Melbourne 2011

[Deleted]

Well the F1 season gets underway this weekend, after the opening race in Bahrain was cancelled due to the unrest.

After first practice yesterday, it looks as though 2011 is starting where 2010 left off, with the Red Bulls dominating but with Ferrari up their tail pipes.

Qualifying is live at 0500 on Saturday, with the race live at 0600 on Sunday. All coverage is on BBC1, who have had a change to the format for this season. David Coulthard will join Martin Brundle in the commentary box, which I think is a good move. They're great mates, and in fact Brundle was DC's manager when he was racing. They have excellent combined knowledge, and I'm really looking forward to it!

news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/9435589.stm

[Genghis]

It seems Mercedes could be right up there as well, Munners.

Maybe I'm quite glad that Jonathan Leg-End has been given the push.

[Deleted]

Well, I was up at 5.30 to watch practice two and, quoting the inevitable words of Daltrey and Townshend "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss", was surprised in parts and disappointed in others.....

Tyres - harder set lasts longer than expected, softs last 5 laps then drop off a cliff. Expect 3 stopping in the race althougyh this could puerely be bluster from the teams wanting somebody to believe them.

KERS - There was no graphic so gawd knows who is using it and when.

Adjustable rear wing - Looks surprisingly 'un-clunky' but, in my opinion, makes b*gger all difference. Alonso couldn't even catch a Torro Rosso in practice down the main straight using it and both cars use the same engine and gearbox. I am prepared to eat my own words but...... I don't think so!

Red Bull - One word, workmanlike. Fastest team in P1, 2nd fastest in P2. Webber looked a match at home for Vettel.

McLaren - Looks like Whitmarsh brought the right new bits with him and must be thanking Allah for trouble in the middle east. 2nd fastest P1, Easily fastest in P2. Worry will be tyres, Hamilton destroyed softs in 3 laps, Jenson was complaining of massive understeer after 5 (but still set fastest time)

Ferrari - Workmanlike again but Massa struggled to keep the F500 on the track and even the normally smooth Alfonso looked twitchy. 3rd fastest team both sessions but will improve.

Mercedes - Schumi is BACK! Rosberg outpaced him in P1 but P2? Schumi by 0.8sec and smooth as Jake Humphrey! Actually led P2 for a fair while. 4th best team and then a gap........ of nearly a second to.....

Renault - Underperformed badly. If this is the new Petrov then how many offs must he have had last year? Oh yeah, that's right, loads!! Heidfeld just looked trundly (if that's a word!)

Williams - Rubens looked fast but Maldonado is going to have to work harder than that if he doesn't want the pay driver tag. Both drivers went off at numerous points but Ruby looked happy enough.

Sauber - Oh look, winter testing = fast, grand prix = midfield. Perez is diamond tho, outpacing Kamikaze Kobyashi by 1 second in both sessions and waaaaaay less scarey with it.

Force India - Di Resta looked reasonable and suspect he was told to get on with the programme and don't bin it. Sutil lacked match fitness as they say in the game with a pigs bladder and a couple of outdoor cupboards.

Torro Rosso - Oh yeah, them..... didn't see them to be honest guv but the times tell you they were there, doing something in an OK kinda way.

Virgin - On the grass as often as the track, still 2 seconds behind everyone else, surprise was Devon Custard man outpacing Glock... who was Rhubarb!

Lotus - Ditto to Virgin, like they haven't been away, car identical to last year's, drivers ditto. Trulli looked bored and Kovalainen overdrove.

Hispania - No laps in P1, One installation lap in P2. Alledgedly they only brought enough parts for one car, guess we'll see if that's true tomorrow. Kolles looked like a cat trying to cough up a very unpleasant hairball, in public and live on television across m,ost of the known world. He should see Max if he enjoys public humiliation this much.

TTFN,
Pip ;D

[Genghis]

Pip, thanks for the detailed run down:

Quali report from the excellent Planet F1 website, as the Golden Boy takes a dominant pole position:

There was just no stopping F1's reigning World Champion Sebastian Vettel as the German picked up where he left off last season, claiming pole in Australia.

