Australian GP Friday

[wombat666]

Practice 1. Fine and warm, dry.
1 11 Robert Kubica Renault 1:26.927 22
2 4 Nico Rosberg Mercedes Benz GP Ltd 1:27.126 0.199 18
3 1 Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1:27.482 0.555 22
4 7 Felipe Massa Ferrari 1:27.511 0.584 18
5 5 Sebastian Vettel RBR-Renault 1:27.686 0.759 23
6 8 Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1:27.747 0.820 21
7 2 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1:27.793 0.866 22
8 16 Sebastien Buemi STR-Ferrari 1:28.014 1.087 21
9 12 Vitaly Petrov Renault 1:28.114 1.187 25
10 15 Vitantonio Liuzzi Force India-Mercedes 1:28.192 1.265 18
11 0 Paul di Resta Force India-Mercedes 1:28.537 1.610 25
12 3 Michael Schumacher Mercedes Benz GP Ltd 1:28.550 1.623 19
13 17 Jaime Alguersuari STR-Ferrari 1:28.572 1.645 21
14 6 Mark Webber RBR-Renault 1:28.683 1.756 22
15 22 Pedro de la Rosa BMW Sauber-Ferrari 1:29.465 2.538 13
16 9 Rubens Barrichello Williams-Cosworth 1:29.712 2.785 18
17 10 Nico Hulkenberg Williams-Cosworth 1:30.249 3.322 26
18 23 Kamui Kobayashi BMW Sauber-Ferrari 1:31.588 4.661 5
19 18 Jarno Trulli Lotus-Cosworth 1:31.652 4.725 13
20 19 Heikki Kovalainen Lotus-Cosworth 1:31.654 4.727 26
21 25 Lucas di Grassi Virgin-Cosworth 1:32.831 5.904 25
22 21 Bruno Senna HRT-Cosworth 1:33.401 6.474 24
23 20 Karun Chandhok HRT-Cosworth 1:34.251 7.324 19
24 24 Timo Glock Virgin-Cosworth 1:34.925 7.998 8

Practice 2. Damp and warm, just enough precipitation to be 'interesting'.
1 2 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1:25.801 13
2 1 Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1:26.076 0.275 16
3 6 Mark Webber RBR-Renault 1:26.248 0.447 22
4 3 Michael Schumacher Mercedes Benz GP Ltd 1:26.511 0.710 16
5 12 Vitaly Petrov Renault 1:26.732 0.931 26
6 16 Sebastien Buemi STR-Ferrari 1:26.832 1.031 29
7 14 Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 1:26.834 1.033 22
8 15 Vitantonio Liuzzi Force India-Mercedes 1:26.835 1.034 17
9 9 Rubens Barrichello Williams-Cosworth 1:26.904 1.103 25
10 4 Nico Rosberg Mercedes Benz GP Ltd 1:26.956 1.155 22
11 11 Robert Kubica Renault 1:27.108 1.307 28
12 22 Pedro de la Rosa BMW Sauber-Ferrari 1:27.108 1.307 25
13 23 Kamui Kobayashi BMW Sauber-Ferrari 1:27.455 1.654 23
14 10 Nico Hulkenberg Williams-Cosworth 1:27.545 1.744 25
15 8 Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1:29.025 3.224 20
16 5 Sebastian Vettel RBR-Renault 1:29.134 3.333 19
17 7 Felipe Massa Ferrari 1:29.591 3.790 21
18 19 Heikki Kovalainen Lotus-Cosworth 1:29.860 4.059 15
19 17 Jaime Alguersuari STR-Ferrari 1:30.510 4.709 43
20 18 Jarno Trulli Lotus-Cosworth 1:30.695 4.894 17
21 24 Timo Glock Virgin-Cosworth 1:32.117 6.316 9
22 25 Lucas di Grassi Virgin-Cosworth No time 2
23 20 Karun Chandhok HRT-Cosworth No time 1
24 21 Bruno Senna HRT-Cosworth No time 0

