Better than the crowd pelting the drivers in disgust......IMO.
True, but it would be too late to get the good price Everyone now agrees Lewis is great and a future world champ, as long as the MCs remain reliable.
great race. Looks to be a wonderful course and made us think about traveling to Indy for the race next year(if Bernie deems us worthy?!) Happy for Vettel, very nice debut. Great driving by Lewis to hold off Alonso. I like him very much, very good interviews, very astute and very cool he shows some life and emotion. So much brighter energetically than FA or Kimi. Glad to see him succeed. Amazing he can go through so many races with such focus and so few mistakes. Biggest cloud in his immediate future is the complete media blitz that is building to ridiculous proportions. Wish him luck with that monster for sure. NIce work by FM too.
Kimi started on hard tires yesterday. I assumed he was going to be heavy on fuel but was proved wrong. That most likely had something to do with his bad start and he most likely lost on overtaking Massa in the pits. I hope the team is not guessing at using different strategies in the hope of something working!
They apparently used up all the soft compounds yesterday during qualifying. The choice was start on a new set of hard or a used set of soft. They chose the hard and I think that may have been the reason for his poor start.
McLarens intelligently ran more downforce, that is why they were one of the slowest on the straights. I can remember watching the Ferrari team in the late 80's and early 90's and they were always one of the fastest on the straights and it used to piss me off. Lap times come from corner speed NOT straight line speed and it took MS to get them to stop reducing wing ... now it seems that the head has been stuck back up that same old @rse. Just imagine how much more competitive Ferrari would have been with the same wing angles as the McLarens ... Pete
Most likely Ferrari ran a simulation with many different levels of wings and found what they thought would be optimum. I am sure they tested different configs during practice. PS I am happy this is not a bash Kimi thread!
You don't know that. It's quite conceivable that this was the fastest pace they could have had. To think that the Ferrari F1 team hadn't done due diligence for their setup is mindboggling.
I love your optimism. However the fact is that the McLarens are considerably faster. Was in Canada in pit lane. Saw the different speeds and handling into turns. Watched the organization and coordination of McLaren and Ferrari in the pits. Saw drivers. There is no doubt in my mind Hamilton is fastest driver in F1 at present. At Ferrari, Massa is quicker than Raikonnen. The McLaren driver duo is faster than ours, and their cars are quicker. We do need DNFs to get close. I say this as a loyal Ferrari fan who would be happy to pay to see Ferrari win every race from now to infiniti. Will always reach for my Ferrari keys not that of a McLaren or Mercedes. But the facts are what they are. Like you, I hope SF find a magic ingredient and blow the McLarens into the weeds...actually it is now a prayer!
BUT, Didn't Kimi set fastest race lap time??? Maybe the Ferraris don't have the power of the McLarens to pull through more downforce...
We are talking about Ferrari here, like I said they used to get it wrong in the late 80's and 90's ... This view of the Ferrari team being the all conquering and perfect team is a recent one, they are more well known for the missed opportunities and squandering of resources (factory, etc. not money). Somebody visited the factory many years ago and after seeing what Ferrari had compared to English teams (back then) was amazed they did not win every championship. Pete
Niki Lauda said that. Back in 1974. So it was MANY years ago. Niki should not forget that Ferrari build entire cars and that the year before his arrival they built sports cars too, so maybe their factory was not so great. Well, maybe was great in comparison with the BRM factory, wich was the only one wich Niki knew then.
I won´t hire you as race enginner ;-) Hell, I suppose it´s not so easy as copying the wings of the rivals to be as fast as them. First, you should remember that even in the dark ages Ferrari used to have one of the most powerful engines (they lacked reliability or power band but they have V12 pow) so probably the only thing they could get, given that their chassis was usually bad, was top speed. Pedro De La Rosa said in TV that the McLaren was good creating downforce, but that their cars have a lot of drag too, so it´s normal that they maximize their oportinities of getting good grip, because they already know that they can´t get good top speed. And don´t forget that in the good ole Shumacher years they already used to have the best top speed. And they swept the concurrency.