Vettel took pole position at Albert Park in a dominant display that left the other teams and his team-mate trailing. McLaren were the best of the rest with a strong performance from Lewis Hamilton who finished P2 ahead of Mark Webber and Jenson Button.

Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa managed P5 and P8 for Ferrari, but Michael Schumacher failed to make Q3 while team-mate Nico Rosberg took P7. Performance of the day came from Vitaly Petrov who put his Renault into P6.

Qualifying 1


With the ambient te,mperature as low as 16C and the trackl at just 18C Vitaly Petrov set the 2011 World Championship in action as his Renault headed out onto the Albert Park circuit for the first lap of Q1. He duly set the P1 time at 1:29.463, while Paul Di Resta was not far off in the Force India at 1:29.779.

The whole proceedings were interrupted by the Hispania team who had completed just six laps in morning practice. As BBC commentator David Coulthard said it was outrageous that HRT should be using a qualifying session to shake down their cars but that was the reality. Neither Narain Karthikeyan or Tonio Liuzzi looked like qualifying inside 107% but they did at least set some mildly competitive laps by the end.

Heikki Kovalainen was next up in P1 with a 1:29.254, followed by Nick Heidfeld 1:28.613, team-mate Vitaly Petrov 1:27.396 and then Sebastian Vettel showed what could be done on a set off hard tyres with a 1:26.657.

In the first session the front-runners, Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes all started on the hard tyre. Having set benchmark times they looked to whittle them down further. Mark Webber snatched P1 with a 1:25.900, Vettel took it back with a 1:25.515, then Lewis Hamilton took P1 with a 1:25.384 only to see Vettel take it back with a 1:25.296.

The Red Bulls and McLarens looked to be the class of the field with Ferrari and Mercedes struggling to make the tyre work. Because the slower teams jumped to the soft tyre straight away that put these slow runners in jeopardy because they had to follow suit. Michael Schumacher and the two Ferraris went onto soft tyre as they found themselves back in P11 and P12 in the dying minutes of the session.

With three minutes left to go it was the new teams firmly in the bottom six with Paul Di Resta's Force India in P.18. Di Resta hauled his car up to P16 which then put Massa in P17 and Fernando Alonso was only just below him in P15. Armed with the soft tyres Alonso managed to jump up to P3. Nick Heidfeld was now in the exit seat and he couldn't get the car round any quicker and stayed P.18.

So out went
18. Heidfeld
19. Kovalainen
20. Trulli
21. Glock
22. D'Ambrosio
23. Liuzzi
24. Karthikeyan
Virgin will have been relieved to finish within 107% but both HRT cars failed to break that barrier and it is unlikely the big teams will want them to use the race as a test, especially with bits falling off the cars. Disappointment of the session will have been Nick Heidfeld who saw his team-mate put the other Renault in third in Q1.

Qualifying 2
Sebastien Buemi set the P1 time with a none-too-shabby 1:26.053. With only two and half minutes gone Rubens Barrichello was already claiming P17 after he put a wheel onto the grass in the braking zone for Turn 3 and went straight on into the gravel. This immediately changed the plans of the Red Bull drivers who had gone out on soft tyres and couldn't use them at their best and so returned to the pits.

Not so for Lewis Hamilton who had another set of hard tyres on and was able to cruise past Rubens' stricken Williams as it was recovered, before going on to set the timing screens to purple with a P1 of 1:25.522. Hamilton's time was despite the most horrendous flat-spot as he locked his tyres into a right-hand turn.

Team-mate Jenson Button had opted for the softer tyre and took over the P1 slot with a 1:24.957. However the McLaren pace was put into context by Sebastian Vettel who was almost a second quicker with a 1:24.090.
It was in this session that Red Bull showed exactly how far they were in front of the rest. Behind the Red Bulls and McLarens the Ferraris weren't having that scary a time of it in Q2 now that everyone was starting to run on soft tyres and there were less mobile chicanes on the course.

Running into the final few minutes both Force Indias and both Williams looked unlikely to make it into Q3, but both Saubers and both Toro Rossos looked like they had chances. The two Mercedes should have been in there but Michael Schumacher could only put his Mercedes W02 into P11 on the first lap on his soft tyres. What was interesting was that he managed to make them last another lap for one final try.