Speed Trap.
1 1 Jenson Button 17:58:15 307.7
2 11 Robert Kubica 16:54:04 306.6
3 2 Lewis Hamilton 16:53:57 306.3
4 14 Adrian Sutil 17:52:26 305.5
5 12 Vitaly Petrov 16:55:10 304.4
6 10 Nico Hulkenberg 16:52:28 303.1
7 3 Michael Schumacher 17:55:38 303.1
8 4 Nico Rosberg 16:51:07 302.6
9 9 Rubens Barrichello 16:55:06 302.2
10 15 Vitantonio Liuzzi 17:58:30 301.8
11 6 Mark Webber 17:55:52 301.2
12 8 Fernando Alonso 18:00:44 300.8
13 16 Sebastien Buemi 16:55:08 300.5
14 19 Heikki Kovalainen 17:58:38 300.0
15 7 Felipe Massa 17:49:24 299.9
16 17 Jaime Alguersuari 17:57:01 297.2
17 24 Timo Glock 17:53:20 297.1
18 18 Jarno Trulli 16:53:28 296.9
19 5 Sebastian Vettel 17:54:48 296.0
20 22 Pedro de la Rosa 16:50:48 295.8
21 23 Kamui Kobayashi 17:56:31 293.8
22 25 Lucas di Grassi 16:51:31 286.2
23 20 Karun Chandhok 16:58:39 53.1

Some 'interesting' numbers here, along with several untold stories and some surprising omissions.

In no special order:
Paul di Resta, the Force India test and reserve driver was quick and confident, enough so to make the regular drivers (perhaps) consider their positions within the front line!
Vitaly Petrov was impressive but on low fuel and soft rubber he should have been.
Mark Webber ran heavy fuel in P1, on what might have been race settings, his time in P2 was set on hard rubber in dampish conditions, no idea of his fuel load.
Vettel appeared to be on the same routine in reverse but speared off early in P2 after losing the front end due to 'wake turbulence', I believe Schumacher made a comment regarding disturbed air effecting his car from as far back as 3 seconds!
Kobayashi was quick (or looked quick) but very ragged.
Both Alonso and Massa seemed to be concentrating on race set-ups.
Hamilton and Button were consistently fast, both on soft rubber and (it appears) medium too light fuel.
Rosberg was quick in P1 but Michael Schumacher exhibited some fine style in the damp P 2 and outpaced him.
The Force India pair were quick but I can't recall their fuel or rubber configurations, possibly light and soft.
Robert Kubica wasn't as quick as his team-mate but he appeared to be on a race day set-up in P1 and was caught out early in the damp part of P2.

Qualifying will be a very different game of course ....... http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/images/custom_smilies/wink.gif

FTR, the 'newbies' were rather sad, miles off the pace, and all this 2010 crop of 'cars' are dead ugly, almost as bad as the 2007-2008 bunch.
Been a good day out, time for a few zeds, need to be up earlyish tomorrow

[Cazzie]

I have to go to bed early and set my alarm so I can catch quals and the race wombat, They had the practice session on SPEED this morn too, but I was sound asleep. Thanks for the results.

Caz

[demorier]

Lewis Hamilton got busted by the cops for hooning. Doing wheelies in a hired Mercedes sports car while leaving the Melbourne track Friday evening.

Gawd ...what a bone head. Police are coming down harder all the time on hoons over this way.

[6297J]

Lewis Hamilton got busted by the cops for hooning. Doing wheelies in a hired Mercedes sports car while leaving the Melbourne track Friday evening.

Gawd ...what a bone head. Police are coming down harder all the time on hoons over this way.


What a bone head indeed - looks like it affected him as well as he just stuffed up qualifying.

