Formula 1 2013:Round 1 - Australian Grand Prix

Myrddin

Max_Charger wrote: »

Coulthard got one last cheeky dig at Schumi on the beeb

All he ever does is expose himself as a bitter, twisted & highly jealous man...a future Jackie Stewart in the works. I pay him little heed

ratedR

It's always great to see Kimi win and to see Red Bull/Vettel not dominate.

Anyone think that this may the the start of a very lean spell for McLaren ? They've lost Hamilton, Paddy Lowe and Vodafone are bailing at the end of the year. The car is cat, Button will win a few races in a decent car but won't ever be WDC again, and noone really knows how good Perez might be.

EireIceMan

Max_Charger wrote: »

Coulthard got one last cheeky dig at Schumi on the beeb

What he say this time?

lolie

ratedR wrote: »

It's always great to see Kimi win and to see Red Bull/Vettel not dominate.

Anyone think that this may the the start of a very lean spell for McLaren ? They've lost Hamilton, Paddy Lowe and Vodafone are bailing at the end of the year. The car is cat, Button will win a few races in a decent car but won't ever be WDC again, and noone really knows how good Perez might be.

Thought the same when Lewis left, hearing them talk about using last years car aint a good sign.
Cant see Button or perez gettin a performance out of a a bad car like Lewis could.
Remember Gary Anderson saying at their launch how the car looked a good step forward, how wrong was he?

Frankie Lee

I remember last season how poor Ferrari were in Australia so it is a bit early too write off McLaren but they have a bi task in front of them. Williams and Sauber had massively disappointing weekends too.

ratedR

lolie wrote: »

Cant see Button or perez gettin a performance out of a a bad car like Lewis could.

Yep, this is key.

Look what Alonso did with Ferrari last year for instance. Without a driver of that caliber I really think McLaren are in for a really poor season.

freestyla

lolie wrote: »

Remember Gary Anderson saying at their launch how the car looked a good step forward, how wrong was he?

Gary can spot mostly aerodynamics changes which is one part of the whole package.

Well you can see also if suspension is push or pull rod style but can't know anything about optimization of the same. Quite a few important bits are under the hood actually.. so I prefer to listen to other drivers if they had opinion - i think it was Gutierrez who told seriously that Lotus looks the best planted to the ground when he drove behind them during winter testing.

ottostreet

I have my first article for the Australian GP up... an analysis of the team mate battles. Have a read if you can, would love feedback.

F1Pad Team Mate Battles

Rascasse

Also, quite a few people were wrong about McLaren due to their pace in Jerez. What no one knew, until this weekend, was that the pace was due to 'unrealistic' ride height thanks to the factory fitting a suspension part backwards.

http://adamcooperf1.com/2013/03/16/how-a-factory-mistake-made-mclaren-unrealistically-fast-in-jerez-test/

Hopefully for them it is just a suspension issue and with more track time will come the solution. Button averaged 1.4 seconds a lap slower than Kimi today, that's a hell of a lot of time to find.

Jordan 199

EnterNow wrote: »

Lewis did very well, I'd say he's a very happy bunny today with 5th place

He did a great job and the result was much better than he expected.

I was worried when I saw Nico retire from the race due to unreliability in his Mercedes, but thankfully Lewis had no issues.

Roll on Sepang

lolie

Mercedes seem to be roughly where they were last year, hopefully they dont fall behind in development.
F1 needs Lewis fightin near the front.

Ghost Train

Some technical analysis from the weekend from gary anderson

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/21821853

Jordan 199

lolie wrote: »

Mercedes seem to be roughly where they were last year, hopefully they dont fall behind in development.
F1 needs Lewis fightin near the front.

What I will be looking out for on this years Merc is:

1: How it performs on its tyres.

2: Reliability.

3: Rate of development throughout the season.

_rebelkid

I'd say R3 or R4 will be where we see the real representative results.

So far it's just trying to get on top of grappling with the tyres, so it will be a while before the dev catches up.

On the story of Merc, I don't think their rate of development will be any quicker this year, but that is because they have started in a much better position than last year; front wing is innovative multi element, coke-bottle and coanda are working well.

What I'm interested in is how teams will integrate the front end vents and passive secondary DRS in races.

Rascasse

_rebelkid wrote: »

On the story of Merc, I don't think their rate of development will be any quicker this year, but that is because they have started in a much better position than last year; front wing is innovative multi element, coke-bottle and coanda are working well.

I saw a thing that said that this car is Aldo Costa's work and he will work on it for its lifetime. Meanwhile, Geoff Willis is working solely on the 2014 car. It explains the talent acquisition and turns them into a McLaren style outfit (where, until recently, one car was designed by Paddy Lowe and the next by Tim Goss). Now if they can just avoid 'resource holes' like last years double drs, that suck in inordinate amounts of time and money, they should be able to develop this car much more effectively.