Adrian Sutil tried vainly to get to grips with his DRS wing and opened it too early on the straight sending his car into a massive 360 spin but hitting no-one (his qualifying now over). Team-mate Di Resta jumped to P14 but not nearly enough. Kobayashi made it to a fantastic P6 while Nico Rosberg's P8 was a relief for Ross Brawn's team.

Round Schumacher came for his final attempt to get into Q3 but although he set a faster, Personal Best time, he stayed P11, after losing time in the final two turns. He ended up behind Rosberg and most surprisingly, Buemi and Kobayashi.

So out went
11. Schumacher
12. Alguersuari
13. Perez
14. DiResta
15. Maldonado
16. Sutil
17. Barrichello


Qualifying 3
The interesting aspect of Q3 was the strategy call for tyres. With cars starting on the tyres with which they set the fastest lap (not the last set) the teams' race strategy would be revealed by the tyres they chose for qualifying. Surprisingly all seemed to go for the yellow-walled soft tyres. This put Ferrari at a disadvantage with only one set left and so it was the two Mclarens first out of the pitlane followed by the two Red Bulls, both with the luxury of two runs.

Lewis Hamilton set provisional pole with a 1:24.501 with Button slotting into P2 three tenths behind. This was eclipsed by Sebastian Vettel with a 1:23.529. Although Mark Webber claimed P2, demoting Hamilton and Button to P3 and P4, he was only just ahead of the leading McLaren.

Fernando Alonso came out to challenge and had a disastrous opening tour that only put him P8 (out of 8) but he got his tyres to work on the second lap and his car up into P5, displacing Rosberg, Kobayashi and Buemi. However he didn't fare as badly as Felipe Massa who put his Ferrari 150 into a spin at Turn 1.

Vettel went out again but could go no quicker, while Lewis Hamilton, despite a KERS failure closed the gap to around 0.8 of a second and grab P2 in the process.

Vettel was typically upbeat with his performance, the big surprise being the revelation that he hadn't used KERS at all through his pole lap and the fact that he was so far in front of team-mate Mark Webber. In the closing seconds of the session Vitaly Petrov put his car in an amazing P6 while Massa stuck his Ferrari ahead of Kobayashi in P8 and Rosberg improved to P7.

It had been a dramatic three sessions with Red Bull reinforcing their testing dominance, Mclaren making the most remarkable recovery from gloomy pre-race predictions and Ferrari and Mercedes under-performing. No-one would have predicted a Sauber, a Toro Rosso and a Renault in Q3. With drivers admitting that the race Pirellis appear to be different from their testing Pirellis, it remains to be seen if the race will unfold with quite the drama that was expected of it.

FH

Times
1. The Golden Boy, Germany, Red Bull, 1:23.529
2. Hammy Hamster, Britain, McLaren, 1:24.307
3. Crumpie's mate, Australia, Red Bull, 1:24.395
4. The MIGHTY Button, Britain, McLaren, 1:24.799
5. The Spanish Flapperjack, Spain, Ferrari, 1:24.974
6. Vitaly Petrov, Russia, Renault, 1:25.247
7. Nico Rosberg, Germany, Mercedes, 1:25.421
8. Felipe Massa, Brazil, Ferrari, 1:25.599
9. Kamui Kobayashi, Japan, Sauber, 1:25.626
10. Sebastien Buemi, Switzerland, Toro Rosso, 1:27.066
Eliminated after second session
11. The Old Cobbler, Germany, Mercedes, 1:25.971
12. Jaime Alguersuari, Spain, Toro Rosso, 1:26.103
13. Sergio Perez, Mexico, Sauber, 1:26.108
14. Paul Di Resta, Britain, Force India, 1:26.739
15. Pastor Maldonado, Venezuela, Williams, 1:26.768
16. Adrian Sutil, Germany, Force India, 1:31.407
17. Rubens Barrichello, Brazil, Williams, no time set
Eliminated after first session
18. Nick Heidfeld, Germany, Renault, 1:27.239
19. Heikki Kovalainen, Finland, Lotus, 1:29.254
20. Jarno Trulli, Italy, Lotus, 1:29.342
21. Timo Glock, Germany, Virgin, 1:29.858
22. Jerome d'Ambrosio, Belgium, Virgin, 1:30.822
23. Vitantonio Liuzzi, Italy, Hispania, 1:32.978
24. Narain Karthikeyan, India, Hispania, 1:34.293