[Wing_Z]

Vettel on pole looks very strong.
2nd grid slot Webber did his best, but his Red Bull team mate looks better.
Alonso 3rd, at least he's on the clean side of the track
And surprise! Button up in 4th.
Where's his team mate?
Nowhere, other than due to make a little court appearance next week.
Please do not leave the country, sir...
Is this another sportsman letting the Good Life interfere with his game?
The media will dine out on this for weeks.

[demorier]

I think the Brit tabloids are already tearing him to pieces. Vettel really rang the neck out of that Red Bull machine late in P3...lucky not to loose it completely on those last few laps.

[huub vink]

Lewis Hamilton must have been impressed by the Australian police as he only qualified 11th...... ;)

Red Bull obviously has the car to beat at this moment. The balance in this car must be very good as the best driver from the Renault team (with the same engine) only qualified 9th.

The teams using Mercedes engines seem to be in balance and I think you can't really compare the teams using Ferrari engines as there is too much difference in available budgets.

The team using Cosworth engines are reasonably in balance as well.... the are all at the back of the starting grid ;)

Cheers,
Huub

[Wing_Z]

Lewis Hamilton must have been impressed by the Australian police as he only qualified 11th...... ;)

He really did pick the wrong spot to play...
Australian police are quite picky about enforcing road rules, never more so than the state of Victoria.
I was breathalysed one evening in Melbourne after being picked up for an apparent u-turn out my hotel forecourt.
It turned out to be a legal right turn, but they had me blow anyway.
Luckily this was before the party, and so they let me go with a stern warning not to do what they thought I was doing in the first place!

[redriver6]

hmm evidently its going to be 'live' on Speed channel about an hour from now (0030hrs CST).

i think i'll stay up and check it out.

[redriver6]

wow....theres a Senna in there

[redriver6]

mayem on the first lap

[Ferry_vO]

Great race from Button and Kubica! :applause: Good call from Button to go to the slicks early and then doing 52 laps on one set of soft tyres! Kubica once again proveing to be a real racer.
Hamilton a real @$$ critizing his team both over the radio and in front of the BBC camera for picking the wrong strategy.. :banghead:
Webber not too smart on that last lap crash with Hamilton and Alonso, throwing away a possible fourth position.

Overall a great race though, much better than Bahrain!

1. Jenson Button Britain McLaren-Mercedes 58 laps 1hr 33m 36.531s
2. Robert Kubica Poland Renault-Renault +00m 12.0s
3. Felipe Massa Brazil Ferrari-Ferrari +00m 14.4s
4. Fernando Alonso Spain Ferrari-Ferrari +00m 16.3s
5. Nico Rosberg Germany Mercedes-Mercedes +00m 16.6s
6. Lewis Hamilton Britain McLaren-Mercedes +00m 29.8s
7. Vitantonio Liuzzi Italy Force India-Mercedes +00m 59.8s
8. Rubens Barrichello Brazil Williams-Cosworth +01m 00.5s
9. Mark Webber Australia Red Bull-Renault +01m 07.3s
10. Michael Schumacher Germany Mercedes-Mercedes +01m 09.3s

11. Jaime Alguersuari Spain Toro Rosso-Ferrari +01m 11.3s
12. Pedro de la Rosa Spain BMW Sauber-Ferrari +01m 14.0s
13. Heikki Kovalainen Finland Lotus-Cosworth +2 laps
14. Karun Chandhok India HRT-Cosworth +5 laps

Rtd Timo Glock Germany Virgin-Cosworth 41 laps completed
Rtd Sebastian Vettel Germany Red Bull-Renault 25 laps completed
Rtd Lucas di Grassi Brazil Virgin-Cosworth 24 laps completed
Rtd Adrian Sutil Germany Force India-Mercedes 9 laps completed
Rtd Vitaly Petrov Russia Renault-Renault 9 laps completed
Rtd Bruno Senna Brazil HRT-Cosworth 4 laps completed
Rtd Sebastien Buemi Switzerland Toro Rosso-Ferrari 0 laps completed
Rtd Nico Hulkenberg Germany Williams-Cosworth 0 laps completed
Rtd Kamui Kobayashi Japan BMW Sauber-Ferrari 0 laps completed

Dns Jarno Trulli Italy Lotus-Cosworth

[demorier]

Good to see Kubica and Renault in there to mix the points up some more.

