The F1 Thread 2012 Season

Leg-End said:
Mercedes are better than they showed there too, I think perhaps the pressure of being up with a chance got to Rosberg but for the next few races at least they will be right up there.
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I've always felt he was a Trulli/Webber type of driver. Fast, but he completely lacks the ability to defend or attack unless he's around Schumacher and then he just tries to drive him off the track. This is further reiterated by Schumachers superior race pace for most of last year.
 
Ole's_toe_poke said:
Lets see. I think Mclaren might make this season boring.
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All the people moaning last year won't mind that ;)

Only woke up midway trough Q2, dunno wtf Kimi is playing at down there but will be interesting to see what he can do from there tomorrow. Q3 was exciting but a lot of that is down to having no idea who has what kind of speed.
 
Ron Dennis just read the time sheets.

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Good to see McLaren at the head of the field in the right direction.

Those of you giving Massa a bit of a hard time - I can partly understand, but that car is clearly a complete dog to drive around at the moment, shown by Alonso (clearly a better driver) losing it at the first corner himself. It can't be easy at all.
 
I'm really looking forward to seeing what Mercedes can do Tomorrow and this year particularly if Ross Brawn is disappointed with that qualifying
 
nemanja15 said:
Good to see McLaren at the head of the field in the right direction.

Those of you giving Massa a bit of a hard time - I can partly understand, but that car is clearly a complete dog to drive around at the moment, shown by Alonso (clearly a better driver) losing it at the first corner himself. It can't be easy at all.
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He came 16th on pure pace though, unless he had any problems that I missed?

And to think I'd been expecting Ferrari to have better quali performance than race pace... Well, I hope for their sake that it was wide of the mark anyway.
 
Really hope it's mclarens year, shaping up to be a very good season for them if they can manage to keep the 1-2 in the race. I know it's early days but mistakes by everyone else/including vettels raw pace is what gave him the title in the past 2 years and by qualifying and practice there were many mistakes by drivers you'd expect to be up there/cars you'd expect to be up there not having pace.

Hamilton or Button for the title IMO.
 
HRT out, breaking news on SSN

HRT will not be allowed to take part in the Australian Grand Prix after both of their cars failed to qualify within the 107 per cent time.

Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan both set lap times in the 1 minute 33 second range, meaning they were too far behind the quickest Q1 time of Kamui Kobayashi to make it onto the grid by right.

They could potentially have been given special dispensation to compete in the race despite being outside the limit, but that permission has not been granted.

Despite the disappointment, De la Rosa says he is still proud of the team's last-minute efforts to make it to the season-opening race.

"I am proud of the team, coming here, building two cars and being able to qualify," he told Sky Sports News.

"The other side of the story is that we did not qualify in the 107 per cent, which was more or less expected.

"There are many areas of the car that we know need improving, we will work on them straight away. We just need a little bit more time and we'll be there."
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gormless said:
Why do they even bother? Even Minardi had their moments
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I think had Karthikeyan not been attempting to impersonate a roadblock in Q1 they might have found a bit more support from the rest of the teams, But being about 2 seconds slower then the Caterhams and Marussias shows they're nowhere near ready for this season
 
BTW if I was Domencialli I would start looking for another job soon. Can't see Montezemello standing for another season of mediocrity without making changes.
 
gormless said:
Why do they even bother? Even Minardi had their moments
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That Minardi team is sitting well with two drivers fighting for top 10 positions.

They weren't the greatest cars by any means at all, but they were plucky little bastards and managed to strike it well with Redbull.

I never thought i'd see the day that Ferrari are the second best Italian team on the grid :lol::lol:

And to the former Minardi team at that!
 
TheBest said:
Would love to see, how vettel does when he is not in the best car.
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This. But hopefully they can get close to parity and we can have a real three way battle for the title, maybe more if Lotus and Mercedes remain the real deal...Webber of course won't be close
 
Guess that the qualifiers today were promising if anything. I'd still have Vettel down as a massive favourite and Red Bull as favourites as well, but I think this shows us that it won't be as easy for him this season as it was last season.
 
Anybody else getting up early for the race tomorrow? F1 then United in the afternoon. Great sunday!
 
There's a flipside to that though, the Renault reportedly allowed them to run less fuel due to its efficiency so at the start of races they had quite a substantial weight advantage over the other non-renaults.

Plus it also was extremely good with the off throttle blowing, now that is gone they have lost one of the two advantages of that engine.
 
Newey chose the engine in spite of its power deficit because it allowed for better packaging within his ideal aero designs.
 
Watched the highlights on the BBC and I thought it was still pretty good. Ben Edwards is a fine commentator and the addition of Gary Anderson is a good one. Jake is an excellent presenter. I thought Sky might have taken him on board.

Sky as always is all about blowing people away with their technology and the sheer budget available to them but the Beeb are still doing a stellar job.
 
I'm not sure about Gary Anderson, I mean its great to have a technical mind on the team but some of the stuff he talks about just comes across as "my way or the highway". He was adamant pre-season that McLaren had gone the wrong way with its low nose design, completely ignoring the fact McLaren have used it with great success for the previous 2 seasons and have a world class design team with world class facilities.

If I want an unbiased opinion on the technical aspects of F1 I just look up Scarbs blog/twitter because he gives technical insight without trying to add his own design opinions into it. I'm quite amazed the guy isn't at least part of the background team of either of the F1 channels this year really, he knows his stuff.

Anderson will be great for pointing out upgrades throughout the year though and how they work, just leave your own opinion out of it and give us the facts.
 
I'll stilll watch it on the BBC live when I can reallly, on Virgin Media we do get SkysportsF1 but not the F1 HD channel.
 
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