Alternative Australian GP Thread

That move was great! And anyone who has ever sat along a starting grid for a race can appreciate it even more. He does seem very polished, but I can't help wonder why Ron Dennis was so uptight about hiding him all pre-season?

Even though you're hoping to avoid chatting about Ferrari, I have to say that their crew shirts are kinda bad this year.

 

Thanks, I looked it up....talk about a stupid rule. I wonder WTF they were thinking???

 

It just seems stupid to tell a team running 2 seconds a lap faster (or slower) to use "x" compound….the fast cars will cook the soft tires in no time flat and the slow cars will never get the hard tires up to temp. This is almost as retarded as the one set of tires per race rule and nearly as dangerous.

 

i thought the tyres were supposed to be marked...i can't seem to spot which is the soft and medium ones.

 

Does anyone have any thoughts on the changes regarding the safety car, i.e. the pits will be closed and lapped cars are allowed to pass the leader and the pace car effectively unlapping themselves? Surely this will have a huge impact on future races, especially mid race where some front runners have pitted and other haven't. Thoughts please?

 

Yeah. I don't get it. guess we'll have to wait and see how this works out during the season. So far it looks like another lame idea.

 

The soft ones are marked with a quarter-size blob of white shoe polish, essentially impossible to spot if they don't show it on the pit stop. The commentators said Bernie wanted to be sure they wouldn't have the appearance of copying Champ Car so no red stripe.

Gary

 

Once they get to know the tyres the problems will disapear. Ferrari in particular appeared to do a very poor job of this with Massa as trying to do a one stop race with the compulsory soft tyre in the equation was just stupid.

He should have done the minimal number of laps on the soft ones (I assume the FIA has mandated this) and then pitted for real tyres and then he could have run heavy if he wanted to.

It's all just strategy and the teams need to think, not just go 'Oh **** we have to run the soft tyres for this stint' ... they need to make it work for them, like do a few MS type laps and use the soft tyres to bang a few really quick laps in with light fuel and then go back to normal laps.

Pete

 

Very perceptive. Thanks for the post.

 

the commentary was, as the announcer said, not mid season form to say the least. peter windsor stood out as the best. the remarks made alluding to hamilton's ethnicity were strange. when the podium ceremony was taking place and hobbs said he'd not seen as dark a complexion on the podium before i almost fell on the floor.

 

I don't think that's true at all. Running tires that are too soft means you need to slow down or you will cook them. Running with tire that are too hard means they will not get to temp and will never develop full grip.

The teams can do sort stints on the tires they don't like to improve the overall race time, but they are still the wrong tires

I Massa's case, I think ferrari figured that Massa would be help-up by the slower cars and would have trouble keeping his tries hot, so the softs were the way to go for the first stint

The only sense the rule seems to make is for bridgestone. They don't want to make a lot of tires that don't get used, so FIA says the teams need to use them...maybe. I can’t think of anything else that makes sense....and I still don't like it. It's F1 for god's sake, it supposed to be the pinnacle of racing….yet they have to run the wrong tires, even club racer get to use the tires they think are best. Stupid.