[Wing_Z]

I really enjoyed the race, too.
Kubica just drove a measured pace into second place, very well done.
Also Liuzzi deserves some praise for a steady race and useful points.

Button was plain lucky, in my view.
His team mate drove straight past him when the playing field was level, which was more than he could handle.
Straight into the pits then, to create some excuse, some reason, for being bested. Umm, tyres!
That the track conditions changed sufficiently in the next couple of laps, he could not have foreseen, and the resulting pitlane traffic jam cost everybody else places.
Hamilton would've beaten him if McLaren had not made the wrong call (Yes it was pretty petulant of him to blab all over the radio! A Mclaren Pratt1 and Pratt2 team then?)

Anthony Davidson said it well during practice: Jenson is a driver who performs really well when the car is absolutely matched to his preference. But when it's not, he's rubbish. In my view, that is not the mark of a great driver, let alone a World Champion.

Schumacher won a race in his time, having lost all but fifth gear - a true champion.

It still is a fact of F1 that you won't see overtaking unless the field is jumbled by other factors.
The fact that Hamilton could not pass the much slower Massa points to that - not to mention how long Schumacher took to get past Alguersuari!

But Australia produced a great race, Melbourne is a superb venue.

[Ferry_vO]

Button was plain lucky, in my view.
His team mate drove straight past him when the playing field was level, which was more than he could handle.
Straight into the pits then, to create some excuse, some reason, for being bested. Umm, tyres!
That the track conditions changed sufficiently in the next couple of laps, he could not have foreseen, and the resulting pitlane traffic jam cost everybody else places.

He mentioned during the press conference that his car was really bad on the intermediates so he made the decision to go to the slick tyre early. His steady pace and his clean driving style won him the race after that. His race engineer confirmed this for the BBC cameras. Once his tyres heated up and everybody saw his lap time dropping all the other cars got stuck in the pitlane because everyone pitted at the same time. Massa lost a few positions there, Kubica won a lot.

Hamilton could have made the call for tyres himself, but instead he left it to the team and destroyed two sets of tyres by pushing really hard. The top four drivers drove slower, but gained time by making one less stop.

[wombat666]

I'm just back from another long day (21:25 Sunday evening) and too tired to get into a lengthy PM.
Button really did a number on Hamilton, it's better to be lucky and good, while Louise threw a huge tanty right after he climbed out of the car, stupidly in front of many people.
Bloody Muppet!!
Vettel was SOL, and the Webber-Hamilton incident was a 'racing incident', one backed off rather unexpectedly while the other was a bit ambitious, stuff happens.
Kubica was excellent in a rather ordinary car, while in complete contrast Kobayashi seems to be doing the usual 'Japanese Driver' routine.
I assume (not having bothered to look at the TV coverage yet) the usual 'experts' were muttering about 'wing failure', from our position it looked like brain fade.
Glock actually looked good aboard the 'Virgin', and Liuzzi made a fair enough job aboard the Force India, but the newbie teams were not impressive, as the one 'Lotus' (Lotus? ....hardly!) only finished because of the driver and the HRT was just slow and Chandhok seemed to be just keeping the car running instead of racing.
Schumacher's apparent lack of pace was to be expected once he was mired in traffic, he mentioned earlier in the week that the wake turbulence began to be felt from as far behind as 3 seconds, and it was all too obvious that once the circuit dried off and the chasing pack caught up they all had the same problem.
All in all it was reasonable but not great and the rest of the season will be similar unless it rains at each round.
Time I caught up on some zeds.
:ernae:

"redriver6 wow....theres a Senna in there"
Not for long!!

