Grand Prix 2012 British Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

After a Grand Prix in Valencia which was probably better than all the others put together it shows that F1 2012 is completely mad. For the first time this season there is a driver with 2 wins after Fernando Alonso benefited from a retirement from Vettel and any pressure from behind was gone when Grosjean lost drive not long after Vettel stopped. The big talking point came on the penultimate lap involving Maldonado and Hamilton which resulted in Hamilton being pitched into the wall and Maldonado lost a podium which seemed pretty certain as it was only a matter of time before he passed the McLaren who had fallen off the cliff.

Without the safety car it was likely that Vettel would have won at a canter as he was a long way ahead before the race changing event in the middle of the race, but he pulled up soon after the restart gifting Alonso the lead and he would keep this until the end of the race, and because of Hamilton's issues he inherited the lead of the Championship with Mark Webber's fourth place meaning he jumped up into second place. Perhaps the biggest shock of the weekend was a first podium for Michael Schumacher since his return to the sport in 2010. Both his and Webber's strategy meant they were able to come through the field and claim major points just like Alonso did as all three started outside the top 10.

Fernando Alonso's victory marks a dramatic turnaround in fortunes for Ferrari as he stormed to victory in a car which was barely faster than the midfield cars at the start of the season, but now the car is as consistently fast as the Lotuses and the McLarens, certainly in race trim anyway but not quite up to the level of the Red Bulls as shown in the early race but we've still yet to see a straight fight between Alonso and Vettel which would provide a true reflection of where the teams are at.

Once again Lotus had the pace for a victory and had Grosjean not have retired he could well have possibly claimed a maiden win for him and the team. Kimi Raikkonen spent most of the race stuck behind Hamilton which prevented him from having a shot at Alonso and by the time he got past there were just a few laps remaining and claimed a comfortable second place which he said underwhelmed him, although since when has he ever been anything but that!?

Looking ahead to the British Grand Prix the atmosphere will once again be fever pitch as McLaren could well be in their best position yet to compete for victory with the high speed corners suiting the MP4-27 and knowing the British summer it could well be a cool day which will suit the car even better and both Hamilton and Button will be fighting for the win. Jenson Button has had a horrid record at Silverstone with no podium finishes in the 12 years he has been driving in Formula One. Hamilton has a better record with podiums in 2007 and 2010 and a famous win in the wet in 2008 where he destroyed the competition.

I know that quite a few members from this site are going to the grand prix and I hope that you all have a great weekend, providing McLaren can nail down their pit stops there is a very good chance that a British driver could be at the top step of the podium, or who knows, if Lotus can finally find the sweetspot then perhaps an eighth winner can be on the cards!

For Galahad's brilliant circuit write up - http://cliptheapex.com/pages/silverstone-circuit/
 
The helmet cams.....really scary watching exactly what the driver is seeing, or not seeing at the moment.....I don't know if they all teams have them...but Macca LH & JB do.
 
Sky is free for me. I do however pay for cable in the US, and SPEED doesn't even broadcast FP1. :no:


Keke......SPEED does live streaming of FP1 and FP3, but without any commentary. That's the reason why I watch those sessions on Sky, which is also free for me. FP3 will be on tomorrow morning at 5 o'clock am EST, three hours before qualifying.
 
How about this for a race 'prediction'?