[Deleted]

A great win for the Golden Boy in Melbourne, and as Martin Brundle said, he's led virtually every lap of the last three GP's. He seems to have so much more pace than anyone else, including his team mate, Mark Webber who finished fifth in his home GP.

Drive of the day for me though goes to Vitali Petrov in the Renault who finished third for a place on the podium. It's great to see another team entering the battle for podium places - and even better that it was at the expense of Alonso in the Ferrari who finished fourth.

Hamilton finished in second, but has yet to pass scrutineering as he drove the last third of the race with a damaged undertray.

Button had a very poor start, dropping several places, and will be disappointed with his sixth place finish.

Got to feel for Nico Rosberg who was T-Boned by Rubens Barrichello. Ruby is one of my favourite drivers, and is far too experienced to go for a gap that just wasn't there, finishing Nico's race.

A good debut for Brit Paul DiResta, finishing in twelfth place, though at one point he looked on to score a point, and a special mention for Perez, with another impressive debut. He managed his tyres so carefully that he did the whole race on one stop!

Not exactly an incident packed race, but interesting to see the new DRS adjustable rear wing in play, and also the reinstatement of the KERS system. Amazing that Red Bull have the pace they do, and they revealed at the end of the race that they're not even using the KERS!

[Genghis]

The Golden Boy was unstoppable, he'll take some beating this year.

These new tyres are annoying, you don't get many decent battles, as soon as someone has been on someone's tail for a couple of laps, one of them disappears into the pits

Not sure why the mighty Button was penalised for overtaking mobile chicane Massa - yep, he had to leave the track, but only because the Mobile Chicane forced him to leave it at a time Button was already coming though. Obviously Jean Todt doesn't allow Ferraris to be passed

Meanwhile, I blinked and missed the Old Cobbler's participation in the race ;D

Result:
1. The Golden Boy
2. Hammy Hamster
3. Alonso's nemesis ;D
4. Spanish Flapperjack
5. Crumpie's mate
6. The MIGHTY Button
7. One-stop Perez
8. No nickname Kobayashi
9. Mobile Chicane
10. Some bloke who drives for Toro Rosso

[Deleted]

Mar 27, 2011 8:35:32 GMT Genghis said:

8. No nickname Kobayashi

Shall we nick Brundle's and call him Kamikaze? ;D ;D

[Genghis]

Mar 27, 2011 8:46:17 GMT @munners said:

Mar 27, 2011 8:35:32 GMT Genghis said:

8. No nickname Kobayashi

Shall we nick Brundle's and call him Kamikaze? ;D ;D

That'll do ;D

[schumi]

Mar 27, 2011 7:52:54 GMT @munners said:

Amazing that Red Bull have the pace they do, and they revealed at the end of the race that they're not even using the KERS!

Not the whole package, but they have a mini KERS system they can charge before the race and use to gain an advantage on the start, apparently.

[Genghis]

Both Sauber cars disqualified due to some obscure technical infrigement. What a coincidence that they both managed to beat a Ferrari and then get disqualified. The Mobile Chicane thus gain 4 championship points.

EDIT: A post from Schumi

[Deleted]

Mar 27, 2011 21:50:44 GMT @schumi said:

Mar 27, 2011 7:52:54 GMT @munners said:

Amazing that Red Bull have the pace they do, and they revealed at the end of the race that they're not even using the KERS!

Not the whole package, but they have a mini KERS system they can charge before the race and use to gain an advantage on the start, apparently.

They do, but the grinning idiot was interviewed after the race and he said they didn't have KERS on the car at all this weekend.

Nice to see you on here - however occasional your contribution!