403 Forbidden

_rebelkid wrote: »

I'd say R3 or R4 will be where we see the real representative results.

So far it's just trying to get on top of grappling with the tyres, so it will be a while before the dev catches up.

On the story of Merc, I don't think their rate of development will be any quicker this year, but that is because they have started in a much better position than last year; front wing is innovative multi element, coke-bottle and coanda are working well.

What I'm interested in is how teams will integrate the front end vents and passive secondary DRS in races.

Agree fully with this, its all about learning the tyres, and with Pirelli confirming that they will be using the new P Zero Orange hard compound, things may get interesting in Malaysia.

Rascasse

Is it too early to judge the tyres?. The track temp was very cold (15 degrees I think the BBC said) so well outside what they would normally expect. If you look Sutil's race from when he put on the super softs to when di Resta was told to hold position he started out very quick for a few laps then went off a cliff (I think he lost 5 seconds to di Resta on one lap), but then they came back very well. In the end he was only about 7 tenths off di Resta. If the track temp was a more normal say 24 to 30 degrees I wonder if they would have lasted better.

Also, looking at the final result, top marks to Bianchi in the Marussia. Ended a lap ahead of Chilton and the Caterhams and on the same lap as Bottas and Gutierrez.

mickdw

I dont buy the whole idea of mclaren having a component upside down in winter testing.
Surely setting up the car they would have found if it had an illegal ride height or whatever.

_rebelkid

flowrider04 wrote: »

Agree fully with this, its all about learning the tyres, and with Pirelli confirming that they will be using the new P Zero Orange hard compound, things may get interesting in Malaysia.

They've made a good choice for KL, orange has very high working range, whereas medium has a low working range. And the orange hard tyres are 0.4/5s quicker than last year, making them closer to last years medium.

Should be a good GP, temps will be what is expected, and here's hoping the weather stays dry

Jordan 199

_rebelkid wrote: »

Should be a good GP, temps will be what is expected, and here's hoping the weather stays dry

I hope it will be a dry weekend in Sepang too. I don't like when there is a wet Saturday and a dry Sunday or vice versa.

Max_Charger

Jordan 191 wrote: »

I hope it will be a dry weekend in Sepang too. I don't like when there is a wet Saturday and a dry Sunday or vice versa.

Latest weather reports looks like wet Fri practice, dry qualy and a storm for the race on Sun.

Rascasse

Max_Charger wrote: »

Latest weather reports looks like wet Fri practice, dry qualy and a storm for the race on Sun.

Which site is that? I've been checking AccuWeather and its been saying dry but cloudy on Friday/Saturday and "Maybe a shower". Temps in the low 30's.

Hopefully not a storm, don't want 2009 all over again.

Jordan 199

Weekend forecast for the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Max_Charger

I use yr.no, usually pretty good

http://www.yr.no/place/Malaysia/Selangor/Sepang/long.html

lolie

LIGHTNING wrote: »

My thoughts about the weekend:

• Massa is back to his best but is doomed to be a number 2
• Alonso body language was very positive
• Tyres are going to dominate the season -in a bad way in my opinion
• Is Grosjean being too safe in races now?
• Sutil`s drive demonstrated the benefit of going for exp over youth

Unfortunately for massa unless he can pull a gap on alonso he's screwed.
The super soft tyres were a joke on sunday, not a fan of them at all.
Sutil done good alright but Bianchi proved he's more deserving of an F1 seat than the guys next to him.m

Harcrid

mickdw wrote: »

I dont buy the whole idea of mclaren having a component upside down in winter testing.
Surely setting up the car they would have found if it had an illegal ride height or whatever.

Have to say I thought the same thing myself. Seems a bit strange.

the culture of deference

ottostreet wrote: »

I have my first article for the Australian GP up... an analysis of the team mate battles. Have a read if you can, would love feedback.

F1Pad Team Mate Battles

Hiya, good read.
Only gripe for me is that I find it hard to read over a black background.

LIGHTNING wrote: »

My thoughts about the weekend:

• Massa is back to his best but is doomed to be a number 2
• Alonso body language was very positive
• Tyres are going to dominate the season -in a bad way in my opinion
• Is Grosjean being too safe in races now?
• Sutil`s drive demonstrated the benefit of going for exp over youth

Just how good was Sutils performance for you as a racer yourself

ottostreet

the culture of deference wrote: »

Hiya, good read.
Only gripe for me is that I find it hard to read over a black background.

Cheers for the feedback, yep, I had the same opinion to start off with the site, but we agreed to wait and see how many people would have issues with the black background. So far, it's only me and you! We're going to leave it for a while and see how it goes. Hope it doesn't put you off reading other articles in the future!