2012 Formula One Season ***possible spoilers***

Chopper inviting skin cancer.
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Oh good on ya! Hope you had as much fun as we did.

 

Figure this out.......

Australian Grand Prix Highlights on BBC 1 got a peak audience of 3.2m. = 100k more than live coverage of the race last year.

 

Melbourne, 19 March – The back to back trip covering the Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix imposes a hectic pace on all the teams. It was a case of all hands on deck last night right into the early hours, to pack away all the equipment in the garages. So not much time to rest before tackling the journey to Sepang, the area situated just outside Kuala Lumpur and its international airport and home to the next Grand Prix. Some, including Stefano Domenicali and Pat Fry have for their part headed back to Maranello, where they will arrive late tonight. Indeed there is no time to lose as there’s a pressing need to push flat-out on the development of the F2012. Also making the trip are the cars used yesterday for the opening round of what will be a very long season.

There will not be anything new on the technical front in Sepang and the team will have to make a virtue of necessity, which means trying to adapt the F2012 as well as possible to the characteristics of the Malaysian track, which is very different to Albert Park. It will be especially important to find the right compromise between aerodynamic downforce and top speed, given the first and third sectors both features long straights. In fact, the lack of top speed (yesterday, Alonso hit the 304 km/h mark, which was around ten less than Hamilton) was singled out by Domenicali and the drivers as one of the areas that needs a lot of work, in order to bring the F2012 to the level of the best cars in the pack. Already arrived in Malaysia is Fernando Alonso.

The Spaniard, who delivered yet another magisterial performance yesterday afternoon, decided to move to hot and humid Kuala Lumpur as soon as possible in order to adapt quickly to conditions that are probably the most extreme a driver has to contend with all season long. Felipe Massa is still in Melbourne and the Brazilian will fly to Malaysia tomorrow night.

 

From Martin

What a great race, 94 minutes of tense action all the way through the field from start to finish. We witnessed some quality driving especially from the six World Champions on the grid. Sebastian Vettel's pass on Nico Rosberg around the outside of turn nine was my personal highlight, but the pace and consistency of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, the dogged determination of both Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen, and the style and pace of Michael Schumacher were also outstanding.

Quite how Mark Webber's Red Bull withstood the double assault into turn one I don't know, but thereafter he made the best of his car, tyres and the safety car for a very competitive fourth place.

Nobody could match the classy pace of Jenson Button though. His start wasn't perfect, he told us on Sky Sports F1 after the race that he grabbed second gear too early, but it was better than Lewis's wheel spinning effort in the 300 metre drag race to turn one. That was a pivotal moment because Jenson would then pull away and have first choice on when to make his first pit stop which also played out well in traffic. His restart behind the safety car was spot on and he sailed away to win his third Australian GP in four years. Fastest lap was simply icing on the cake.

In five of the past six seasons the winner of the first race has gone on to take the title...

Thankfully Red Bull promised and delivered a more compelling performance in the race than in qualifying to keep the race alive. Fernando Alonso also somehow dragged a reluctant prancing horse through all 58 laps to seal a heartening fifth place for a Ferrari team under enormous pressure with a difficult and inconsistent car. Felipe Massa just couldnt get to grips with his car.

Being a temporary parkland circuit, Albert Park doesn't have the perimeter roads of permanent facilities where cars can be quickly cleared away and accidents usually end up against the wall with debris bouncing back onto the track. However despite heavy multiple first corner contacts and plenty of nerfing and barging throughout the race, the inevitable safety car was actually for a broken down Caterham stranded on the pit straight with nowhere to hide.

Having said that, Pastor Maldonado's painfully unlucky plunge with his Williams into the Turn Seven inside wall would have triggered another safety car had it not been the last lap for the leaders.

We witnessed much brilliance but also plenty of bad luck and sob stories, not least Maldonado's crash out of sixth place when he was eagerly chasing to pass Alonso's Ferrari for a result which would have cemented a return to form for Williams.

Many others talk of bitter sweet weekends, especially the Lotus team. Grosjean started from third but dropped to sixth after a poor start and then had his steering broken by a very ambitious overtake from Maldonado in which Grosjean just couldn't give him any more room. In the other Lotus, Kimi Raikkonen did a fine job driving from 17th on the grid to sixth with some feisty action and very solid lap times. Lotus have a good car which seems easy to set up and drive and which bodes well if they can maintain the development race.

Along with Williams we can include Sauber, Force India and Toro Rosso in this group of teams with very solid pace and an ability to nurse the Pirelli tyres well. Once again Sergio Perez floated his Sauber around Albert Park on a one stop strategy with often impressive lap times. His tyres were finished at the end of each stint and avoiding Maldonado's stricken car and subsequently touching with Rosberg meant that he finished 8th from 22nd on the grid.

Probably the most disappointed team after the race would be the Mercedes team. They had shown prodigeous pace all weekend especially in the top speed tables. So much so that other teams were speculating and pointing fingers about secondary drag reduction devices that piggy backs the driver-activated DRS rear wing system. The FIA seemed satisfied with the legality of the car but unfortunately Schumacher's car lost gears and Rosberg was in the wars at the end with a puncture. More of a concern though is that both drivers suffered from heavy tyre degradation which will hurt them if they can't find a fix.

Lets hope we have as much action this weekend in Malaysia

MB

 

Sooooo same as your 308 then?

 

Plenty of older cars, plus an f1 car

 

I don't know how you can't agree. there were cars from 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s 00s and 10s. of course the older cars are rarer, there were only a handful made.

Lorbek had an 80s car there too, definitely. Not sure if he had anything older though.

 

Yeah......so there