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

Going into the 7th race of the season we are now hitting new territory as far as different race winners are concerned as for the first time in history 6 different drivers have won the first 6 races with 5 different constructors as Red Bull are the only team to have had more than one driver win a race with victories in Bahrain and Monaco, the way things are going there could easily be 10 winners from 10 races with people like Hamilton, Raikkonen, Grosjean and Schumacher yet to win this season, and with Canada pretty much being Hamilton's best track, it could easily be 7 winners from 7 even though McLaren have been floundering in recent weeks.

Despite this downturn in form, Lewis Hamilton lies just 13 points off Fernando Alonso who no-one would have predicted to have been leading the championship after 6 races going into the opening race where Ferrari had a car which struggled to even get near the top 10 let alone fight for wins and podiums, but improvements with the car allied with supreme driving and consistency from Alonso has seen him top the table from Vettel who's clever strategy in Monaco nearly get him onto the podium despite starting from 10th on the grid.

While Ferrari have made the biggest improvements (even Massa has been better, even though one race a season does not make) it seems McLaren have surprisingly made the biggest backwards step. In Melbourne they had the quickest car and they romped to a comfortable 1-2 and many wondered if they were going to have a Red Bull type domination season, but Button hasn't won since that race and Hamilton hasn't won at all even though he has 3 pole positions so far (2 if you discount the one in Spain) but while Hamilton has made the best of a bad job on the Sunday it has gone even worse for Button who is struggling to even make the points and his performances are a shadow of his 2011 form. Hamilton has improved considerably but surely the pit stop problems and other issues will be getting to him if it costs him a shot at the title, it'll be 5 years since he won the title if the 2012 title slips away and with contracts soon to be under negotiation it could play a part in what he decides to do.

If the 2012 Canadian Grand Prix is even half as good as the 2011 race we are in for a treat, I dont think there will be a race like the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix ever again and ranks up there as one of the best I have ever watched and the 4 hour marathon was certainly worth the 2 hour rain delay in the middle. But even in the dry Canada serves up great racing with recent years being a testament to that and with the unpredictable nature of 2012 so far this seasons race will not be an exception and while overtakes in Monaco were only just in the teens, there could be nearly 10 times that in Montreal. Some say that this seasons unpredictability can be a bad thing, but really, it's so much better than the Schumacher years of the early 2000s and even better than 2011 as while there was very exciting racing in 2011, for a lot of races so far this year that action has been extended to the very front as well which is where the casual viewer could determine the entertainment value of a certain race.

For Galahad 's superb circuit write up - http://cliptheapex.com/pages/circuit-gilles-villeneuve/
 
Kewee mjo
Given the session is only 90 minutes and there is very little time to gain track knowledge you would think Mclaren being the professional team of technical excellence would have thought about the unnecessary time wasted to rebuild and put on parts .

So 1 hour 45 minutes is a hell of a lot of time to do this ...imagine if this was a title decider race and the Mclaren driver is sitting in the garage whilst their rival are gaining invaluable track knowledge

Remember Mclaren had problems last year with their L - pods which was too complicated to take part and put back together in testing before they reverted to the Red Bull set up because it took too long

The engineers and mechanics are wasted in maintenance rather than focusing on the race preparation.

why do I see some of the problems at Mclaren seems to coincide with Sam Michael joining the team !:givemestrength:
 
mjo Kewee

You think about Mclaren's reputation as a team of technical excellence and professionalism but this is a latest series of problems that have blighted the team this season

Gary himself as a designer engineer has been in the same situation many times before with Jordan and Stewart and would not have been impressed that the team takes half a day to fix the car

It does seem Mclaren are making a lot of little mistakes here and there each weekend which is having an impact on their results on Sunday !
 
It was a simple mechanical failure. It happens sometimes. When they realized they couldn't find the root cause they changed the back end of the car. Another hour and a half lost, but surely that was their best option to be sure the problem didn't carry over into 3rd practice and qualifying. Sometimes what appears to be a poor option is the only option. Ultimately they need to provide Button with a reliable car for qualifying and the race, they've made the best choice to achieve that even though it meant losing most of Jenson's track time.
 
Kewee Maybe I should have clarified this one as "inefficiencies in their operation"

You can put it down as a design flaw if it is taking quite a bit of time taking the car apart and putting it back together
 
Track knowledge will prove to be irrelevant to a degree. They will have gained a lot of information from Hamilton but even that will be somewhat outdated when track the temperature rises by ten degrees as they expect, so the time Jenson's lost probably won't handicap him.
 
Il_leone.....I don't know about other teams but Neale's quote that the average time for a gearbox change up and down pit lane is one and three quarter hours indicates all the teams have similar difficulties. To be fair to the teams, gearbox failures are so rare they probably feel the trade off in weight saving designs justifies the greater time involved in replacement if something goes wrong.
 
Caterham practically rebuilt Kovalainen's car in that time (probably including at least part of the gearbox) do Mclaren, really should have changed it faster. But it's only themselves they're penalising.

They only rebuilt the wheel/suspension on the left side, which I believe they are allowed to have ready made on a sort of T-car, so it was a much simpler job than it looked.
 
Kewee's off to bed guys. Got to get up again in two hours for 3rd practice and then again 4 hours later for qualifying. Not much sleep for me tonight over here in NZ. :yawn: :sleeping:
 
Il_leone.....I don't know about other teams but Neale's quote that the average time for a gearbox change up and down pit lane is one and three quarter hours indicates all the teams have similar difficulties. To be fair to the teams, gearbox failures are so rare they probably feel the trade off in weight saving designs justifies the greater time involved in replacement if something goes wrong.

This just points out how phenominal the Audi R8 was--in (in think) 2000, the team managed to change the entire rear end (gearbox and complete suspension) in, I recall, 3 minutes, 30 seconds! F1 looks rather inept in comparison.
 
I get the impression Red Bull are on the back foot so to speak and are pushing the design envelope a little too far to try to get up to speed again.
 
This just points out how phenominal the Audi R8 was--in (in think) 2000, the team managed to change the entire rear end (gearbox and complete suspension) in, I recall, 3 minutes, 30 seconds! F1 looks rather inept in comparison.
Wouldn't have been the light weight integrated design they have in an F1 car though. Different cars designed for different purposes.
 
Kewee you will be surprised because its not like both Button and Hamilton drive in the same way which help determine their set up


I do have to agree with Gary because it seems to be a lot of niggling things happening at Mclaren every race so they don't seem to have a trouble free weekend at the moment
 
All I can say is thank god it wasn't Lewis's car that had the gearbox problem because if it had have been all hell would have broken lose on here....
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