Grand Prix 2013 Australian Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

Finally F1 is back! After three months without racing, waiting for car launches and testing, the first race of the 2013 Formula One season at Melbourne is just around the corner.

A quick look on what has changed compared to last year:

Teams:
HRT are not on the grid anymore.

Drivers:
- Lewis Hamilton replaces Michael Schumacher at Mercedes.
- Sergio Perez replaces Lewis Hamilton at McLaren.
- Sauber start this season with a completely new line-up as Nico Hülkenberg and Esteban Gutierrez replace Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi.
- Adrian Sutil replaces Nico Hülkenberg at Force India.
- Valtteri Bottas is Williams’ new driver, replacing Bruno Senna.
- At Caterham Vitaly Petrov and Heikki Kovalainen are being replaced by Charles Pic and Giedo van der Garde.
- Marussia bring on Jules Bianchi and Max Chilton in favor of Timo Glock and Charles Pic.

For the complete line-ups please check this brilliant overview from teabagyokel http://cliptheapex.com/threads/2013-driver-by-driver-preview.6011/

Circuits:
- The German Grand Prix is being held at the Nürburgring instead of Hockenheim.
- There won't be a race in Valencia this year, as the Spanish Grand Prix will alternate between Barcelona and Valencia from now on, starting with Barcelona.

Pre-season testing suggests that (as almost always) it is almost impossible to predict which teams will be at the very front of the grid. Red Bull look as strong as ever. Ferrari look significantly better than at this stage last year. McLaren seem to be struggling a bit. Mercedes appear to have made some progress over the last weeks and might be able to surprise us all. Lotus look like they could be fighting at the top this year as well.

In the midfield battle it seems that Williams and Sauber could have the upper hand over Toro Rosso and Force India, who have waited a very very long time to announce their second driver, Adrian Sutil.

Caterham and Marussia will probably be at the back end of the grid again. It seems very unlikely that any of them is going to be able to fight for points consistently. What is interesting though is, since HRT aren’t on the grid anymore, there will now be six drivers eliminated in Q1, which means, that apart from the Caterham and Marussia guys, there will now be two drivers of other teams out of qualifying after the first part of it.

How will Lewis Hamilton do for Mercedes? Is Mercedes’ completely new structured team going to improve? Is Sebastian Vettel going to pave his way for a fourth consecutive championship? How will Sergio Perez settle in at McLaren? Is Jenson Button going to win for the fourth time in Melbourne? Will Ferrari be able to win races from the outset?

Many questions! At least some of them will be answered in two weeks’ time at the 2013 Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne!
Let’s get it on!!

 

[teabagyokel]

Why do I get the feeling that if McLaren tried to mess up the starts of one Red Bull, it'd be Webber.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Hee hee.

 

[teabagyokel]

ExtremeNinja - I can confirm that for you - this is from f1fanatic's interactive race chart, showing the top 5 at the time.:

Vettel gets as close as to within half a second of Sutil, but by their stops, Sutil had pulled the gap to 1.34. If anything, Vettel backed the Ferraris into Raikkonen.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

As I thought. It looked more like Massa was going to get past Vettel than Vettel was going to get past Sutil. This is why I believe they pulled Alonso in when they did. He was stuck in the Vettel train behind Massa and pulling him in would give Alonso the clean air to jump the pair of them.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Funniest quote of the race.

Crofty:- Every time there is papal conclave the person on pole wins the race.

Martin:- That's going in the top tenuous theory's....

I've heard some theory's on this site that could beat it.....

 

[Mephistopheles]

Carling don't do bad starts but if they did they still wouldn't be as bad as Webbers...

 

[RickD]

All that proves teabagyokel is that the Red Bull is pants when behind another car, same as the last few seasons. Vettel would still have been in Sutils dirty air.

 

[teabagyokel]

RickD - That's as maybe. Fact is, for whatever reason, Vettel was struggling to keep up with Sutil.

 

[RasputinLives]

I thought the last two pope annoncments before this had shortly been followed by a win from the Enstone team and a win for Lotus. I thought that was the fact.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

All that proves teabagyokel is that the Red Bull is pants when behind another car, same as the last few seasons. Vettel would still have been in Sutils dirty air.

Sutil was quicker than Vettel on the Medium tyres on a great deal of occasions and was throwing in fastest laps when both were in clean air. Sutil simply had better race pace. Shame his strategy didn't work out and that he killed his super softs as he was driving a great race. Vettel never looked like pulling away from the Ferrari's, either. Once the cars had shuffled about and sorted themselves out after the first lap tussles (Vettel had the luxury of being clear of all this) the Ferrari's started to reel Vettel in. Vettel drove a great race to third when really his pace ought to have finished him behind Massa. He has Ferrari to thank for that on top of his own solid drive.

 

[Mephistopheles]

It probably was RasputinLives I couldn't remember and couldn't be bothered to look it up and so I was paraphrasing...

Your not seriously suggesting that god smiles down on Lotus whenever a new pope is elected surely?.

 

[RasputinLives]

Crofty was!

 

[Jen]

I remember the same commentary Mephistopheles!

 

[Boyle]

When's the last time Webber had a good start?

I know, I know! It's a trick question! He's never had a good start

 

[siffert_fan]

Interesting little war of words developing there! I think it does happen to Vettel reasonably regularly as well (he had issues at some point on Friday I think), but he tends to go and finish on the podium/win anyway!

It may be just my memory declining due to advancing years, but it seems to me that Vettel has a fair number of problems, but always manages to have them occur in practice/qualifying, while Webber seems to hold out until race day.

 

[teabagyokel]

At times I really do expect his "problems" are simply Red Bull attempting to explain his poor pace.

 

[Il_leone]

I hope more cars simply block Red Bulls in the race because it proves how slow they are running high downforce but a tortoise down the straight

one side effect of high downforce is they wear tyres down much faster.. the Red Bulls again suffer from high tyre degradation issues which just may give Ferrari and Lotus more chances so Vettel is not going to run away with it

 

[ExtremeNinja]

That is not necessarily true. High downforce will preserve a tyre in most cases because the car won't move around on them so much.

 

[Il_leone]

The Red Bull once again proves it vulnerability in setting up the car with high down force and unable to pass other cars

 

[Brogan]

It's a very fine balance; too much downforce and the tyres will wear too quickly, too little downforce and they will wear too quickly, for different reasons.