Mclaren on pole (Not Hamilton, he's in 4th place with Webber and Raikkonen between them). It's a wet race, with the rain falling steadily.
The first three make poor starts. Hamilton gets a good one up the inside of turn 1 but his team mate just fends him off, with slight contact between them.
Webber in one Red Bull spins, ending up at the back, while Vettel in the other touches with a Scotsman, sending them both into a synchronised spin into the gravel and out of the race.
Hamilton is clearly quicker than his team mate and after five laps makes a bold move down the inside at Stowe to take the lead.
Raikkonen then passes the second Mclaren and begins to catch Hamilton as the rain eases, closing to within about a second. But then his team make a tactical error at the first round of pit stops, leaving the flying Finn on old intermediates.
The rain increases again and Raikkonen loses lots of time. Hamilton meanwhile gores serenely on, pulling out an increasingly large gap on the field while many others aquaplane and spin for a pastime on the very wet track.
Alonso's team mate passes him into 5th place and looks like gaining a rare and impressive win over the Spaniard, until later in the race he too aquaplanes off into the gravel at Abbey, and out of the race.
Senna, in the Williams, through impressively smooth driving and a good strategy, takes second place while the old stager in the Mercedes, under Ross Brawn's tactical guidance, moves into third on full wet tyres while most remain on inters.
As the race moves into its final phase and the rain eases once more, it becomes a question for the leader of whether to stay on inters or change to full wets. He opts for the inters, has one small scare when he takes an excursion across the grass, but after that goes smoothly on to win his home Grand Prix almost a lap ahead of the Williams and more than a lap ahead of the rest of the field.
 
Weathers appauling really do feel sorry for those camping out at Silverstone. You wouldn't think it's July!

Anyways hopefully the weather can spice the race up this weekend and we get some unpredictable results :).

Nice to see Lewis back on form, fingers-crossed he can keep it up throughout the season and Mclaren don't mess up his race again.
 
The fans actually camping are the luck ones.Many fans never got there.
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/100948 Silverstone organisers have warned fans travelling to the British Grand Prix that they can expect further delays and have promised a full investigation into the traffic chaos that people trying to attend Friday's practice day were met with.
With large areas of the country under flood alert, and 80,000 fans expected to come to the circuit on Friday, huge tailbacks quickly built up on the A43 approach road to Silverstone and its surrounding routes as unprecedented levels of rain over the past few days rendered some campsites and car parks waterlogged.
The traffic problems were caused largely by Silverstone's official campsite, as well as privately owned ones, turning away large numbers of fans who had not booked in advance and returning them to the queuing traffic on Friday morning. This created a back up.
The delays led to many fans being forced to miss practice and spend hours waiting in their cars trying to get in the circuit.
 
McLaren, Sauber, Merc all look good. Rosberg looked good through Becketts, and it felt like there were 4 Saubers out there. There was a big cheer when one of them broke the silence of P2 :).

Nice and sunny here now, hope it carries over to tomorrow.
 
From the press conference.It was not the lack of tyres that stopped them running.
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/100970
Q. (Dieter Rencken – The Citizen) To Bob Fernley, as team principal, today you did very little running this morning in particular, certainly nothing in anger. I would assume that's because of the limitation of wet weather tyres for the weekend; you don't know how much running you'll do. If one looks at the cost that spectators have paid plus some of them spent five hours in traffic trying to get here, is it really fair on them and is there any solution that you can think of to improve the spectacle under such circumstances?

BF: Not really, Dieter. As a team, we obviously feel very very guilty that we're not out there running for the spectators but on the other hand, we don't gain anything from it. With all due respect, even if we'd had the tyres we wouldn't have run, because the risk to reward is the wrong ratio for us, and it was more of a precautious programme than it is by taking unnecessary risks.
Q. (Kate Walker – Girl Racer) On the subject of the limited running that we saw today, do you guys have any messages of sympathy and support for the fans, some of whom weren't actually able to get to the circuit before the last F1 car left it?

BF: The answer's yes, we have terrible guilt for the fans in not running, but what happened in terms of them being able to get into the circuit, obviously I'm not aware of, because I didn't even know there was a problem to be honest with you. We've just been working ourselves. If they have had problems, obviously we sympathise with them and I'm sure that's something to do with traffic management of the circuit or something like that that needs to be resolved. It's not something from the teams, the teams can only try and put the cars out on the circuit and give the spectacle and I regret today that we couldn't do that. As I say, it's more to do with our side of it in terms of the risk and the benefit and are we going to learn anything? Until the last half an hour of today, there wasn't any benefit in running.
 
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