[Ferry_vO]

Kubica was excellent in a rather ordinary car, while in complete contrast Kobayashi seems to be doing the usual 'Japanese Driver' routine.
I assume (not having bothered to look at the TV coverage yet) the usual 'experts' were muttering about 'wing failure', from our position it looked like brain fade.

TV cameras picked up the accident with Kamui already in the barriers with his front wing stuck under the car, before plowing into Buemi and Hulkenberg. First statement by Kobayashi suggests he had no idea just when and where he damaged his wing.. Too much 'Banzai' and not enough brains IMHO!




Schumacher's apparent lack of pace was to be expected once he was mired in traffic, he mentioned earlier in the week that the wake turbulence began to be felt from as far behind as 3 seconds, and it was all too obvious that once the circuit dried off and the chasing pack caught up they all had the same problem.

Deduct 30 seconds from his time for replacing a front wing and he would have been right behind Rosberg.



All in all it was reasonable but not great and the rest of the season will be similar unless it rains at each round.

It was pretty entertaining on TV though!



"redriver6 wow....theres a Senna in there"
Not for long!!

Well at least there will be until his pockets are empty.. ;)

[Cazzie]

You think you needs zeds!

I'm up from three hours of sleep. I wouldn't have missed it for anything given the rain. An F-1 race is only good in the wet, they need sprinklers at all tracks,

Looks as though our race (Martinsville) will be a rainer. All I know is I am not there and I would be by this time were I going. Flood watch here from noon today until midnight.

As said, I'll wait out today, if they race, I'll see it on TV, if not, I'm a lucky bloke and I'll drive up tomorrow and get a ticket real cheap. Besides the Criterium National bike race finishes this afternoon and I watch Lance any chance I get!

Did go up to the truck race yesterday, only a 30 minute drive, only costs $20.00 Yankee, which is cheap fare for any American sports event. Put in the fact that Matinsville has the best and cheapest hot dogs on the circuit ($1.25 each) and one has a good event for little expenditure. Throw in the fact that hardly anyone shows up for a truck race, so one can sit where ever one pleases and it's a no-brainer on a clear day for a motorhead. Race had many cautions, the truck race is always for me more interesting than the Cup race. It was longer than your race too wombat, too long at three hours for the cool temps (50 degrees) and a truck event.

Caz

[Panther_99FS]

I thought it was quite the good race....:)

-Too bad yet again for Vettel....
-Great seeing Massa up there...
-Nico Rosberg seems to be coming too now....

[Wing_Z]

Now you mention Massa...
He is a top-ranked driver in a top team, paid...who knows how many millions.
And then on the team radio from race engineer to driver (I can't remember who was hauling him in?):
"Felipe, you must brake earlier into the corner, so you can slow him down. Then accelerate fast down the straight!"
I hope Massa is sharing some of his considerable pay with Rob Smedley... ;)

[Panther_99FS]

To come from the kind injury that he had, heck he can have all the coaching he needs....That's why it's a team sport :)

[Wing_Z]

He did make a brave comeback, and it's great to have him back.
However, he gets paid too much money for his talents, to have his pit crew instruct him on driving tactics.
It's unheard of, in the prima donna circles of F1 racing drivers.
Martin Brundle almost choked on his microphone when he heard this, too.
That's what made me wonder what goes on.

[wombat666]

Frankly, as 'Coaching' from the sidelines is banned in many forms of 'Sport' (ie Tennis) then I really believe it should be eliminated from the so-called top tier of racing.
In fact, except for NASCAR (they can't function without spotters due too their roundy-roundy tracks) I'd ban it completly.
That includes our V8 series BTW.
MotoGP and Superbikes rely on pit boards, and seem to do very well without electronic hand holding.
Top level car drivers should be capable of making their own decisions ........ :173go1:
If it's a team sport then the vehicles should be capable of seating the entire team!
Bus racing anyone?