this is if one of the mercedes finds itself out of position and in clean air. Alternatively if rosberg pushes hamilton, but that doesn't seem to be happening this year.

Maybe Hamilton will slow down to give Rosberg a chance.

 

[Skeeter]

Or even funnier, Rosberg tries to punt Hamilton off the tack but loses his front wing.

Would love to see the interview afterwards.

This is the track where Nicole tried running a load of people off the road, leading to the "significant part of your car alongside" rule.

The only time we will see this is if one of the mercedes finds itself out of position and in clean air. Alternatively if rosberg pushes hamilton, but that doesn't seem to be happening this year.

Last year was a perfect storm of events that led to a flat out sprint to the finish between tge Mercedes. I very much doubt we will see the same again.

 

[utajoker]

i dont think ferrari will be as close as previous, the track was something like 60C in malaysia wasn't it?

In china it was over 40C and we saw how much pace hamilton had when he wanted it.

Maybe Rosberg is withing distance of vettel but i dont think hamilton, unless there is incidents in p1/p2 and they lose setup time. but you never know.


I think williams might have to stop looking forward for ferrari and start looking over their shoulder in the next couple of races for Lotus, they look much improved in the hands of grosjean anyway.


anyway, BACK TO BACK WEEKENDS WOO.

 

[utajoker]

Last year was a perfect storm of events that led to a flat out sprint to the finish between tge Mercedes. I very much doubt we will see the same again.

that fight was also helped by Hamilton being on the slower tyre wasn't it? and was this the one Rosberg turned his engine settings up also?

 

[MooMoo444]

Kinda hoping Kimi qualifies infront of Vettel so we can have a 'Kimi, Sebastian is faster than you. I repeat, Seb is faster than you.'

 

[Skeeter]

that fight was also helped by Hamilton being on the slower tyre wasn't it? and was this the one Rosberg turned his engine settings up also?

Yeah Hamilton held off Rosberg even though he was on the slower tyre.

Can't remember which race had the engine settings argument? I can remember Lewis and Jenson having a spat about that at Turkey a few years back

 

[smr]

Sounding positive ...

Sounds positive!

"And having so far raced with the engine turned down to protect the power units, which are limited to four per season, Boullier says the team can now start to turn it up as well as adding aerodynamic performance to the car.

"Now we can power up a little bit and we know the potential," he said. "There's a lot of potential coming from this point.

"We have some new specs coming from Europe. In terms of chassis as well, we'll keep bringing parts in Bahrain.

"We have a good package coming in Barcelona so we're ramping up. I think it's as we said - it's not tenths by tenths but half a second by half a second.

"So as Fernando said, we started from too far behind but we are catching up. Now we are just behind the midfield pack so hopefully in a few races we will be in front."

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/118511

 

[this_is_gav]

That sounds very optimistic. From a neutral outsider, overly optimistic!

Anyway, didn't they open up the power units to 5 again for this season after Melbourne? Have I dreamt that?

 

[Skeeter]

You dreamt it.

Bernie tried to sneak in a 5th by listing Korea on the Calendar, but the FIA denied that. The teams are also in discussion about allowing a 5th that can only be used on Fridays, but there's been no decision yet.