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

Racking up the air miles now

Going into the third race of the 2012 season and it is still unclear where everyone lies in true race pace over a normal dry race without the intervention of a safety car apart from that McLaren have done the best job of the teams with Red Bull and Mercedes not too far apart but Mercedes seem to be struggling with higher levels of tyre degradation compared to the other front runners.

Despite all the highly publicised problems at Ferrari, Fernando Alonso currently leads the Championship after a 5th place in Australia and an against the odds victory in Malaysia where the rain early on managed to put Alonso in the lead when the others struggled. However this doesn't mean things are rosy in Maranello as when the track dried up Alonso started to fall back and was being hunted down by none other than Sergio Perez in the Sauber who was closing in rapidly on the Spaniard only to make a minor mistake with a couple of laps to go which ruined his chances of a maiden victory, but he was understandably delighted to finish in second place. Lewis Hamilton showed that he is a more rounded driver than he was in 2011 with a second consecutive third place showing he has the maturity to make the best of a bad job when circumstances were against him when he was caught out by the pit stops (like he was in Australia) to not make any mistakes and bring the car home in third place for 15 points which could be crucial at the end of the season.

On the other hand, team mate Jenson Button had a characteristically poor race after running second early on, but after outbraking himself he broke his front wing trying to overtake an HRT who was running there on position after an early gamble for wets paid off as when the red flag fell, Narain was running in 10th place which shocked fans worldwide. The red flag was also (im)famous for the introduction of gazebos all down the grid, something previously pioneered by Mercedes in Canada last season.

2012 has seen (so far) probably one of the most competitive midfields in many seasons with Force India, Sauber, Williams and Toro Rosso all pushing the top teams for points and Sauber have already claimed a podium through Perez and it could be said that on pure one lap pace, most of these teams are as quick as if not faster than Ferrari, certainly faster than Felipe Massa who is really coming under pressure for his seat after 2 mediocre performances so far while Alonso continued to drag the car to places where it shouldn't really be.

Looking ahead to China and it has been a track which has favoured McLaren in recent years with Lewis Hamilton winning in 2008 and 2011 and Jenson Button winning in the rain affected 2010 race. Hamilton should have won in 2007 but famously threw it away in the pitlane after running wide on very used tyres when he was in a position to win the Championship, something with now Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen took advantage of to win the race and eventually steal the Championship in Brazil.

China will also be an importunity to be the first true comparison of Sky and BBC as it is the first race that will be shown live on BBC and it will certainly be very interesting to see where the two broadcasters shape up over a full race weekend and it will show to people in their own minds which one is better and it is pretty clear that it certainly won't be a clear cut thing and will be down more to personal preference than the overall package compared to the other.

For Galahad's brilliant circuit write up, see here http://cliptheapex.com/pages/shanghai-international-circuit/
 
"We’ve had three Grands Prix so far this year, and they’ve been won by three different drivers from three different teams. The performance differential between the fastest cars is minimal. It looks like we’ve got a great season ahead of us, doesn’t it? Bring it on!”

Well said Martin!
 
"We’ve had three Grands Prix so far this year, and they’ve been won by three different drivers from three different teams. The performance differential between the fastest cars is minimal. It looks like we’ve got a great season ahead of us, doesn’t it? Bring it on!”

Well said Martin!


We might see more race winners and more team wins

first time since Monza 2009 when other than Alonso, Vettel, Button , Webber or Hamilton won incidentally and the last time BRawn/ Mercedes won a race

I think Merc have closed the gap and will cause more problems for the big 3 as it were from last year although Ferrari are off the pace at the moment but Lotus is not far behind if they can keep it up. Interesting to see Williams and sauber going to be a thorn to the quicker cars for the first half of the season at least
 
I think more recently Jenson has gone for more daring moves and got through the field quicker at times
In this race Button got past alot of the cars in front of him simply by using DRS - which seemed harder for Hamilton to do. This may have been because Button had a setup that gave him slightly more traction coming out of the turn leading onto the back straight keeping him closer to his prey whereas it seemed - at least to me anyway - that Hamilton was losing a couple of tenths at that crucial point coming out of the turn. But whatever the reason traffic definately impacted Hamilton more and he was losing chunks of time to Button after every stop. .
 
I just had a question for you all- (I may have missed this on screen),but I've just been looking at the pitstop summaries. Charles Pic drove through the pits on lap 48- taking 13.981seconds. Presumably this was a drive-through, but I can't remember what for (or even seeing anything about it)... Anyone know?

Well, I did saw him in the pits on that lap. It was at a time when the pos 2-11 train passed by. I assume it was more a "getting-out-the-way" act, than a problem or penalty.
 
What about Schumacher? Surely he could have stood a very good chance of winning without that mistake

Looked to me like Rosberg was comfortably pulling away from Schumacher to me, no reason to think that would change. Then again no reason it shouldn't have.

Raikkonen: "Tyre strategy hurt us"

I don't know what Lotus were thinking today, no way was Raikkonen going to manage 28 laps on those tyres without hitting the cliff, Grosjean managed 21 (or 22?) without hitting the cliff which was really impressive, clearly his side of the garage was better today.
 
Nico had the superior pace from start to finish.
It wasn't quite as clear cut as that.

2012-chinese-gp-rosberg-button-hamilton-lap-times.png
 
Well lap times are directly related to pace and you said that "Nico had the superior pace from start to finish".

The chart shows that not to be entirely true.
 
Looked to me like Rosberg was comfortably pulling away from Schumacher to me, no reason to think that would change. Then again no reason it shouldn't have.

It's an interesting situation. I think Schumacher is a great teammate and plays the number 1 and number 2 driver strategy wholeheartedly.

Sure Rosberg had Quali, but are you sure he pulled away from Schui, or did Schui play the number 2 role to give Nico a chance knowing that the Mercedes race pace is questionable?

If Schui was driving for the team win he couldn't have done a better job than what actually happened.
 
It's an interesting situation. I think Schumacher is a great teammate and plays the number 1 and number 2 driver strategy wholeheartedly.

Sure Rosberg had Quali, but are you sure he pulled away from Schui, or did Schui play the number 2 role to give Nico a chance knowing that the Mercedes race pace is questionable?

If Schui was driving for the team win he couldn't have done a better job than what actually happened.
Reminds me of Irvine in 99, 'He's a great number one and number two' Does anyone have Schumacher's lap times?
 
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