2012 Australian Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

I guess no matter how good the guys at Cosworth are they haven't had the head start the Renault, Merc and Ferrari guys have had on them. One thing I will say about Cosworth though - does anyone remember a single engine failure they've had since they came back in in 2010? I can't think of one. Thats some good going.

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Maybe he was just being nice so as not to hurt their feelings

I don't know how long it will be before this thread gets locked but I made an observation that nobody else seems to have noticed so it could be my imagination.

I think I heard this message at about lap 9 or 10 when Ted was down a McLaren Jenson's pace had dropped off slightly and and Ted said that the team had told him to save fuel and yet it seemed only moments later there was a message saying something like Okay Jenson you have saved enough fuel now it's okay to push.

Given the time delay it takes for us to hear the message Jenson could only have been saving fuel for two or three laps.

Is it possible to save enough fuel in a couple of laps if they were as marginal on fuel as Whitmarsh is saying or is he lying, trying to spook the other teams?

I for one think this is another case of you've got to short shift every corner Seb we need this.... By the way what exactly did they need they had already won everything?

Thought I ought to post this in the Australia thread. Anyone else see it as a great advert for DRS? With the tyres more even and strategies very close, we still got lots of overtaking, on a street-type circuit. The overtaking came all over the circuit. Very few passes would be considered easy. It makes it look like the tyres were responsible for the extremely easy passes and DRS is actually the more natural passing system, similar to the speed differential caused by a good slip-stream. My mind is yet to be made up with DRS, but if they set it up the way we had it in Australia at all circuits, I think they are closer to getting a good balance between challenging, but not impossible.

Considering the fuel saving cost them 2nd place, I doubt they would have only kept a 2-3 second gap to Vettel between the stops. I find it highly unlikely that it was mind games and it was actually Whitmarsh being genuine. After all, we didn't see Hamilton attempt any sort of move up the inside of Seb, which suggests to me that they didn't want him to risk any sort of fuel sabotaging manoeuvre.

Just seen some tweets from an insider who was at Melbourne. Apparently Lewis had a different setup to Jenson in that he had a higher top speed in qualifying, which is backed up by the FIA top speeds. This helped him in qualifying as he could make maximum use of the DRS, whereas Jenson possibly hit the limiter, but Jenson's car was set up better for the race when DRS was not in use. We've seen this done a lot by Vettel in the past and this may explain some of the speed difference in the race. One may ask why Jenson got so close to Lewis in quali if Lewis' car was set up for qualifying, but, we never saw Lewis' second run as he made a mistake at the 1st corner and he could have most probably gone a couple of tenths quicker.

2012 Australian Overtaking

I've calculated the average lap time for the Australian GP to give us an idea of race pace. I have deleted lap times as the result of pit stops, inlaps, outlaps and accidents. Obviously there are limitations to this, as it doesn't take into account traffic, but can provide a general idea.

1 Button.......... 01:31.928
2 Vettel............ 01:32.111
3 Hamilton....... 01:32.129
4 Webber........ 01:32.435
5 Alonso......... 01:32.799
6 Maldonado.. 01:32.850
7 Rosberg...... 01:33.028
8 Raikkonen... 01:33.206
9 Ricciardo......01:33.307
10 Vergne....... 01:33.317
11 Perez......... 01:33.322
12 Kobayashi. 01:33.360
13 Di Resta.... 01:33.429
14 Glock......... 01:36.608

In this one, I have adjusted the times set by drivers who didn't finish, relative to the average at the time of their exit. This again has limitations, particularly for drivers who went out very early (Schumacher).

Button.......... 01:31.928
Vettel............ 01:32.111
Hamilton...... 01:32.129
Webber....... 01:32.435
Alonso......... 01:32.799
Schumacher 01:32.849*
Maldonado.. 01:32.850
Rosberg...... 01:33.028
Raikkonen... 01:33.206
Ricciardo..... 01:33.307
Vergne......... 01:33.317
Perez........... 01:33.322
Kobayashi... 01:33.360
Di Resta...... 01:33.429
Massa.......... 01:33.747*
Senna.......... 01:33.965*
Petrov.......... 01:34.338*
Kovalinen.... 01:34.514*
Glock........... 01:36.608
Pic............... 01:37.235*
*adjusted

Thanks John.

I guess I should give Maldonado a modicum of credit.

The race edit is now on the F1 website: http://www.formula1.com/video/race_edits/

Nothing new or particularly interesting though.